The Daintree

13 May
Cairns
Sunny, breezy, and warm

Finally! The sort of weather one associates with Cairns has arrived: sunny with a nice breeze and warm temperatures. It's a shame that we won't have more of it before we take off for Alice, but at least the students got a taste of it. Today is a day for errands and such; I did laundry in the morning, then posted the prior entry to this journal, went over the student entries at the course blog (http://ecaustralia09.blogspot.com/) and added a few of my own, and made a few phone calls to confirm things for tomorrow and the next day.

Yesterday was our visit to the Daintree rainforest to the north. This tour package includes a cruise on the Daintree River to search for crocs and other wildlife, a rainforest walk, a buffet lunch, an afternoon tea on Emmagen Creek, and a visit to Cape Tribulation, our northernmost point on the course. Our guides this time were Findlay and John.

John is a old friend to the course. We started using Billy Tea Bush Safaris several years ago, and John has been one of our guides every year. He is very knowledgeable, and is very good with the students. By the way: to my senior colleague, John sends his regards. Watch for a picture of him cooking our lunch on the course blog.

Our drive up the coast was pleasant, though rainy. We stopped in Mossman to pick up avocados for lunch and fruits for the afternoon tea. It is often the case that we are doing this while children are on their way to the nearby school, so we get a chance to see the school uniforms and the crossing guards directing children and cars about.

After Mossman, we continue up the road for another half-hour, until we near the Daintree River. There is no bridge across the Daintree; one must cross on a boat or by ferry. For our first crossing, we use a boat that takes us on a cruise of the river searching for crocs. Of course, with the cloudy and rainy weather, the big adult males that dominate the river were off in their lairs, so we only saw a small hatchling swimming by the side. It was a shame, but there's no controlling the weather, of course. We did see a python and a few tree snakes, as well as an azure kingfisher, a brightly colored bird of the river.

Our tour guides met us on the far side of the river, and we continued our drive into the Daintree Rainforest National Park. This park is a part of the tropical rainforest of north Queensland, and is thus listed as a World Heritage Site. We drove into the mountains for our rainforest walk.

The boardwalk we use takes about 45 minutes to complete, and runs through a typical portion of the forest, complete with the ferns, cycads, satinays, paperbarks and strangler figs that make up the major portion of the forest. There are the epiphytes, too: the staghorn and elkhorn ferns, as well as huge basket ferns far above the forest floor. We even saw a couple of lizards clinging to small tree ferns.

The fate of the cassowary has been on the minds of the people here for a long time. A cassowary is a large flightless bird, similar to the emu, the ostrich, and the kiwi. It is a keystone species of the rainforest; remove it, and the forest will undergo dramatic changes. And the cassowary is endangered; the current estimate is that there are about 1500 left. Since the area has been World Heritage listed, loss of habitat is no longer an issue. The biggest threats to them are cars, and competition from feral pigs.

No one is certain, but it was a common practice for mariners to release pigs into the areas around beaches at which they would land. This would often guarantee a supply of meat when they would return. The thinking is that the feral pigs in the Daintree are the result of such a release, though it is impossible to be certain. IT is also impossible to say who did so, or when. But the pigs have been in the Daintree for a few hundred years now, slowly eating the ecosystem out from under the cassowaries. It is uncertain if there is a way to save the birds. And since no one has successfully bred them in captivity, it is very possible that the cassowary will go extinct in the coming years, thus drastically altering if not destroying the rainforest.

On these walks in past years, I've seen a lot of the damage done by the feral pigs. They often tear up the forest floor, exposing the earth that then sheds moisture, leaving less for the plants. The pigs go after young plants, making it difficult for new growth to get started. But this year, I noticed a lot less. I asked John about it, and he said he had noticed it too, but was uncertain of the reason. There have been culling programs in place; perhaps they are having an effect. In any case, it's a bit of good news for the rainforest.

We stopped at a roadhouse higher up in the mountains for our buffet lunch, prepared by John. Steaks and sausages, four different types of salad, coffee and tea service, all very good. The roadhouse keeps a menagerie as well: a few tropical birds, some kangaroos and wallabies, and two snakes. Some of the students went with Findlay to feed the kangaroos while John prepared lunch.

After lunch, we made our way up the Bloomfield track, a dirt road that runs up to Cooktown. We went past Cape Tribulation to Emmagen Creek, the northernmost point of our travels, stopping at the creek for afternoon tea, damper bread, and exotic fruits. Th sun began to show while we were at the creek, as the rainy weather system finally started breaking up and moving out.

On our way back to Cairns, we made three stops, one at Cape Tribulation for a quick look-see, a second at a tropical fruit ice cream shop, and a third brief stop at a lookout on the Coral Sea. All in all, a very lovely day.

It is now around 5:30 pm on the 13th. In a little while, I am going to take the students over to the Cock 'n' Bull, a local restaurant, for a group dinner. And tomorrow, we take off for Alice Springs and our visit to Central Australia.