Holiday to North Queensland

Highlights of our two weeks away

• Relaxing in the laid back town of Port Douglas
• Getting to grips with my 300 2.8 lens - what a beaut it is
• Seeing a Cassowary in the forests of Cape Tribulation
• Seeing a duck billed platypus in the creek of Kingfisher Park at dawn - a life goal
• Seeing 74 new birds including little kingfisher, papuan frogmouth, noisy pitta, chowchilla, masked owl, whitebellied sea eagle, great bowerbird
• The beautiful mangrove forests from Mardja Board Walk at Cape Tribulation
• Andrew and Trish, our wonderfully friendly hosts at Red Mill Lodge, Daintree
• Snorkeling on The Great Barrier Reef (from Port Douglas)
• Climbing to the top of the forest canopy at The Discovery Centre, Cape Tribulation
• Reading 8 books, including the final Harry Potter book (can't believe it's come to an end) and Cider House Rules (John Irving is a genius)
• Boat trip with Chris Dahlberg, birding extraordinaire, and "Sauce" on the Daintree River
• Exploring the wetlands in Mareeba and Atherton
• A hot and dustry drive to Chillagoe (over 30 dead knocked over kangaroos in 100 km's!) where "the outback begins" to visit the beautiful Trezkinn cave
• Doing cross word puzzles and other brain teasers with Ally (our new hobby)
• Learning to throw Aborigine spears and boomerangs at the Aborigine Culture Centre in Cairns.
• Lazing by serene Lake Barrine in Atherton

Learning to throw the boomerang at the Aborigine Culture centre





The Tablelands - hot, dusty and arid. And less than 50 km's from the rainforest. Beautiful in a totally different way, this is where the outback begins. We visited spectacular caves and national parks.




Daintree Forest and Cape Tribulation

Beautiful and restful with rainforests extending right down to gorgeous beaches. As a birder, was in heaven and spent endless hours exploring mangrove forests and tropical riverways.











Snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef

Mossman Gorge

Local wildlife

yes, we saw Duckbilled Platypus in the wild - one of my life goals! Very exciting

A fun but serious sign



Birds

The bird life in North Queensland is out of this world. I saw over 70 new birds - and many of them were absolutely gorgeous.

Ally's Account

It went by in the blink of en eye.

Flying to Cairns found us really excited – it was after all our first holiday in
Australia - and we do have a whole continent to explore. The temp when we arrived was about 30C and it was an immediate mood booster.

We took possession our little car – so little that G could not see the dash board – hence did not know what speed he was going! But it took us around safely enough.

Our first place what Port Douglas. This is a lovely seaside village but don’t try to get a meal on a Saturday night without having booked even in low season – I can’t imagine the queues during peak season. We did a tour to the Great Barrier Reef which I was very excited about but I have to admit was not the best under water scenery I have been in. I think that just far too many people have been and also – despite what the instructors tell you – people do not care about the coral – they just walk all over it. When we got back to the TV I was also dismayed that one could buy tropical fish i.e. like Nemo (the clown fish) complete with a genuine sea anemone for your lounge fish tank!

So moving on from the world heritage site of the Great Barrier Reef to the world heritage site of the Daintree Forest. The Amazon is reputed to be about 10 million years old and Daintree is about 150 million years old. Quite the oldest rainforest in the world. They are discovering new plants etc all the time

G wanted to go to see some of the unique bird species. Some were tiny little Kingfishers and other were giant Cassowaries. We stayed in a B&B run buy Trish and Andrew who are keen birders themselves and spent long hours with G taking about what he could see. There were very cute frogs in their house who live on the picture frames and in the light fixtures. They would come out at night and peer over the frames with their big eyes with the occasional ‘ribit’ to let you know they were there. During the wet season there are many more - these are just the ’residents’.

Our hosts wanted to know if we were keen to run their B&B for 12 months while they went travelling – they were most inspired by G’s nearly 1000 bird sightings in the wild. A tempting offer!

From here our host recommended we go to Cape Tribulation which is up the coast where the natural rainforest reaches the beach. Indeed I was quiet innocently minding my own business improving my tan when a two foot lizard stopped just above my head to improve his tan too! To say that I got a bit of a fright is an understatement and while I did not move I shouted for G and the Lizard gave me a filthily look - you panicky female etc – and wondered back into the scrub, much to my relief.

I had decided to visit the exotic fruit farm while I was there and while I was walking up the rain forest road to the reception and warder asked me to watch out and said there was a Cassowary around. My heart started to beat as these birds are at least as tall as me and aggressive when they feel threatened. Yesterday I had seen a video of one attacking a farmer who definitely came out worse in the encounter. But it all OK and the bid stayed pawing the ground for fruits and I had a good look at her. G saw her in the beach later just casually walking in the sand and it was so lucky that we both saw her.

A highlight for me in this area was visiting the exotic fruit farm. The couple who owned it has passed through about 18 years ago with their life savings after 3 years teaching and were due to go overseas. They visited Cape Tribulation just before they were due to leave and fell in love and never left! It has taken them a long time to work out what fruits grow well (i.e. avoid the bugs and the birds) and have only come up with one… The rest they keep for their tastings. G really enjoyed the Daintree Forest ice-cream factory that made exotic fruit ice-cream – there was something for everyone.

During our numerous nature walks I was forced to use nature’’s ablutions which was never my strong point! Especially as they have big warnings here to avoid the Stinging Tree. The leaves are covered in tiny glass like hairs that enter the skin and release a poison that lasts for months. The way to slowly decrease the stinging it is to constantly wax the effected area! I was extremely careful.

From here we decided to move further inland – the sun was really very fierce on the coast and no-one was swimming in the sea for fear of the killer jelly fish. Someone had recommended Kingfisher Park to us and we happened to see it as we passed. So we stopped and they had a room available as so we stayed. They told us that there was a Duck Billed Platypus in the creek which could bee seen at dusk and dawn which got us very excited. We did see it. When we came home told both Ker and Russell over the phone got very blank looks - I am not sure what that says about us nature buffs but anyway….

To give you an idea of how strong the sun was I left a frozen T bone steak to defrost from frozen – in the sun for an hour. When I went to fetch it for the marinade it was COOKED! I was astonished and not a little taken aback that if this is what the sun does to frozen steak I could not imagine what it does to one’’s face – hence everyone wears hats!

After this we went on an early morning bird tour. Both G and I felt that any minute we would see some large animal flicking the flies from its ears but then we had to remind our selves that we were in Australia not in Africa. I wonder how long it will take me to get used to only seeing kangaroos as an ‘animal sitting’. Anyway I was clearly the novice bird watcher as I was requested to leave my bright red fleece in the car least I scare the little birds we might see in the dusty area. G achieved his life goal here of seeing 1000 birds in wild which has taken him to 5 of the 6 continents.

While I thrilled that we had seen a platypus and that G had achieved his life goal I did want to do something other than having bird photo’s for our holiday so we headed west to the outback. It was amazing how scenery could change from lush green forest to sparse gum trees in red, red earth in only 100km. The dusty gravel road we encountered made me count our water supply (500ml) dangerously low, our eating supplies (a pack of fruit gums) and our sleeping bags (nil!)…. To say that we were unprepared for the outback is understatement but thank goodness we did not have far to travel. We will be better prepared next time.

The town we went to was called Chilligoes and I have never been to a place that tried so hard to make a tourist attraction out of well….. not much. Ok ok. The caves were good – but then we went to the balancing rock which was more like the securely attached rock if you saw it from the back., then we went to the Ford museum which promised old cars in there prime….. yeah right! Feeling hot and bothered we tried the river water hold for a swim – water puddle more like it. And this is to say nothing of the decaying iron smelter we tried to envision – we thought of Craig, he would have loved to have photographed this! I must admit I was thrilled to leave this town and head back towards to coast – not least because of the flies, they are very peasky and about five will settle on you at one time and you end up doing some strange flapping and shooing dance. I am sure they give the brochures for the express purpose of swatting flies!

The rest of our holiday was rather quiet – we got to see another platypus. I got to see the Cairns craft market. We stayed in a hotel room which had a bath and I two long ones in 12 hours and then we came home – all too short really…

Now we look forward to New Zealand and the Northern Territory next year.


Thanks Carleen for the photoshop fun!!

List of new birds seen (74)

• Orange-footed Scrubfowl
• Bush Stone-curlew
• Pied Imperial Pigeon
• Peaceful Dove
• Forest Kingfisher
• Helmeted Friarbird
• Spectacled Monarch
• Figbird
• Whitebellied Cuckoo-shrike
• White-breasted Woodswallow
• Yellow-bellied Sunbird
• Southern Cassowary
• Masked Lapwing
• Brahminy Kite
• Brown Cuckoo Dove
• Bar-shouldered Dove
• Emerald Dove
• Double-eyed Fig Parrot
• Turquoise Parrot
• Common Koel
• Pheasant Coucal
• Papuan Frogmouth
• Little Kingfisher
• Noisy Pitta
• Large-billed Gerygone
• Yellow-Spotted Honeyeater
• Graceful Honeyeater
• Brownbacked Honeyeater
• Shining flycatcher
• Yellow Oriole
• Victoria's Riflebird
• Black-faced Cuckooshrike
• Black Butcherbird
• Tree Martin
• Nutmeg Mannikin
• Mistletoebird
• Metalllic Starling
• Spotted Catbird
• Whitebrowed robin
• Macleay's Honeyeater
• Spangled Drongo
• Varied Triller
• Red-browed finch
• Masked Owl
• Rufous Fantail
• Little Shrike-thrush
• Yellow-throated Scrubwren
• Atherton Scrubwren
• Chowchilla
• Brolga Crane
• Australian Bustard
• Whistling Kite
• Wedge-tailed Eagle
• Nankeen Kestrel
• Squatter Pigeon
• Red-tailed Black-Cockatoo
• Red-winged Parrot
• Varied Sittella
• Brown Treecreeper
• White-throated Gerygone
• Noisy Friarbird
• Blue-faced Honeyeater
• Yellow Honeyeater
• Rufous Whistler
• Great Bowerbird
• Apostlebird
• Double-barred Finch
• Black-throated Finch
• Leaden Flycatcher
• Magpie Goose
• White-bellied sea eagle
• Royal Spoonbill
• Plumed Whistling Duck