Our Tour of Alice

May 19
Alice Springs
Sunny, warm, and dry.

I do apologize for being away for so long. Our schedule has been hectic enough so that it's been pretty much impossible to get some time for writing, let alone getting on the internet to upload journal entries.
Were back from our Central Australian camping trip, and have but a few things left in the course. Tonight, after their final quiz, we will have dinner at the Red Ochre Grill, followed by a didgeridoo concert at Sounds of Starlight. Tomorrow we head back to Sydney for a couple of free days before returning home.
Let me first write about our day tour of Alice Springs. Though Alice is very small as cities go, with a population of just over 25,000, it is the largest city within 1000 miles in every direction, and thus serves as a hub for much activity. So, there is actually a fair amount of things to see here.
We began our day at the Alice Springs Desert Park. The park is a zoo of sorts, though the emphasis is much more on presenting the habitats one is likely to encounter in Central Australia. The students thus had the chance to see the sorts of conditions that they would encounter while camping.
The Bird Show is particularly interesting. Though it is a free flight show, the birds are clearly well-trained to display their natural behaviors. The species we saw were the standard birds of prey one finds in the wild, with the exception of the wedge-tailed eagle. But we saw plenty of kites, a magpie, an owl, and a tawny frogmouth as a part of the show.
We stopped at the Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS) Visitor Centre for a tour and a lunch. The RFDS is the first line of medical care for anyone in the remote Outback, providing over-the-phone emergency care, emergency airborne medical transport, clinics in villages and on stations, and medical evacuation. They do this with a small fleet of planes, a staff of pilots, mechanics, nurses, doctors, and radio operators.
We had a leisurely lunch at the RFDS Cafe. Since we had so much time, I wandered about the neighborhood, as our coach driver had suggested that I take a look at the nearby Old Gaol. This old eyesore is being refurbished as a museum celebrating Australian pioneer women. Perhaps we'll include it in the tour for next year.
We continued to the School of the Air. The running joke is that tourists often think that it's a school for pilots, though our students always arrive knowing that it is in fact a school conducted from Alice Springs and other central locations in Australia, for the children in remote stations and Aboriginal communities. Because many of our students are preparing for careers in education, this visit usually turns into a long question-and-answer session during which the students learn a lot, not only about the School of the Air, but also about the educational system in Australia.
The Telegraph Station is the reason Alice Springs is located where it is. During the 1800s, Australia underwent tremendous economic growth, and needed therefore to be in touch with the rest of the world. The plan was to run a telegraph line from Asia undersea to Darwin, and then down the middle of Australia to Adelaide. The terrain itself certainly represented a barrier, but gaps in the central ranges needed to be located as well. Most importantly, repeater stations needed to be located every 150-200 km to amplify the signal, and the people staffing those repeaters needed water.
The local river, now named the Todd River, had an unusual amount of surface water in it when the explorers came through; they thought they had discovered a spring, though there was no reason for a spring to be located at that point. The telegraph station was located on the spot, and a town named Stuart soon flourished nearby. Of course, everyone knew the name Alice Springs, since that was the telegraph station, so the citizens of the town eventually renamed their city Alice Springs.
The telegraph station was closed in the early 20th century, but the history of the place continued. Under the name of the Bungalow, it was used as a native school for some of the children of the Stolen Generation until the mid 1960s -- in fact, our tour guide, Merrill, was the daughter of a woman who was a resident of the Bungalow, and had several other relatives who had passed through there. So, her lecture about the place had an extra dimension to it.
I'll recount our camping trip in my next post.

The Daintree

May 12
Daintree Rainforest
Partly sunny and warm. Early afternoon shower.

(Of course, I am posting this after our camping trip to Central Australia. Just catching up....)

Our visit to the Daintree took place today. On this day, we go the farthest north in Australia as a group that we will, past Port Douglas and Mossman, across the Daintree River, and continue up the Bloomfield Track to Emmagen Creek. It's usually a very good day, and this one was no exception -- except for a personal stupid moment that did not end well.

Our guides were John and Matt. John is a old friend of the course; I think he's been one of our guides almost every year we've included Billy Tea Bush Safaris as a part of the excursion. We started very early, as it is a ways up the coast -- we'll be over 150 km north by the time we get to Emmagen Creek, and we have several stops before then.

At 8 am -- the same time the children were going to school -- We stopped in Mossman to pick up some fruit for lunch and our afternoon billy tea break. I went in the Yum-Yum Tropical Fruit Store along with John just to have a look around the place. It's a small food store with an eye toward supplying folks in the more remote areas of the north with quantities that will last a few months.

We continued up north to a river boat stop where we boarded for our cruise on the Daintree River. This cruise serves two purposes: it gets us across the river; and it gets us pretty close to a wild saltwater crocodile. There are five dominant male crocs along the stretch of river that we visit, along with about 20 or more females and many additional juveniles and hatchlings. The tour guides have names for the males, though I can recall only three at the moment: Gummy, Fat Albert, and Scarface. Gummy has no teeth; he has lost them all in fights with the other males. Fat Albert is huge. Scarface has an obvious scar on his snout, no doubt from a fight.
Males fight over territory; whoever controls a section of the river has mating rights with all the females in that section. Fights typically occur when one croc challenges another in an adjacent territory. It is rarely a fight to the death; like most fights for dominance among animals, it's over when one backs off. But fights almost always result in crocs losing some teeth, thus eroding their ability to catch and hold prey.

Most of the crocs were in hiding during our visit, but we did get a good look at Scarface today. I've seen Gummy and Fat Albert before, but this was my first glimpse of Scarface. He's somewhat smaller than the others, though he routinely holds his own in frequent clashes with the other males along the river. I got many really good shots of Scarface -- but more about that in a moment.

Of course, there's other wildlife on the river besides the crocs. We saw some tree snakes, as well as an azure kingfisher -- and I had very nice photos of those, too. (My guess is you sense that the disaster coming involves my camera in some way.)

We got off the Daintree river at the cable ferry crossing, where our 4WDs were waiting, having crossed while we were on our cruise. Our next destination was a rain forest walk in the Daintree.

The rainforest walks in the Daintree take place on boardwalks built slightly above the forest floor. You are thus not crushing anything valuable, and will tend to not take anything as a souvenir (which is a crime and is punishable by a fine). Since the boardwalk is raised, the small animals of the forest can get underneath and are unimpeded; the larger ones like cassowaries can easily cross it.

The numbers about cassowaries are depressing. The last authoritative number I heard was 2500 left in the wild, but the tour guides are all saying that it's more like 1100-1500 left. It seems to be a quick downward spiral to extinction, and I have heard of no successful breeding programs at any zoo or sanctuary. Needless to say, we saw no cassowaries during our travels today -- I think that the responsible guides probably stay away as much as possible from areas in which particular birds are known to range.

The cassowaries have lost much of their habitat, and the introduction of feral pigs into the rainforest has had an additional negative impact. The chief thing that kills them these days, though, is the automobile. As the roads improve, the threat grows for the bird. There was some attempts by developers to pave the road north of Cape Tribulation; this would of course increase the property values. But the regional councils and ratepayers (= homeowners, I think) associations put a stop to it by getting the entire area World Heritage listed. So, nothing but dirt north of the Cape.

Okay, the disaster was that I lost the roll of film in the camera. I was at the end of the roll, and push a little too hard on the advance lever without thinking and snapped the roll. Of course, the whole roll was ruined at that point, since I had no changing bag and would have had no place to put the film anyway, and no way to get it to a developer willing to try to save it. So, I threw the film away. Arrgh! I know, I know; it wouldn't have happened if I used a digital SLR...

We had lunch at a small resort in the Daintree, one that we've stopped at many times before. John prepares fantastic steaks, complemented with salads and avocado slices. While he was busy cooking those up, a few of the students visited the kangaroo refuge. There were only two red kangaroos and two wallabies; two of the kangaroos that had been there in 2006 had died. Since it is a refuge for kangaroos that could no longer survive in the wild, they often have ailments that will limit their time, so it was not really a surprise to find some gone. Of course, it did not mean as much to the students as it did to me, since one of the ones who had passed on had given me the strongest 'kangaroo hug' after I had given him a particularly tasty treat back then.

The kangaroos and swamp wallabies were very sweet, of course, and seemed very grateful for the attention. The reds were both very old, and one who clearly had difficulty moving about had hip displacia, according to Matt. I suspect that it's a common complaint for elderly kangaroos, as their hip joints probably get quite a pounding over the years.

After lunch, we continued north, through the tea plantations and the forest, until we left the paved road at the Cape Tribulation and continued north through the forest to Emmagen Creek. The creek is a freshwater stream up the mountainside, well away from the crocs and any other nasties, and is a place where the students could have a bit of a splash in the water while John and Matt got the billy tea going.

The 'billy' in billy tea refers to the can in which the tea is boiled. A billy is a can with a wire handle that probably holds about 2 litres of water. The word 'billy' is a corruption of a French word that means 'to boil,' and refers to the cans of 'bully beef' from which the billy cans were originally made.

The process of making billy tea is straightforward: get the water boiling in the billy, throw the tea in, wait a few minutes, and then whirl the hot tea water overhead to force the tea leaves to the bottom of the billy. This was demonstrated for us by Matt this time, though I suppose it's something anyone could do. You must simply trust the physics of it.

They also served a sweet bread, a sort of raisin loaf, with golden syrup made from cane. Along with that, we were treated to several exotic fruits. These are grown in Tropical North Queensland but are not native to Australia, and included familiar items like bananas, papayas, and pineapples, but some unusual things too, like Amazon custard apple and mammy sapote. They were all very tasty, though some of the students were a little intimidated by the latter two.

We did stop at Cape Tribulation on our way back. The Cape was so named by Captain Cook, as he felt that all his troubles with the voyage started at this point: running aground on the reef and tearing a hole in his ship; ravaging the crew; and many other difficulties began at this point.
The Cape has a lovely stand of mangroves on its northern side; at low tide, the complex root system is revealed. It's also a good place to watch for wildlife. Some students found small translucent crabs on the beach, and many saw a variety of birds about. There was an enormous golden orb spider hanging around outside the women's toilet, and apparently an even larger one inside -- needless to say, I couldn't see that one, and had to take the students' word for it.
We made a stop at a tropical ice cream store, where I got my yearly taste of wattleseed ice cream. Someone must bring this to the US! It has a taste somewhere between chocolate and coffee, but lighter. It's very good. If I can, I will find some roasted wattleseeds, bring them back, and make some for folks back home.

The tropical ice cream store sells one item only, a cup containing four flavors of the day. They were wattleseed, black sapote, soursop, and macadamia nut. All were very good, of course -- but I was waiting for the wattleseed.

After the ice cream store, we came back to Cairns and said our good-byes to John and Matt. A note to Larry: John sends his regards.

Tomorrow is a free day. And then on the 14th we're off for our final round of adventures in Alice Springs and Central Australia.