Not our photo
This impressive animal is the southern cassowary, endangered resident of the rainforests of Northern Queensland. They grow up to 2 meters tall.
They are one scary individual. They've been known to beat up and even break windshields of cars when they try to scare off their reflection! Needless to say they come with a warning:
We decided to stay one night in Mission Beach because we'd read that cassowaries were commonly seen at the Big 4 Beachcomber Coconut Resort. Things looked promising when we spotted these signs on the drive in.
The speed limit was reduced from 100 kph to 80 kph on a road we Canadians would feel most comfortable driving at about 60. We slowed down and checked the verges carefully every time we came across one of these signs
Or these:
But no cassowaries to be seen.
We stopped at the Lecuala Track and walked the trail in quiet expectation.
Where are the cassowaries?
Lecualas are these beautiful Fantail palms,
endangered because their habitat has mostly disappeared due to development along the coast, with huge beautiful fronds.
Fronds are approx. 4 ft diameter
We had no luck finding cassowaries, until Leo stumbled upon this:
Of course, I had already researched this trail online, so I knew they were fakes, installed to educate and amuse children.
When we checked in at our guaranteed cassowary sighting caravan park, the receptionist was apologetic. They hadn't seen their cassowary lately.
This could be good news, maybe they'd stopped feeding their cassowary so it wasn't coming around anymore, or it could be bad news and the bird was the victim of a car accident.
But she said we should visit the caravan park down the road in Etty Bay when we left the next morning.
There was a moment of panic when we checked into our cabin
and the air conditioner wouldn't work, but the maintenance guy assured us that it took 5 minutes to kick in. We thought we we might expire before then as the cabin had been closed up in the heat all day, but soon all was well. And we were just across the road from the beach
That's a stinger (jellyfish) -proof swimming enclosure those kids are playing in
so a breeze even came up as evening fell. We checked the camp kitchen at dinnertime, but no still no cassowary. We drove back down the local roads at dusk, but no luck.
The next morning we stopped at another guaranteed cassowary site, the Dreamtime Trail. It was raining as we started. It soon stopped, and we took down our umbrellas but the air was now so hot and humid our clothes were totally sweated through.
Desperate, sweaty and cassowary cured in the jungle
Not only did we find no sign of the cassowary but there were no other birds around to distract us. It became a death march to the end of the trail which came out back on the main road about 1-1/2 hours later. We couldn't face going back on the trail, so we started walking back on the road. By now we were so discombobulated we weren't sure which way we should go and walked back and forth on the road several times till Leo left me at the trail head and ran back in the right direction to get the car! While waiting I discovered that the actual trail we were meant to take was across the road, a much shorter, less arduous loop trail, with actual twittering birds in the trees. The cassowary curse! No cassowaries on this trail either, of course.
By now it was to late in the day to bother looking for the cassowary at Etty Bay so we continued on our journey to Daintree National Park.
There were signs of the elusive cassowary all along the way:
Where the cassowary fulfills his battery needs, obvs.
Could this be where he lives?
No, but we found a pretty decent cauliflower and cheese pie and delicious custard tarts at the Goondi pie shop on this street! Things were looking up! A few hours in the air-conditioned comfort didn't hurt either.