Daintree National Park

Hi again.  We are actually safely home now, but as promised there will be a few more posts to complete the blog - before I forget everything!

Monday, 2-28 in Cairns, Daintree experience

When setting up the itinerary in Cairns, the two things I knew I wanted to do were the Great Barrier Reef and the Skyrail.  After that, I wasn't too sure, except that the Daintree National Park sounded interesting.  So the concierge set up a tour on “Billy Tea Bush Safari.” With a name like that, I did not have high expectations for the day.  Was I ever surprised!

One great thing is that we were transferring to Port Douglas that night and I was going to rent a car to get us there.  But since the tour to Daintree would take us by Port Douglas, the tour operator agreed to pick us and our luggage up from the Cairns Hilton and drop us off at the Sheraton Mirage on the way back.  Brilliant!

Ready for safari!

So the day began when Andrew, our driver/guide picked us up early in the day, and also picked up two Japanese women, a young single woman from North Carolina, and a nice couple from San Antonio that we hit it off with early on.  For the long two hour drive north to Daintree, a World Heritage forest well north of Cairns and Port Douglas, Andrew entertained us with a running commentary about everything under the sun, but mostly about the history of the area, the agriculture, the type of vegetation, unique animal life, including the cassowary, an endangered and rarely seen flightless bird, the largest in the world, with the possible exception of Big Bird on Sesame Street.  He sees one two or three times a month, so one never knows.  (We didn’t.)

If we had seen a Cassowary, he (or she) would have looked like this!

He dropped us off at the Daintree River, where we boarded a small boat captained by a rough and ready Australian with heavy accent.  It became apparent immediately that we were in the hands of an expert about the mangrove environment.  While not degreed academically, he has a virtual PhD in his knowledge of the plants, their biology, the animals like snakes and birds and crocs, and many other things which he showed us as he piloted us around the bayous off the Daintree River.  Someone asked him about how he knew so much, and he basically said life experience primarily, but that he also works with professors from many universities discovering new species and the ecology of the mangrove environment.  He learns from them, and they certainly learn from him!

In mangrove forests, multiple roots develop above the water so the plant can breathe.

Just to pick one example:  there is one particular tree (don’t remember the name) that develops a long pod, looks like a super long string bean.  When it is fully developed, it drops into the water and bobs along in a vertical position until the bottom touches ground, at which point it immediately sprouts roots and starts another tree.  In the top of the pod, there are already miniature leaves developed, which start growing rapidly once supplied with nutrients from the newly formed roots.  Now here is even more amazing stuff:  this tree thrives in a 50% salt water environment, but does not do well with either greater or lesser salinity.  So this pod only floats in a vertical position, ready to strike soil, if the salinity is around 50%.  If less or more than 50%, it floats horizontally so it will not make contact with the river bottom until the tides bring it back upstream or downstream to the proper environment.  Is this as fantastic to you as it is to me?

Our knowledgeable riverboat captain with the  pod I described above

Andrew said later that every animal and plant on earth except one exists for a purpose to support the rest of nature.  The one exception?  Humans!  So as much as we may abhor flies, mosquitoes, cockroaches, etc., etc., if you eliminated one of these pests completely, the balance of nature would crumble!  (However, ask me again about flies when we get to Ayers Rock.)

Andrew picked us up again from the boat and we drove up into the mountain rainforest, where it was time for lunch.  The driver/guide now turned into cook and did some great steaks and sausages at a little wildlife place.  He also led us into a pen where we could feed kangaroos and wallabys.  There was also a crocodile in another pen and for a short time then, and a long time later, gave us more information on the life and evolution of crocs than I could have imagined.

Now this really was an Outback Steakhouse!

Karen and Roo

Moving on, we stopped to take a walk into the rainforest, where he showed us fascinating plant life, including fern species such as the King Fern shown here, that have been in existence for over 300 million years.  The individual plants may live for hundreds of years.  These rainforests are the oldest in the world.

King Fern - a 300 million year old species!

The highlight was a continued trip into the forest to a mountain stream where we were invited to take a swim (yes, we knew this in advance - no skinny dipping!) in cool, but pristine water.  While we did this, he prepared a table with all sorts of local tropical fruits whose names I cannot remember, but they were all delicious.

Do they or don't they have swim suits on?

We packed back into the 4WD vehicle which got us to this idyllic place over rough unpaved roads and took us to the beach at Cape Tribulation, which would have been another great place to swim except for deadly box jellyfish which inhabit these waters during their summer months.  He said, “Don’t even stick your big toe in!  One thing I noticed there were little holes in the sand, perhaps an eighth of an inch in diameter, with little balls of sand all around them.  This turned out to be the Sand Bubbler Crab, who makes these holes in between high tide and low tide, and when the tide comes in it washes nutrients down these holes, then consumed by these tiny crabs.  I actually got a video of one of them pushing sand out.  Really funny!

That's close enough, Karen!

Sand bubbler crab hole, about 1/8 inch in diameter, surrounded by sand balls pushed out.

We began the drive back from a tremendously informative and entertaining day, with a discourse from Andrew about agriculture.  Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear it all, because it was a relatively short drive from there to our new home for two nights, the Sheraton Mirage in Port Douglas.

I hope this post wasn’t boring to you.  It is very hard to put into words or even pictures, what we experienced on a tour into such an environment rich in plants and animals totally unfamiliar to us.  There is a whole world out there we know nothing about!  In fact that no one knows about!  The estimate is that only 1/3 of the species of plants in Australia have been discovered and named.