Alpine Australia

Beth on the trail to Craig's Hut

We are now in southern Australia, having flown from Cairns to Melbourne on Saturday, November 20th.  Since we’re in the southern hemisphere, flying south here is like flying north back home – it’s much cooler here in the south, and the daylight is longer.  We are currently staying in a timeshare just north of Melbourne, having traded our timeshare back in the U.S. for this week, knowing we would probably need a break from all the camping. The resort is in the alpine region, where the ski resorts are.  Yep, that’s right, Australia has ski resorts!  There are six of them in this area.  There are no pine trees here; instead they ski amongst the snow gum trees.  Right now there isn’t a trace of snow – we were told that the season ended six weeks ago (I have a feeling their winter is very short).  There are lots of mountains here - they remind me more of the Smoky Mountains than the Rocky Mountains.  This is Snowy River country, for those of you that might remember the movie “The Man from Snowy River.”  It was filmed in this area in the 1980s and used many of the town’s inhabitants as extras.  The film itself is based on a poem written in 1890 by Australian bush poet, Banjo Patterson.  I happened to watch the movie last winter so it is fresh in my mind (love that movie!).  The hut that Jim Craig, the main character, lived in is in a picturesque part of the mountains here – as soon as I saw a photo of it I knew we had to go there!  This area has been in a severe drought until this year when they received loads of rain, which happened to wash out the road going to Craig’s Hut.  No worries, we weren’t going to let a silly road washout stop us!  We talked to a few different people from the area who helped us figure out the best route to hike there. 

Daron on top of Mt Stirling

On the day of the hike we got an early start and headed up to the top of Mt. Stirling, near the ski resort of Mt. Buller (which we had hiked the day before).  The views were fabulous, as all views from mountaintops are!  From Mt. Stirling we continued on an arduous up and down road until we reached Craig’s Hut.  The nice thing about the road being washed out is there were very few visitors at the hut.  It did not disappoint –the hut and the view were both very scenic and as a bonus we had it all to ourselves!  We took pictures and had lunch on the porch, enjoying the fabulous views.  No wild brumbies in sight (that’s Aussie for horses, for those of you who remember the movie J)!  The hut was destroyed by a bushfire in 2006 and was rebuilt in 2008.  Original or not, it’s still very picturesque, and is exactly how I picture my fantasy cabin in the woods where I will live when I want to get away from it all. 

Craig's Hut

On another note, kangaroos are ALL over the place where our timeshare is. We can’t walk around the grounds without seeing loads of them.  We watched them almost every evening:  eating, hopping around, and even boxing with each other.  I never get tired of watching them.  They also have lyrebirds in this area, which we really wanted to see but I guess they were hiding from us!  The lyrebird image is on the Australian dime, as well as the $100 bill.  The male lyrebird has these really long tail feathers that it drapes over itself to attract female lyrebirds.  It also mimics natural and unnatural sounds – like car alarms, chainsaws, cameras, etc.  I watched this amazing video on the internet and could hardly believe that a bird could make those sounds.  If you’re interested, you can watch it here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y

Beth with her kangaroo friends

This was a mostly uneventful week – we took it easy and enjoyed having a kitchen and free laundry facilities, as well as a TV and movie channels.  I indulged my craving for pancakes (yum!) and Daron cooked us lots of tasty meals.  We booked our flight to our next destination, New Zealand, leaving on Dec 8th from Melbourne.  This week was a nice little respite during our time here in Oz. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just a quick post to wish all of our friends and family a Happy Thanksgiving!  We are very grateful that each and every one of you are in our lives. Thank you for all of your support and encouragement before and during our trip.  It is greatly appreciated and means more than you know. Thank goodness for the internet, for its ability to help us keep in touch with everybody. We enjoy hearing from each of you - it feels like a hug from home, halfway around the world!

Here's to you!

Much love,
Beth & Daron

Salties



Crocs are stealthy hunters

 Since we haven’t been able to see crocodiles in the wild during our time up here, we decided to spend a day at a crocodile farm/zoo.  I enjoyed the place we chose to visit because they were big on education, and not just crazy shows.  They also took in wayward crocs from the surrounding area that had been causing trouble.  One thing I noticed right away is that every employee had a healthy respect for the crocodiles, almost bordering on fear.  We took a boat tour through their lagoon and the lady driving the boat said two of the big males got in a big fight right next to the boat the day before (it’s breeding season) and she didn’t know what to do besides scream.  She seemed nervous throughout our boat ride, even though it was fairly tame.  We’ve been to alligator places in Florida and Colorado where the handlers would get super close and the alligators were so well fed they didn’t try anything.  I got the feeling here that the saltwater crocodiles weren’t that way.   They are entirely unpredictable.  We saw freshwater crocs too, and the handlers had no problem being in the pen with them.  Not the case with the salties.  We heard lots of stories during the shows of people in the area who had been killed and eaten by crocs.  As they told us, “crocs aren’t stupid; they eat stupid people.”  Basically the ones who had been killed were swimming in known croc-infested waters.

A face only a mother could love!

There are two species of crocodiles in Australia, the saltwater and the freshwater.  The salties range throughout the Indo Pacific regions, with the largest ones being about 5-6 meters.  They can live to 100 years of age and have over 60 teeth - in a lifetime they can wear through 100 sets.  Their jaws have a force of several tons (we heard them snap shut and it was impressive – not something you want to be the last thing you ever hear!).  Crocodile’s stomachs are as big as a human head and they have the most advanced heart of any living animal on earth.  They can jump six feet in the air from water.  They are active 24 hours a day while most other reptiles rest once the sun goes down (I thought this was interesting).  Large crocs can live off their body fat for a year.  They don’t do much feeding underwater – they mostly prey on what is on the shore.   They were around before, during, and after the dinosaurs, and were almost wiped out here in Australia in the 1960s before laws were passed protecting them.  It is currently illegal to kill a croc in the wild.

We met a few interesting crocs and learned each of their stories.  We met Paul, who had eaten several cattlemen’s dogs and had the annoying habit of biting the heads off of cattle as they were drinking from the river.  Then there was Sollie, who was named after the dog he ate on New Year’s Day.  A group of local children were getting ready to swim in the local swimming hole and poor Sollie (the dog) was the first in the water (bad for Sollie but lucky for the kids!).  We learned about one legendary large croc named Sweetheart that used to attack boats in the area.  He didn’t go for the canoes or kayaks, but instead would attack motorboats, flipping them over and putting all the passengers in the water!  Can you imagine?  Yikes!  While everyone was swimming for shore Sweetheart would be busy attacking and dismantling the motor!  I guess he had a thing for motors.

A cassowary up close

Other cool things we saw at the croc place were the cassowary birds.  We had seen one in the wild while in Daintree National Park, but it was nice to see them up close.  We heard them call to their handler, and if that sound isn’t prehistoric, I don’t know what is.  Such an amazing bird.  We also saw the death adder snake and the taipan snake, both extremely venomous.  A handler brought out the taipan snake during the snake show – it was hard to sit still while watching him (wouldn’t want to be in the front row!). We learned that ounce per ounce, the taipan’s venom is the third deadliest (to us) in the world.  Number two is a frog in Columbia, and number one is the Irukandji jellyfish (box jellyfish) here in Oz.  We read in the newspaper that a dog in the area was recently killed by a taipan bite.  Its owner got a glimpse of the snake after it bit the dog, otherwise they wouldn’t have known what killed it (dogs have it rough over here!). The snake handler told us that two people get killed by snakes in Australia each year (he went on to explain that the real number is 1.8, which equals one Australian and one Tasmanian – wonder what the Tazzies think of that joke!  J).  Interestingly, it’s illegal to kill snakes in Australia. 

Yikes!

We had fun checking out the salties (while protected) and learning all about them.  On a final note, I'll leave you with a picture of Daron having too much fun with a croc!  

The Great Barrier Reef



The catamaran we took out to the reef



Today we took a boat tour out to the Great Barrier Reef on a nice, relaxing catamaran (no more crazy ocean rafting for this gal!).  The reef covers an area of 348,700 square kilometers and is larger than Great Britain.  It’s not one reef, but actually a collection of over 2,500 individual coral reefs and islands – the largest system in the world.  Reefs are only found where the seawater temperature ranges from 18-33 Celsius ( It is the only living thing that can be seen from the moon.  Its beginnings go back to the last Ice Age when the current continental shelf was exposed.  When the sea level rose, all the beaches, dunes, and barrier islands were submerged, providing the perfect platform for the tiny organisms that build coral.  The reef grew more each time the sea level rose.  In periods when the level fell, exposed coral broke off and this reef debris raised the level of the shelf floor in the reef zone, allowing even more reef to be built.  Reefs are only found where seawater temperature ranges from 65-90 degrees Fahrenheit.  



The latest in stinger suit fashion!



The Great Barrier Reef is home to about 350 species of coral, 10,000 species of sponges, 4,000 species of mollusks, 150 species of echinoderms, and more than 1,500 species of fish.  The Cairns region is considered a great place to view the reef because the outer reef is much closer to the coast and the water depth is much less.  The boat we went out on took us to two spots – one was its own private area and the second was a popular snorkeling spot.  The snorkeling in both places was amazing – the best I’ve seen!  The visibility was excellent and I’ve never seen so many fish!  It looked like someone threw confetti in the water – small colorful fish everywhere!  We saw so many different corals and fish; we even saw a black tipped reef shark, a leopard shark,  stingrays, turtles, and at the second site, tons of giant clams!  The giant clams were incredible, and they were all over the place.  Daron liked to touch them and watch them close.  We did see jellyfish too, lots of them, but they were harmless (still puts a chill down my spine!).  We were told that about 8-10 people get stung by the dangerous jellyfish each year out of all the boatloads of people that go out to the reef (Daron and I thought this was a high percentage, whereas the boat employee who told us this thought it was low).  Treatment is oxygen, morphine, and a helicopter ride to the nearest hospital.  Yikes! 



Daron with Michaelmas Cay in background

It was a fabulous day on the reef, great weather (finally!), great guides, smooth water, and it was so nice and relaxing sailing back into the harbor at Caines.  I feel very fortunate to have been able to see the Great Barrier Reef and all the life that it holds.    

Roos!

Beth hiking in the bush

After camping in the rain for days, we decided to head inland and visit the Outback.  We figured it must be drier there, and the spot we had in mind wasn’t too far away.  Driving in the Outback was quite the experience!   The only paved part of the road was one lane right down the middle; when we met another car on the road, both of us would move over and ride partly on the gravel shoulder and partly on the paved middle.  UNLESS…it was a road train.  These are large trucks with up to three trailers attached to them and they pretty much rule the road.  They drive down the middle of the road, on the paved area, and don’t slow down at all for oncoming traffic.  We did the best we could to get as far onto the shoulder as possible, surviving the dust and debris that rained down on us after it passed.  Wow!  Luckily the roads are pretty straight and open so you can see them coming up the road quite a way ahead.

Road train in the Outback

Our destination in the Outback was Undara National Park, where they do tours of old lava tubes.  We did not do any of the tours, but we did take advantage of the campground, the pool, and the guided nighttime walks.  The bathrooms themselves were a study in the various insects of the area (Yeesh! And not in a good way!).  I showered with a very active frog one morning, keeping my eye on him the entire time, just in case.  During our first evening in the park I was waiting for Daron outside the bathrooms and three kangaroos went jumping right by me!  We followed them into the hotel compound and watched them for a while, happy that we were finally able to see kangaroos.  Later that afternoon we took a short hike and saw kangaroos everywhere!  Wallabies too!  There were so many of them it was almost ridiculous.  As I was watching them in the wild, all sorts of questions popped into my head:  do kangaroos have any predators, how long do they live, etc…  It inspired me to find out a little more about them, and this is what I found out:

The kangaroo has hardly any predators here in Australia, besides the dingo and the odd vehicle that may hit them in the mornings/evenings when they’re active.  They only live 4-6 years, which helps explain why there are not more of them. The government does “harvest” them, in order to keep their numbers down – their numbers have increased since the introduction of European farming methods (lots more grass to eat!).  There are no kangaroo farms;  licensed hunters are allowed to kill a certain amount in the wild, depending on the population.  We haven’t tried it, but kangaroo meat is supposed to be quite tasty and low in saturated fat compared to other meats.  Interestingly, kangaroos are great swimmers. Kangaroos have no breeding cycle and are perpetually pregnant (and you thought nine months was a long time to be pregnant!).  The joey (baby kangaroo) is born after 31-36 days; it’s about the size of a lima bean, with only its forearms slightly developed, which it uses to crawl up its mother’s belly into the pouch where it attaches itself to a teat and stays for about nine months.  The female has the ability to freeze its pregnancy if food and water are scarce.  It can also simultaneously produce different milk for each teat, one fit for the tiny lima-bean joey, and one for the older joey that is out of the pouch and sometimes still needs its mother’s milk.  Quite the adaptation! 

Daron and kangaroos!

No matter how many kangaroos we see, they are always fun to watch.  It seems like so much effort for them to hop around like they do, but what I learned is that energy is stored in their tendons, rather than their muscles, so it doesn’t take muscular energy for them to hop.  The hopping action expels air from the lungs, making it an efficient way to travel in such a harsh environment.   The hopping requires little energy, and increased speed requires little extra effort.  Speed is not necessary for escape since they have virtually no predators; instead it’s used to cover large distances in search for food and water.   There you go - everything you never wanted to know about kangaroos!  As we see more and more of them all over, I find them very fascinating.  They look like a cross between a deer and rabbit with a weird pear-shaped body.  When the Europeans first saw them with their joeys peeking out from their mother’s pouches, they thought they were some strange two-headed being!

Kangaroo family

Anyhoo, we enjoyed spying on the kangaroos in the Outback.  More discoveries awaited us on the night walk at the park.   It was cicada season, a cicada being a large locust-like bug that hatches for about three weeks each year about this time, where the males are very noisy while they are trying to attract the females.   It sounded like we were under very noisy power lines the entire time we were there.  For some reason the evening we took the walk I must have smelled like a very attractive female cicada because I had three (yes, three!) different cicadas fly into my head and hair and knock themselves out.  Of course I did the requisite screaming and dancing around that I do whenever any big bug flies into my hair!  Yeesh. 

We also came across an Orb Weaver spider, which was humongous as far as spiders go.  They are as big as a person’s hand.  Yuck!  Our guide, who is also not fond of spiders, told a story about pulling his shorts off his clothesline before a party, where he played for an hour or so with a piece of lint in his pocket while at the gathering, only to pull it out hours later and find one of those big orb weavers in his hand!  Yikes!  I have goosebumps even now thinking about it! 

Our other wildlife sighting that night was a cane toad (more yuck!).  They were introduced to Australia in the 1930s, in hopes that they would eat the beetles that were ravaging the sugar cane fields.  The toads didn’t like the beetles and have changed the ecology of the area in which they were released.  They are poisonous, but only if you eat or lick them (no chance of that!).  They will make a crocodile very sick.  The Aussies have their own humorous way of dealing with them, developing sports such as cane toad golf and cane toad cricket! 

Not quite the lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) that we could see in other parts of the world.  We enjoyed our short time in the Outback, even though the rain caught up with us, even out there in the “dry” areas.  Everywhere we went for a week straight it rained.  We’d check in at a campground and the host would say, “we haven’t had rain all year” and then as soon as we put up our tent it would start to pour!  People we’d meet at the campgrounds would ask which direction we were headed just so they could make sure to go the opposite way!  We kept our sense of humor about it all; it became an ongoing joke with us!    

Our new and improved rental car

After the Outback we headed back to Cairns so we could book a snorkel trip out to the Great Barrier Reef.  The day before our trip we were checking out a local campground when our beater car died.  Oh no!  It wasn’t completely unexpected; we didn’t have a lot of faith in that car from day one, but if it had to die it picked a good time and place.  The caretaker at the campground was SO helpful – we are very grateful for all she did for us that day!  Eventually the rental company replaced the car with a nice newer rental car, which we enjoyed driving around town while we had it!  We are so fortunate that the car didn’t break down while we were out in the Outback!  

Whitsunday Islands

We are now in Airlie Beach, having been here for three days now.  Airlie Beach is along the east coast of Australia, a bit south of Cairns.  It is the jumping off point for the Whitsunday Islands, which are just off the coast from here.  The Whitsundays are 74 islands, made from the forested peaks of a drowned mountain range.  Most of them are national parkland, some have camping, and some have resorts on them.  We signed up for a boat tour that would take us to the most famous spot amongst them, Whitehaven Beach, which has four miles of powder white sand.  We hit a couple of booking agencies in town and both people we spoke with recommended the boat we went on today – in fact, both of them had taken this tour a few times, and they even take friends on the boat tour when they’re in town to visit.  Seemed like a good recommendation for us – it went to all the places we wanted to go and sounded like fun, so we signed up for it. 

Our boat coming to pick us up

The day of the boat tour was cloudy with rain in the forecast, but we weren’t going to let that stop us.  The boat tour advertisement said “the ride of your life!” and boy, was it ever!  I think it was the ride that almost ended my life, but maybe I’m just being overly dramatic.  The boat was one of those small crafts that do slides and donuts and all that rollercoaster-like fun stuff.  We saw something similar in Sydney Harbor that looked like fun.  The only difference is the boat in Sydney had seat straps to keep a person in the boat, whereas this one had none.  We were told by our captain, Benny, at the beginning of the ride, “if you fall down it’s your fault – it means you weren’t holding on hard enough!”  Great.  Whose idea was this?  The brochure showed people sitting on the sides of the boat, smiling and laughing, holding on with one hand – I remember thinking after looking at that, how bad could it be? Well, I was about to find out. 

Our very attractive stinger suits

Daron and I sat in the back, on the left side, in sort of a couch situation, which made it a little tricky for holding on.  There were metal bars alongside the bottom of the seat and behind the seat which is where we hung on.  After we cleared the harbor Benny started off with the turns and spins, which were a bit jarring, but still fun. The hard part for me was hanging on in an awkward sideways position.  Soon we made it to the snorkeling spot, where we donned our stinger suits (meant to protect us from the deadly jellyfish, even though your feet, head, and hands are still exposed), and jumped in.  It was full on raining by now and besides that it was high tide, so the visibility was poor.  We took it all in stride, especially since we weren’t on the trip for the snorkeling anyways.  Next stop, after more boat tricks, was Hill Inlet, where there’s an overlook onto Whitehaven Beach.  The postcards of this view are drop dead gorgeous and it was the main reason we booked this particular boat tour (most boats are too big to be able to stop at the overlook).  The view was beautiful, even in the rain, although since it was high tide the sandbars that we saw in all the postcards were under water.   Our last stop was Whitehaven Beach, which did not disappoint.  The rain stopped and the sun thought about coming out (alas, but didn’t).  We had a nice lunch and lounged around on the beach, enjoying the soft sand.  Daron took his life into his own hands and went into the water without a stinger suit (lots of others did too).  It was a great way to spend the afternoon.

After a couple of hours on the beach we got ready to head back to the harbor at Airlie Beach.  They offered everyone a piece of chocolate cake before heading out to sea (yum!), which put me in a chocolate haze where I thought the boat tricks might not be so scary after all (darn that chocolate!).  We’d been warned that the seas around that part of the island would be rough and to hang on.  The other side of the boat was the wet side going out (I thought they were ALL the wet side!), so coming back our side would get the worst of it.  Benny played in the waves (not small ones either) all the way back – we hopped and jumped and caught air and turned – and our side of the boat was drenched.   One girl in front popped right out of her seat, over her boyfriend, and landed on the other side of the boat.  Benny stopped long enough to ask if she was okay, which she was, but she wanted to change seats with someone in back.  Daron leapt at the opportunity – he was in her seat before I knew what was going on!  More tricks and turns and finally we were through the rough stuff.  Benny said on a REALLY windy day the waves were twice that size, and for him, that’s a REALLY great day!  Yikes! 

Daron on Whitehaven Beach

After the rough stuff Daron and the frazzled girl changed seats again – he told me it was really jarring in front.  He couldn’t talk to anyone while he was up there because his mouth kept snapping shut and he was afraid he’d bite his tongue off!  Anyhoo, we got close to the harbor and I mistakenly thought, “phew, I made it!”  Little did I know!  The other boat from the same company (different route) came into the harbor at the same time we did.  Before I know it, Benny is maneuvering the boat so he can splash their boat, which requires a huge yank on the wheel.  I’m holding on so tight my wrists hurt.  I keep telling myself, “they do this everyday and no one gets hurt.”  The other boat tries to splash us, and then the testosterone-laden hijinks begin.  Benny says, “alright, everybody hold on “(like we hadn’t already been doing this for the past few hours)!  He’s yanking the wheel this way and that, both boats are showing off, and before I know it, with one big yank I lose my grip and fly to the other side of the boat, ending up on the floor.  It happened so fast I was stunned to find myself face down on the boat’s floor.  I remember thinking, “oh #!@$%^!!!, he’s still going and I’m not holding on!”  I was behind Benny in the boat and he didn’t know I was loose, so he was still sliding around and doing his tricks.  Thankfully he was only doing donuts at this point, which allowed me time to scurry back to my seat and hold on with everything I had left.  If he had yanked on the wheel like he had been doing I have NO DOUBT I would have flown out of the boat.  If you are wondering what Daron was doing while I was flying around the boat, he told me later it was every man for himself!  Ok, not really, I was behind him too (we’re sitting sideways on a bench holding on) and he did not see me flying around gracefully behind him. We eventually made it back safely and I was so glad to be on solid ground!  It took the rest of the night for me to recover from the ride.  I had big bruises on my knees for days and my arm and wrist were super sore, from hanging on (Daron’s were sore too).  It was quite the adventure, and one I hope not to repeat anytime soon.  The moral of the story is:  just because it comes recommended, it doesn’t mean it’s right for you!  But on a positive note, I’m glad I got to see the Whitsundays and Whitehaven Beach.

Wallabies!



Beth and her new wallaby friends

Today we camped in the Atherton Tablelands, an area of Queensland that is higher altitude than the coast, and is a bit drier too (although there are still patches of rainforest here).  We had one place in mind:  Granite Gorge.  We heard it had a great swimming hole (too rocky for crocs) and lots of rock wallabies.  The lady running the campground was a hoot!  She had her own “zoo,” full of various birds and lizards; there was even a pair of American turkeys (no, not us! J) with chicks running around the place.  Her monitor lizard got out three days ago and she was worried that the kookaburras (birds) would catch and eat him.  Luckily she found him that morning – she liked to hold and cuddle him. 

Baby wallaby peeking from its pouch

The wallabies at Granite Gorge are a special type that is able to live amongst the rocks – they are very agile and stick to the rocks like glue.  They can also hop into trees.  The lady running the place sells special food for feeding the wallabies – she assured us that she had a license for this (not sure what that means exactly; it doesn’t seem like feeding them would be good).  We were anxious to see a wallaby “in the wild,” so we purchased food and made our way out onto the rocks.  It didn’t take long for them to find us (not a surprise), and before we knew it we had a group of them surrounding us.  The best part was seeing the little ones peeking out from their mother’s pouches – so cute!  They looked so cozy in there it made me want a pouch of my own to sleep in! 

Daron as crocodile bait



After the food was gone we went to the swimming hole to check it out.  The water was brackish, even though a fresh water river fed into it.  They assured us there weren’t crocs in the area (too many boulders), although it looked like a good place for them to be.  Daron made his way down the rock face in order to wade in; the algae on the rock were so slippery that he slid right in!  I couldn’t stop laughing; even now it makes me laugh out loud!   There was a rope bolted to the rock (now we know what that was for!), and all I could hear above my laughter is Daron saying, “Throw me the rope!  Throw me the rope!”  It was so slick that he couldn’t get out on his own.   If there were crocs in that pool, they would definitely have had a tasty and easy meal waiting for them.  Good times for sure - I got to see rock wallabies up close, as well as my husband squirm, all in the same day! J

Daintree Rainforest



Daron's Tarzan impersonation!

We spent the last couple of days in Daintree National Park, which is a protected part of Australia's rainforest.  The rainforest, home t many primitive flowering plants, is thought to be the evolutionary cradle for much of Australia’s unique wildlife.  It is home to 30% of Australia’s marsupial and reptile species, 65% of the bat and butterfly species, and 20% of the bird species.  I found this little tidbit interesting:  the Amazon rainforest is 7-10 million years old, while the Daintree rainforest is between 150-200 million years old!  It is a living museum of primitive plants and a window to how the world once was.  Twelve of the world’s 19 primitive plant families are found here.  The area’s annual rainfall can be as much as 180 inches (that’s 15 feet!).    



Daron and a Cassowary exhibit

Over 1,000 freehold properties were created in the Daintree area in the 1980s (the government has since been trying to buy them back), so as we were driving through the park there were businesses all throughout (ice cream, restaurants, hotels, etc).  It definitely did not feel like a national park.  We did all of the nature trails, walked on the beach, and checked out Cape Tribulation, named by Captain Cook when his ship ran aground there.  It is so dark in the forest, even when the sun is shining up above – and the vines are astounding, various kinds winding all over the place.  The giant ferns look prehistoric - I feel like we’re in Land of the Lost, about to see a dinosaur any minute! 

Speaking of dinosaurs (or birds that look like dinosaurs!), we were lucky enough to see a Cassowary, which is the world’s most dangerous bird (not a surprise for Australia!).  They are large like an emu, but slow moving, and have a spike on each of their feet.  If threatened, they will attack with both feet and slash you with their spikes.  They are very important to the rainforest because they are the only animal capable of dispersing the seeds of more than 70 species of trees whose fruits are too large for other animals to digest and pass.  In fact, it is thought that if the Cassowary disappears, those 70 species of trees will also disappear.  It is an endangered species with less than 1,000 left.  A male Cassowary slowly crossed the road in front of our car with its baby chick.  That’s right, the males incubate the eggs and raise the chicks! 

Not a sign you like to see at the beach!



The warm tropical climate makes a person want to jump in the water here, but alas, there will be no swimming for us (unless it’s in the pool)!  There are warnings all over regarding salties (crocodiles) and stingers (jellyfish).  Salties can be found in the freshwater rivers and also in the ocean close to shore.  Stinger season just started – the enclosure nets are already up on certain beaches, so people can swim in small areas.  There are more than one type of jellyfish here, and the most deadly one (the box jellyfish) is tiny.  All the signs say to swim at your own risk and that there’s no guarantee that the jellyfish won’t get through the nets. We won’t be taking that chance – the pool is fine for us!