Thursday 3 October 2024 – Long Post Alert!!!!
Yesterday, 2nd October, marked two months since we left the UK on this fantastic trip; it also marked the time to travel to our penultimate destination – the Atherton Tablelands. This is an area somewhat to the south of Port Douglas, and we had a drive of some 2½ hours to get there. So we bade goodbye to the coast as we passed a reminder of this once sugar cane dominated area – these rail freight carriages, or “bins” as they were called, used to take the cane to Mossman when there was a working sugar mill there.
Although the railway is defunct, there are still many road signs and other indications which give the impression of a working system.
Just before we got to Mossman, we turned left and headed inland – and uphill. It was difficult to find a place to stop, to admire the views that we were presented with back towards the coast; but we eventually found a layby with only a slightly perilous walk along a twisty road with big trucks barrelling down it, back to a viewpoint.
We stopped for coffee at a village called Mount Molloy, which had a hotel which, by the sound of the loud banter coming out of it, could have starred in Crocodile Dundee, but only if the censor had been feeling lenient that day. A café on the same side of the road had just turned off its coffee machine, and so we crossed over to the “Ahoy Molloy Coffee Ship”.
It billed itself as a “coffee and whole foods store”,
and, indeed had a variety of things for sale around the back.
We asked the exceedingly hippy barista what the chemical symbol meant on the front, and he told us that it was the caffeine molecule. Rough round the edges, but a cool place, actually.
The landscape changed dramatically as we left the rainforests of the Daintree; trees became much sparser
and the grassy spaces were dotted with a multitude of termite mounds;
the dense forests disappeared.
The agriculture changed, too.
Mango, avocado and banana crops could be seen from the road and the surrounding lands were exploited for farming.
Our planned lunch stop was in the town of Atherton, which has given its name to the surrounding countryside. Its name came from one John Atherton, who settled the area and introduced cows in 1879. Interestingly, the landscape once we’d climbed out of Port Douglas was flat, but once we officially arrived in the Tablelands, where one might have inferred flatness from the name, we saw many more rolling hills. We’d been two months in Australia and never visited a fish and chip shop; given that there was a reasonably well-reviewed one in Atherton, our lunch venue was an easy choice.
The fish and chips were very good; and on the walls were some clues as to perhaps why Australia has a similar occurrence of obesity as the UK.
Jane had, as ever, done her research on Things To See On The Way, and it was her work that decided us on travelling via this slightly longer route to get to our destination; Madam Tomtom in our car would have taken us back down the coast via Cairns – slightly shorter, and, as it turned out, probably a lot less interesting. Jane had spotted something called the Curtain Fig Tree; and since individual trees rarely get their own spot on Google Maps, we decided to take a look. The tree has signposts, its own car park and even its own National Park. We didn’t explore the National Park, but took up on the offer of a car parking spot and followed the signs, which led to a boardwalk
from which one could start to get an idea of the scope of what was on show. Which was astonishing.
The area is a sacred place for the Ngadjon-Jii people and an info board explains how this extraordinary scene developed. A fig seed was deposited by a bird in the crown of a tree. It was a strangler fig seed, so it grew roots down to the ground which also reached out, encircled and eventually strangled the host tree. The host tree (now effectively dead) then toppled, and ended up leaning on a neighbouring tree; the fig continued to send roots earthwards, which developed into the curtain one sees today. We’ve seen it compared to the “Tree of Life” in Avatar – actually more like the tree of death for the original host…
Jane had also spotted a “Platypus Viewing Platform”, which was in the pretty village of Yungaburra.
As we searched for a place to park, Jane spotted that there were Stone Curlews on the green – the female presumably incubating eggs in a ground nest, and the male strutting around nearby.
The male, by the way, was another disciple of the Phoebe Waller-Bridge side-eye school.
There was, indeed, a formal platypus viewing area, but looking out from it revealed only a turtle.
As a platypus viewing exercise, it was a turtle disaster.
It was then but a short journey to our accommodation, the Rose Gums Wilderness Retreat. We were slightly amused, as we drove towards it, that we were traversing farmland, but once we’d arrived and checked in to our (very substantial) cabin,
it was clear that we were in forestland once again. As darkness fell, Jane stood on the balcony with a torch [ in the rain, I may add – Ed ], seeking out wildlife. She’s like that. Her persistence resulted in the sighting of a snake,
a (reasonably sizeable) common brown tree snake, which came down off our roof and was looking around on the ground outside for a snack of some kind.
Rose Gums doesn’t have a restaurant, and we’d prepared by buying all kinds of good food in Port Douglas on our way here. But we ended up taking gin and peanuts as our evening meal. Well, we’ll be back in the UK soon and having to go back to a healthy diet; we had some gin left over from our Port Douglas stay, and You Can’t Take It With You, You Know.
That was last night. Today was our time here, and we were booked on a full day “Nature Tour”, with a guide all to ourselves. Accordingly, at 8.30am, along came the very energetic, up-beat and knowledgeable James
to whisk us off to, well, whatever we agreed would be a good place to be whisked off to. We gave him the task of finding us a cassowary and a tree kangaroo, and, to his credit, he didn’t blench, but instead told us he’d see what he could find for us.
First, though, we took photographic advantage of two features of the Rose Gums retreat: a feeding of rainbow lorikeets
and a hide from which one could see musky-rat kangaroos, or possibly musky rat-kangaroos (the sign was ambiguous) which are the smallest and the most primitive of the quokkapadewallaroo family. Rather than hop they scurry very rapidly which made things rather difficult for your photographer…
Interestingly, the hide enabled photography of some other interlopers, too; an emerald dove and a peaceful dove, both very prettily coloured.
It was good to have James on hand, since he could identify these birds. He is an inveterate birder, which enabled some great photos for us – see later.
Our first stop was Petersen Creek, somewhat upstream from where we’d failed to see any platypuses yesterday. Today?
There were at least two of them – interestingly much smaller than the ones we’d seen in Tasmania. On the same stretch of water, we saw a Pacific Black Duck
and, in the surrounding woods, an arrangement which looks like a very comfy hotel room for a possum.
James then took us to see a nearby colony of spectacled flying foxes
and then walked us along the Peterson Creek walking trail in search of cassowaries and tree roos. No luck with them, but he did find us some possums: the bum of a sleeping coppery brush-tailed possum
and a very cute pair of green ring-tailed possums,
who looked a bit uncertain as to whether we were good news or not.
After a coffee stop, we headed out to Mount Hypipamee through the typical Atherton Tablelands countryside
to a secret location, unvisited by the public and known only to several hundred birders; this was to be our final chance to see a cassowary. It involved looking for a specific entry to a track through a type of forest called mabi forest“, mabi, being the indigenous name for the (annoyingly elusive) Lumholz Tree Kangaroo. Before entering it, James sprayed our shoes with anti-leech spray and warned us to be very careful of stinging tree leaves (the upper and somewhat moth-eaten ones in this photo)
brushing against which could prove anything from very painful – with the pain lasting for months – to, erm, fatal. It’s a member of the nettle family, with the neurotoxin sting being delivered by very fine hairs on the leaves and the fruit. Apparently, the fruit is edible once you remove the hairs, but I’m buggered if I’m prepared to try that out. Its aboriginal name is gimpie gimpie which translates as “ouch ouch” i.e. a big ouch. The things I go through to bring you this stuff, eh?
Did we see a cassowary? Did we see a tree kangaroo?
Nope.
Were we disappointed? Absolutely not. Birder Lore had led us to the bower of a bower bird.
As luck would have it, its owner was (a) in the vicinity, and (b) stayed still long enough for even me to get a decent picture of it.
A Golden Bower Bird – a rare species which figures high on the twitchers’ list, apparently. This is a young adult male, yet to achieve his full golden-ness of plumage.
There was much interesting tree bark:
and, to relieve the focus on fauna and flora, James also took us to see the crater lake of the local volcano, which was 50 metres deep and very impressive.
The route to our next stop took us past some more lovely Atherton Tablelands scenery
and into a real old Australian Pub called, quite accurately, The Big Pub, in Malanda,
where we had a very agreeable lunch (and possibly my last-ever taste of Castlemaine XXXX). Afterwards we went to the Malanda Falls National Park,
where we could see saw-shelled terrapins,
Wompoo Fruit-Doves,
and a Boyd’s Forest Dragon,
which was a great source of relief to James, who didn’t want Aaron to be the only one to show us one of these delightful creatures.
By this stage we were approaching the end of our tour, but we had one more moment of delight in wait for us as we headed back to our accommodation: a bird we’d seen as we departed the retreat but had failed to photograph, because it buggered off as soon as we hove into view. We saw it again on our return (or another one of the same type) and for some reason this time it stayed put.
It’s a Pheasant Coucal – this one a young adult male, apparently, and a very handsome chap he is, too. Apparently it’s rare for them to pose like this; James was so excited that he even wanted me to send him this photo, which I have done.
Aaand…that was it for the tour; no cassowary, no tree kangaroo, but we had a great time anyway, with a great guide, lovely scenery and some new wildlife to photograph (oh, and look at too, I suppose). So we bade goodbye to James, and, since the Rose Gums retreat doesn’t actually offer any internet to its cabins (it’s a Retreat, OK?) instead of catching up on Facebook we went for a short walk to find out more about the Rose Gums that give the place its name. These are not floral versions of wine gums, they are
gum trees. Having hacked down a track, we thought that the above tree was the Giant Rose Gum that we’d read about in the information in our cabin; but we were wrong. This (the one on the left below) was.
It’s immense. You can’t really see that from the photo, even if I include someone for scale
or if I show you what the crown looks like,
but take it from me, it’s a big’un. OK, it’s a gum tree, and, yes, a very old one (estimated to be 600 years old). But why Rose? Jane took a revealing picture at the bole of the tree
which shows that the wood is of a definitely pinkish colour.
To end the day, Jane did her “look for wildlife in the dark and the rain” bit again, and spotted
a bandicoot! We’re honestly not sure what actual species of bandicoot it is, but it is the first of these marsupials we’ve seen (outside a stuffed example in a display case). That we’ve not seen one before is not really a surprise, since they’re strictly nocturnal and we’re not.
We have one more place to visit on this trip, and, if all goes according to plan, we’ll get there tomorrow. It should offer us a final chance to relax before we head back to the gloomy wet and cold of an English autumn, but maybe there will be some decent photos to share. Keep watching these pages to find out, OK?