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.