Author Archives: Steve Walker

About Steve Walker

Once a tech in-house PR type, now professional photo/videographer and recreational drone pilot. Violinist. Flautist. Occasional conductor. Oenophile.

Julaymba and Mossman – Gorgeous

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Tuesday 1 October 2024 – Blimey, what a day we’ve had! My brain is full, and I’ve already forgotten most of what I was told today, but here’s what I can remember.

We were booked on an all-day tour, with a company called Walkabout Cultural Adventures. In order to help me decide what photo gear to take with me (meaning, mainly, do I take the big, heavy lens or not?), I looked at their website, but it was really rather vague about what the day held. After the event, I understand why. Beforehand, I guessed that the lens might be too cumbersome and I was almost entirely right about that.

We were ready for our scheduled pickup at 0745. Unusually for this kind of thing, the minibus turned up on time, and out jumped our guide for the day, Aaron,

full of energy, engaging and well-organised. As we went to pick up the final members of the (10-person) group, he drove his bus,

asked us about ourselves, commented on the state of all manner of things and looked out for items of interest, all at the same time. He is a man of many talents, opinions and anecdotes.  His expertise is in bush medicine, and, having lived in the bush for most of his life, his knowledge of flora and fauna is extensive, engagingly delivered and almost always correct.

Confirmation that the crop we saw yesterday was indeed sugar cane came in the form of a drive-by (photo) shooting at Mossman Sugar Mill

once the beating heart of local industry but now sadly disused; it had struggled to stay afloat financially for years, but ageing machinery and a finite amount of cane-growing land available eventually pushed it into liquidation, despite a Aus$45 million bailout from the state government to help local farmers buy it.

The next stops were part of prep for the day, picking up lunchtime wraps and stopping at a local business which grew exotic fruit.

It’s owned and run by a lady who’s originally from Florida, and has all manner of fruit, some familiar, some less so.

Inside the shop was a root vegetable that I’d never come across before, called Taro

which, as you can see, can be thinly sliced and fried to make taro chips. Outside grew wild bush grapes (Brazilian grapetree)

which unusually grow direct from the trunk and branches. Aaron showed us how to eat them; they have tough skins but delicious contents. He also retrieved a dangerous-looking blade on the end of a pole and started chopping at a tree to retrieve some flowers

which he then used to stage a demonstration – and bade us follow his example.  Place them in a little water in the palm of your hand, mash the mix around vigorously,

and – hey, presto! – you have Ylang Ylang perfume.

Aaron then drove us around to various places, sometimes pointing out things on the way, like this view of so-called Snapper Island

which looks like a crocodile lying in the water (except with no tail); and sometimes stopping to get out and search for stuff to show us.

In the first instance it was a Noni fruit (which seems to be a panacea for many ills – though sadly not for old age).

When mashed in the hand, the fruit emits a pungent smell like blue cheese.  The young fruit on the tree looks like this.

In the second instance above it was lilli pilli,

a very sour fruit, but one which contains a very high concentration of vitamin C, so is a good addition (thinly sliced and in moderation) in salads.

We stopped at a wild mango tree, where one of our number commented that he had eaten a wild mango fresh from the tree 40 years ago, and was keen to do so again; a bit of comedy ensued as Aaron started throwing unripe fruit at the ripe ones, aiming just to dislodge them, and recruiting the youngest fittest bloke to catch them so they weren’t bruised.

We all got to taste wild mango fresh from the tree and very good it was too. We aren’t the only creatures who think so; the evidence of fruit bats tucking in to the ripe fruit was hanging from the tree!

As we went on, Aaron commented on the scenery

and showed us a view over the upper Daintree river,

as we headed into the Daintree National Park, whose aboriginal name is Julaymba. Its Australian name is derived from the Daintree River, which in turn was named by George Elphinstone Dalrymple, an early explorer of the area, after his friend Richard Daintree, a pioneering Australian geologist and photographer. The 1,200km² park consists of two sections—Mossman Gorge and Cape Tribulation, which include the towns of Mossman and Daintree Village.

His next trick was a wowser.  He took us to the nest of some weaver ants, which were busy repairing a hole he’d made in it some days before,

and made another hole in order to get them angry, so that he could pluck some off the nest as they boiled out to defend their home.

The result of his mashinations was something that definitely cleared the nasal passages. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was covered in ants that were biting him.

We had a short stop in Daintree Village

where I had a coffee at a place which had a much more engaging table identification system than boring old numbers

And then we went to a place called Daintree Ecolodge.  The main reason for this was to visit something that has much significance to Aaron, as an aboriginal man; a women’s birthing pool, which is in an area that he, as a man, is forbidden to enter under aboriginal law. So we walked, or rather, stumbled up some rocky steps, up to it without him guiding us.

The pool itself is shown in the middle of this photo,

which also shows the damage caused by a landslip after last December’s storms.  The damage meant that the pool itself was inaccessible. Even when it was, it was a fairly challenging climb up the steps; those aboriginal women were tough!

The Ecolodge itself has some very interesting-looking cabins on offer

and in its forest surround, we found a wonderful creature;

a Boyd’s Forest Dragon (this one a female). Unlike most other lizards, it doesn’t bask in the sun, instead letting its body temperature fluctuate with air temperature (thermoconforming rather than thermoregulating). It has a strange hunting strategy: sit and wait. This involves staying extremely still until it spots suitable prey (typically invertebrates); strange, but, it would seem, not ineffective. Aaron cautioned us not to touch it, as doing so would cause it to hibernate too early and therefore starve to death.

Aaron also found us a type of nut, which he called a “wild bush almond”, although it looks more like nutmeg [a Native Nutmeg, I reckon – Ed];

when chewed, it’s a mild hallucinogen, something (he said) that aboriginal elders would chew as they sat around the fire, thus quite possibly giving birth to their stories that are part of the Dreaming.

We had been in moderate hopes of seeing a cassowary, but the closest we came to it was a fine specimen of cassowary plum.

See yesterday’s page for a description of its consumption that will make your eyes water.

We passed a raptor and its nest

which Aaron told us was a Whistling Kite, but it isn’t. We are pretty sure it’s an Osprey. This is the only time that I missed having my big heavy lens with me; I could have got a much better picture of the bird.

More demonstration followed, as Aaron showed us how to make a foamy potion which would relieve mosquito bites and dry skin, using the leaves of what he said was called silver wattle or silver ash – we suspect western botany knows it as the latter; the stalks could be used to make a muscle ache reliever similar to Deep Heat.

He also selected a variety of coloured stones which could be ground up with water to make a paste

which is the paint that aboriginals use to paint their bodies when they dance.

These colours can be supplemented by black, which is made from the ash of burnt eucalyptus.

After a lunch stop, at which we ate the exotic fruits acquired earlier (yes I have pictures of their exoticness; no I am not going to show them) we went to the delightfully-named Wonga Beach, where Aaron attempted to teach us how to throw a spear, aboriginal-style. I shall draw a veil over our attempts to emulate him.  After that, some people went hunting for mud crabs

although the only evidence of crabs on the beach were these distinctive patterns in the sand.

Aaron told us that these were made by Ghost Crabs as they excavated their holes. Those of you who have been paying attention will remember that we also saw these on Cable Beach, near Broome, way back in August when we were in the Northern Territory. It’s possible that these patterns, and those seen on the spotted goanna, might have been inspiration for some of the patterns seen in aboriginal art.

The final segment of the day was a walk along Mossman Gorge. This is partly over constructed boardwalk

and partly up and down a path which contained some fairly challenging going at times.

It led across a suspension bridge over the river, from which one got a decent view,

past a lookout giving another viewpoint

(and showing further evidence that Aussies in the hot parts of the country can’t pass a body of water without getting into it).

There were big boulders

and big trees

and, near the exit, a huge golden orb spider, which was quite friendly, at least with Aaron.

The big spider is the female;

the tiny orange blobs e.g. at bottom right are the males, otherwise known to the female as a post-coital snack.

That was the final act in a day spent in Aaron’s theatre.  It was hugely informative, engagingly delivered and made fun by our guide for the day, but I was almost too exhausted to make G&Ts when we got back to our hotel; that’s how brain-challengingly content-rich it was. Luckily, the morrow is going to be more relaxed.  Sadly, we have to leave the Daintree and head for another region, the Atherton Tablelands, where we hope to see some more wildlife, including, if we’re very lucky, at a cassowary. All we have to do tomorrow is to drive there; what happens the day after when we do our tour, will be something you’ll be able to read about if you stay tuned.

Casso Wary

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Monday 30 September 2024 – Our schedule today included an all-day tour. Like these things so often do, this one required a somewhat early start, as we had, officially, an 0810 pickup at the hotel reception which (you of course remember, because you were paying attention) is a non-trivial walk away. Our shopping expedition of the day before had netted some breakfasty-type stuff as well as the Twinings Finest Earl Grey, so we ate in our room before heading for the hotel reception

so that we could wait an extra 10 minutes because the pick-up was late.  However, some good came of the wait; we chatted to the lass at reception, who confirmed a possible future holiday travel destination as being a sound choice. We will start saving up just as soon as we get home.

Our destination was the Daintree Rainforest, part of the largest contiguous area of tropical rainforest in Australia, the Wet Tropics of Queensland. The region, along with a select number of other rainforest areas on the Australian east coast, collectively form some of the oldest extant rainforest communities in the world at around 180 million years old.

Our guide, a jovial and, as it turned out, very knowledgeable chap called AJ,

picked us up in his bus, which seemed to be almost devoid of any suspension mechanism,

where we joined a dozen and a half other people on the journey further North! up the coast.  I think all the others had come from Cairns, because it wasn’t long before we stopped for a comfort break at what I think is the most colourful set of toilets I’ve ever seen.

We learned a couple of things there: the first was the disturbing extent of flooding that followed the epic storm that hit eastern Australia in December 2023, when the full extent of that 2m flood indicator was a relevant measure; the second was

the words for Ladies and Gentlemen in the aboriginal language of the area.

After the loo break, we carried on northwards, crossing the Daintree River via a cable ferry.

We passed the Mount Alexandra Lookout, normally a part of this tour, but noted as “temporarily unavailable”.  It became clear, from extensive roadworks along our way, that this was another consequence of the storms of last December, a little more of which later. Having passed it, our next stop was at the Jindalba boardwalk, where we hoped to see a specimen of wildlife that Jane was particularly eager to see, but which is notoriously elusive – a Cassowary. AJ had said, in his various spiels, that it would be possible we might see one, and that one sign that one of these beasts was in the neighbourhood would be fresh scat. Well,

there was a seemingly fresh pile of cassowary shit there, containing some of the “seeds” that this bird eats. Let me give you some idea of scale, here:

those “seeds” are the size of plums, and the cassowary will have gobbled them up whole. Indeed, there is a particular tree, called the cassowary plum, whose fruit (a fetching shade of navy blue)

needs to have passed through a cassowary’s digestive tract to enable it to germinate. Sorry if you’re reading this over a meal.

AJ was eloquent about this and other fruits of the rain forest,

giving us hints about how not to kill ourselves by eating the wrong stuff.

Because the Jindalba boardwalk was severely restricted because of storm damage, we then headed off in the general direction of Cape Tribulation, named thus by Cook (only a Lieutenant at the time, not the Captain) when Endeavour was holed as it hit a reef. En route, there’s another boardwalk, the Madja boardwalk, where we were able to explore the hinterland where rainforest and mangrove swamp meet. AJ pointed out various other interesting plants, such as this vine

which indigenous people used as fishhooks. Given that disentangling oneself from an accidental encounter with this vine takes a lot of time and careful unpicking, it is not surprising that it’s called the “wait-a-while” vine.

We saw other things at Madja that were new to us: this palm tree;

and mangrove “snorkels” of an unfamiliar kind, much stubbier and blunter than we’d ever seen before;

apparently there are some three dozen varieties of mangrove in the Daintree area. Naming of them, like the wait-a-while vine, is a reasonably simple affair; for example, here is a picture of the fruit of the cannonball mangrove.

Unsurprisingly, there were several varieties of crab fossicking about in the mud

as well as angler fish in the creeks (these are the ones that squirt water at insects to dislodge them from low branches)

and weaver ants

whose bum tastes, allegedly, of citrus. AJ told us that you “pick, lick and flick”; pick them up, lick their bottoms and then flick them away from you. Apparently if you try to brush them off, they will bite, which is uncomfortable. The citrus taste is, he said, ascorbic acid, better known as Vitamin C, mistakenly thought by many as being a cure for the common cold.

The rainforest was very atmospheric, with some very photogenic corners.

Our next stop was the beach at Cape Tribulation, which is, frankly,

just this beach, you know, although it does have an interesting variety of mangroves growing there.

It was on the walk back from the lookout path that things became more interesting.  Firstly, the main lookout had been completely destroyed by the storm;

in front of us should have been a sizeable platform, but instead there was a massive landslip and a chap who  was doing some surveying about repairing the damage. Secondly, there was a demonstration of the dark side of Mother Nature; give this video 30 seconds if you’re interested.

I was rather taken by this image of the goanna which was part of this scenario.

We dashed towards the final item on the tour’s itinerary via the Daintree Ice Cream Company, who offered us a tasting of four of their exotic fruit flavours, including black sapote and wattleseed. I can report that these taste nice, but are not particularly spectacular. The reason for the rush was that we had to meet a cruise ferry. Not a big one, you understand,

but nonetheless one that could give us a chance to see some of the flora and fauna in and around the Daintree river; our guide on the boat was a knowledgeable chap called Mick. Sadly, the time of day, and, indeed, the time of year, were not the best for wildlife spotting (too warm in both cases), but Mick gave a good educational talk about the varieties of mangrove we were looking at and the root systems they depended on; and also was able to show us some of the damage that that storm had done, in entirely demolishing what were once beaches along the river.

We did, finally, catch sight of the main objective of the river trip – an estuarine crocodile (commonly called a saltwater crocodile), actually the alpha male of this stretch of river,

and a juvenile who might one day take over as such, and seemed to be smiling at the prospect.

We also saw a kingfisher, one of my favourite bird species; this one was an Azure Kingfisher.

The wildlife might have been largely absent, but the general view was pleasant

belying the very clear destruction that must have happened during That Storm. At the top of the walkway off the boat, we got a further idea of how high the floods ran.

At the “Cruise Terminal”

we had a cup of tea and a chuckle at the local entertainment on offer.

Also there is the second prize in the “best painted loo” competition.

AJ dropped us off at our hotel and, before we allowed the evening to descend into an abyss of drinks and snacks, we went to its beach,

which is nice enough, but just this beach, you know?  On the way down there’s a warning

and on the way back a gentle suggestion.

Our final wildlife encounter of the day was a katydid by the light switch for our cabin.

So we never got to see a cassowary; any that were there were obviously reluctant to show themselves. Maybe we’ll get another opportunity; we certainly hope so.

The morrow has another all-day tour, which looks to have a bit more culture and a bit less wildlife in it. I expect we’ll learn a bit more about the region and I’ll share it with you when I can.

 

 

Port Douglas

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Sunday 29 September 2024 – With nothing formal on the itinerary for today, our plan was to explore Port Douglas, a town about 16km further North! up the coast – apart from anything else, we were down to our last half dozen Earl Grey tea bags. Before we went out, though, there was the small matter of breakfast, which would be served in the main lodge. Our accommodation was among the select group of cabins that were furthest away from the lodge,

so this entailed a 300-metre walk through the rainforest. It’s not a level walk, though, oh dear me no.

I realise that in absolute terms, the ascent is not daunting; it’s just that, somehow, it’s not particularly welcome as a pre-breakfast workout. We had our first wildlife encounter of the day en route, with a many-striped skink which could give Phoebe Waller-Bridge some useful lessons in side-eye.

Our second wildlife encounter was to see a bird taking a bath; I suspect that the bath was specifically set up so that punters like us could watch from the restaurant.

Later in the morning we headed towards Port Douglas, which is a mere 20-minute drive away. The scenery really makes it clear that one is in the tropics

and we passed a crop that we think is sugar cane,

although it looks different from the sugar cane we saw in Madagascar earlier this year.

Port Douglas is a compact town, with all of the major commercial activity concentrated in a couple of streets

and an architectural vernacular – corrugated iron roofs on a steel frame – speaks of the need to withstand cyclones (as did the signpost en route to the town pointing to a cyclone shelter).

There are many bars and restaurants

and, of course, the obligatory aboriginal art outlet.

On the town beach, there’s a wharf called Sugar Wharf,

which supports the probability that the crop we saw earlier was sugar cane. Its use for loading sugar cane ceased in 1957 and it’s now an entertainment venue.

We stopped in the town for a coffee at the Grant Street Kitchen, which is a bakery

proudly advertised around the town as “award-winning”. Jane said that her almond croissant was the best she’d had so far on this trip, and the place was very popular, with a persistent queue out of the door,

and an interesting selection of customers,

so the claim would appear to have merit. They clearly do a good line in pies, which appeared to be the meal du jour among people sitting outside.

Port Douglas is world famous in North Queensland for its market – every Wednesday and Sunday. It being a Sunday, we pottered over (it being very humid and hot enough, at 29°C, to put anything more energetic than pottering out of the question) to take a look. It’s obviously a flourishing concern.

Immediately neighbouring the market is a delightful little church, St. Mary’s by the Sea,

and behind the church, a tree which is remarkably laden with epiphytes.

We did our necessary shopping and headed back to Thala Beach. In the grounds, we stopped to examine something that had been pointed out to us on yesterday’s stargazing expedition.

This is not a small heap; let me show you the scale of it.

Believe it or not, this has been made by one pair of birds, orange-footed scrub fowls.

The male starts the mound in an attempt to woo a passing female by showing off his nest-building skills; the pair then continue building and managing the heap each breeding season. If all goes according to plan, she lays eggs in the heap, which is big enough to foster internal warmth from rotting down and thus incubate the eggs. Once they’ve hatched, the chicks then dig their way out. This strikes me as being like something out of the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch: “We were evicted from our hole in the road. We had to make do with a pile of rotting leaves.”

The rest of the day passed in blissful idleness; we have two days of relentless tourism coming up and one has to build up one’s reserves, after all. Stay tuned to find out exactly what these two days of tourism actually entail.