Captain Cook ran aground on the reef off of here and wrote “all our trials and tribulations seem to have started here”. They had to lighten the ship and wait until high tide to row the ship off of the reef. Ashore the Rain Forest with its then impenetrable mangroves, snakes, 15’ crocodiles and unfriendly natives awaited them. (There are 3,600 different types of snakes in Australia and we are told that “only 10% of them have poisonous venom”. Well, OK, that’s just about one poisonous snake for each day of the year then).
We have an easier time and join a tour which takes us by boat along the river to look for crocs (I keep my hands in my pockets). They run to 15’ but we just see a baby one about 18 inches long sunbathing on a tree root. Crocodiles have a natural way of keeping their population in line with their food supply - they eat each other when they run out of other food. That includes their own babies and is probably the reason why the baby we saw was hiding up out of the river.
With our excellent Naturalist Guide we then go on to the Daintree Rain Forest and then Cape Tribulation. Our guide (“Nic”) shows us a tree that is 15’ tall but 1,000 yrs old (“cycad” a species that has been around since the dinosaurs) and the “wait a while bush” that does manage to snag my hand and draw blood. It has hundreds of hooks all along its stem and they are sharp and face down to the root, if it catches you it will take some time to get out of its grip. The Rain Forest is fantastic, there is so much stuff in here and every living thing in here is fighting for its survival or having sex. We see an 18” lizard/dragon waiting to catch some flies; a white tailed rat; a brush turkey; a golden orb spider at about 6” toe to toe; lots of different and highly colored butterflies, a curtain fig tree that germinates high in the branches of a host tree (so it gets a head start on reaching above the forest canopy to the sun) and then drops its roots 20’ to the ground and then eventually grows strong enough to be able to stand without its host tree which it then proceeds to strangle; other trees that have seed pods that look like spears so that, when they drop, they penetrate the brush and water and lodge in the mud below.
We look for but don’t see the female eels that live in the high mountain lakes but are related to moray eels. Once every three years the females get the sexual urge and travel tens of miles down to the sea to mate with the waiting males. Also looked for but not seen is the Rufus owl that grows to 3 feet tall.
It pours with rain while we are in the forest and we get soaked but it’s magical to be there when this is happening and to hear all of the sounds and to smell the dozens of different smells.
Carrowaries live here as well and are a flightless bird, related to the Ostrich and Emu, and the female can be 6’ tall standing. They are territorial and a little scary with their knife-like claws capable (our guide, Nic, tells us) of slicing us open with one kick. (I can’t help thinking of a scene from the movie Jurassic Park). We have seen them in a zoo but not here and so Nic fills in with a story about one instead. She and another naturalist friend were alone in a clearing and her friend was playing a small Didgeridoo when a Carrowary came into the clearing making their deep-throated “you are in my territory” noise. They stopped playing the instrument and the bird came over and sat down next to them. Very slowly, Nic’s friend picked up the Diggeridoo and started to play it again. The Carrowary just sat there next to them and listened for about 30 minutes and then just got up and walked out of the clearing but turned back to look at them before leaving as if to say - “that was real guys”- and walked off.
We took a look at Port Douglas on our way back to our Cairns hotel. A very good trip.
Australia has an amazing variety of, quite different, natural environments.
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