13th June 2011 - Wonga Beach (again)

Cape Tribulation: are there enough superlatives in the English language to do justice to this area?  When the statistics are studied, your mind becomes boggled by just how diverse and unique is the flora, fauna and anything and everything else is.

The Daintree is the only place in the world where two pristine World Heritage Listed wonders meet: the Wet Tropics and the Great Barrier Reef.  It should also be noted that the Wet Tropics is the only site in the world that meets all four criteria inscribed on the World Heritage listing.

·         It provides outstanding examples of ongoing environmental processes.

·         It represents a major stage of the earth’s evolutionary history.

·         It contains the highest quality of natural occurrences and areas of natural beauty.

·         It contains the most important natural area for the conservation of the variety of life.

The Daintree forests are the oldest continually surviving tropical rainforests on earth.

Of the 19 primitive flowering plant families on Earth, 12 are found in the Daintree. Similar figures apply when discussing the area’s fauna.

·         Capt Cook discovered what is now Australia about 240 years ago.

·         William the Conqueror invaded England about 1000 years ago.

·         The crucifixion took place about 2000 years ago.

·         Palmerston Range (Innisfail) Rainforest is about 50,000 years old.

·         The Amazon jungle is about 7,000,000 (7 million) years old.

·         Daintree is about 110 to 200 million years old.

As awesome as these sterile statistics are, sitting above them is the simple but overwhelming beauty of the place.

From when you cross the Daintree River by ferry, it is 35 km to the end of the tar – from there it becomes an increasingly 4WD only type track.  We drove to this point so that we could see, and stand on the ‘real deal’, actual factual’ Cape Tribulation. Step from the rainforest straight onto a beautiful tropical beach. There are hundreds of places north of Cardwell where this task can be achieved, but there is only one Cape Tribulation!

 Cape Tribulation Beach

 Duh! so tell me something I didn't know

We gradually worked and walked our way back, stopping at the numerous boardwalks that wind and wend their way through the different types of rainforest.

Eventually we got back to the “Discovery Centre” and where we were totally gobsmacked. They take you via boardwalks and a quite tall tower from the base, to the top of the rainforest – and keep you enthralled every step of the way. There are explanatory signs, information sheets, recorded guidelines and info, pictures and videos to ensure that you come away with a head not just full of knowledge, but of real understanding.  It took us 4 hours to complete the various paths and tracks.

 View from the tower

We also had a good day out at the Hartley Crocodile Farm. More crocs than you can poke a dead chook at, and the guides have really got there act sorted out so that it is informative but also very funny.

 Big Ted - 2nd biggest Croc in captivity @ 5.4 mtres

Freshwater Crocs

Amazing to think that the human jaw can exert a pressure of 180 psi, a lion can do 600 psi, but a croc has up to 3000 psi!  Once they get their teeth into you they won’t let go – I know some salespeople like that.  Despite surviving for millions of years, their brain is smaller than a chicken egg – I also know some salespeople like that.

Bart the croc has been doing this every day for twenty years, but still does his best to eat the guys.

This weekend in Queensland is like everywhere in Oz. Cars are packed, trailers loaded and hitched up and everyone heads to ??????? wherever, to celebrate the Queen’s birthday.  You see groups of good folks standing around singing “Happy birthday, dear queen, happy birthday to you”. Well, that’s what I thought they were doing.

I’ve just been told by Shirl that they’re really just swapping stories about what happened to them as they drove to ???????? and set up camp.

Firstly, the trailer had sat out the side of the garage for so long that the wheel bearings gave up about 20km from home. Then when they finally got to the campsite, the tent was covered in mould and the stitching had rotted.  The pots, pans and BBQ were all rusted, and the gas tank was empty. The airbeds had holes, and one of the  #$%&* kids had pinched all the fishing line.

But, like every year a lot of fun will be had by all.

road between Mossman and Croc Farm

Off the Mossman Gorge today.

9th June 2011 - Still at Wonga Beach

Through the forest of lost souls stalked the great bird of diversihues. His prey was within his penetrating night vision and he moved forward with precise steps, paused, then with nodding head continued to close upon his quarry. A few beats of his short but powerful wings and he was atop his victim. Taking care to ensure his body was perfectly balanced, he shat – and he shat great volumes.

With the breaking of dawn I emerged from a peaceful nights slumber to find great gobs of peacock poo oozing down the side of the van.  I don’t know the exact ingredients of the daily peacock diet, but I do know that it sticks like - - - - -well, you know. It’s also quite colourful with a proliferation of dark reds, yellows, and blacks – all overlaid with a pinch of green.

We’re still at Wonga. Why move? Daily temperatures are of mid to high 20s, with nights of 15 to 19.  Living right on a tropical beach, we need to keep reminding ourselves that this is winter. Neither of us can recall the last time that we wore a jacket: maybe last spring.  We had a big laugh a few nights ago when Scott called from Brisbane to complain that he was the one who traditionally called us to brag about the weather, now here he was shivering in Brisbane’s coldest day since the pre Jurassic period.

It is very true that life on the road produces regular moments of pleasure and joy it, however, does have one very big frustrating, annoying, anger-inducing issue. To get anything fixed or modified, or to even find the correct parts to do it yourself is guaranteed to test you to your limits, and beyond.

When in Brisbane, we decided to have a gas bayonet fitted on the outside of the van for use with our Weber.  Great idea – no more would we need to haul out the gas bottle, just plug directly into the van’s copious gas supply. Ha! Bloody Ha!

Does anyone realise the huge variety of gas hoses and fittings that lurk out there in the retail jungle?  There’s SAE or BSP, there’s left hand threads or right hand threads, quarter or half inch (I thought we went metric a while ago), and thirty two billion combinations of these on lengths of hose, together with almost twice that number of connectors.  But, it’s an absolute certainty that the exact one you need is (a) not in stock, (b) “No mate, I don’t think they make that one”.

After trying every hardware or BBQ shop between Brisbane and Cape York, I finally had success in, of all places, the small local Mossman hardware shop. Most probably old stock from the Pre-Columbian Period.

We Have a Working Weber .........!!!!!!

Now, does anyone have a need for a box of unwanted, and unused gas fittings and hoses – I believe they weigh 51 kg, or should that be a Hundredweight?

I am now going to turn my attention to a little modification that I’d like to make to one of our water tanks. I expect that I’ll source the two connectors somewhere around mid November.

On a similar subject, our battery charger / controller blew a fuse. Not a problem you’d think. Remove old glass fuse – where the hell’s the bloody fuse fitted?  After a long period of searching and feeling it is found to be at the back of the unit, and is in so tight that a screwdriver is needed.  The bloody driver won’t fit in behind unit!  Get up off the floor where you are laying to get at the unit, exit the van and go to tool locker, get spanner, re-enter van, lay down, reach upper body into cupboard, reach arm (whose elbow doesn’t bend the required way) into back of unit and %&*$%#  the spanner is the wrong one. Extract body, get up of floor and repeat the process. Finally the bolts holding the unit are removed and it can be taken off the cupboard wall and twisted so that a screwdriver can remove the faulty fuse. I try and read the info on the end of the fuse but its way too small.  “Shirl, do you know where my specs are?”  - - - “No, they’re not there, where else?” - - - - 10 minutes elapse - - - - “its okay, found ‘em, why were they in the Weber?”  I still can’t read the writing, must be really tiny font.  “Shirl, do you know where the magnifying glass is?”- - - - “Nope, not there” - - - - “Not there, you sure you haven’t been using it?” - - - “’S’okay, found it, why was it in the fridge?”  Nope, still can’t read it.  “Shirl, can you read this?”- - - “No, I don’t know where your specs are”.

Then I have the brilliant idea of getting the guy in the shop to read it. First stop is the service station – nope (why do they still use this name? – it’s been a long time since they offered ‘service’).  The auto parts shop was next – nope, auto electrician – nope.  Finally, in perplexed anxiety I went to a local radio control hobby shop. Here, the guy took my precious, but useless and unreadable fuse, and after placing it under a microscope that would challenge those used by NASA, and announced that it was all written in Chinese.

Thankfully he had a little box of similar buggers that he used on the power chargers for radio controlled helicopters. So, if you see a caravan flying around the sky, you’ll know it’s just me moving camp.

Having spent all my energy solving these issues, I needed to just sit and relax. There
I was, wine in hand, just chillin’ out in the warm evening twilight when I felt something touch my toes. Caravan awnings may look somewhat fragile, but they can support the entire weight of a large fully grown man who has just had his toes licked by an unknown night critter. Looking down, I spied a bandicoot just ambling away, and stopping on the edge of the light pool.  Why was he checking out my feet? Do bandicoots eat meat?

Upon checking with Google / Wikipedia, I discovered, among a lot of other things that they are prodigious carriers of ticks. It took me quite some time to be assured that I had checked my entire body out – 23 times.

The early next morning (actually, it was more like mid morning) we found that a peafowl had left a message on our awning mat. We had cleaned it, washed it, and laid it on the grass to dry when a peacock wandered by and pecked at it. Not satisfied with this, he began to vigorously scratch at it. Shirl yelled at him to stop it. His response was to turn away, raise his great fan of tail feathers, and ‘Moon’ her.

So Shirl has been mooned by a bird – priceless.

1st June 2011 - Wonga Beach

Our time at Bowen was great with not a single tiny thing to complain about.  The commercial centre of town is somewhat small and it’s easy to see why the movie people chose it to substitute for war time Darwin. Not a single building with more than two levels, but does have some really nice older places.

Our van park was right on Queens Beach where we walked in the setting sun. I went fishing, and maintained the style of not catching anything, although I had a lot of success finding yabbies.

Collinsville is a small coal mining town, about 80 km west of Bowen.  We did a day trip and would you believe, $5 for ‘honey mustard prawns’ at the local Mine workers Club.

The top floor held the historical museum of Australian coal mining. Everyone should visit these places to understand just what the folks of days gone did. Miners worked more than a kilometre underground with less light than a flickering match.  Teams of two: one blowing and digging, one shovelling into a skip hauled by a Clydesdale horse (Ponies were not used, because of the weight that had to be hauled). If the carbide lamp went out, the two blokes grabbed the horse’s tail and took the ‘Clydesdale route’ to the top.

Also of note was that Australia has had 9 major mine disasters since 1886. Five of these happened since WW2 and in each case subsequent coronial inquiries have found that management’s push for greater profits over safety have been the cause.

We left Bowen last Friday and pushed north through endless cane fields. The size of Townsville was a big surprise. It appears that a new satellite city called Thuringa has just popped up and claimed the title of Australia’s fastest growing city. We continued on to Cardwell. 

As we approached, the evidence of cyclone Yasi was everywhere with whole forests knocked over and trees every which way but up. Cardwell would have to have one of the most picturesque main streets imaginable. One side are the shops, and on the other is the beach and ocean with many off-shore islands. Unfortunately Yasi has eroded the beach and flattened the fringing trees. Approx 40% of houses still wear a tarpaulin roof, and 10 to 15% remain uninhabitable.

Only a few trees within our van park escaped without significant damage. The van park owner was one of the few who didn’t evacuate, but stayed in his house and watched from ‘within’. He tells of a 10 metre coconut palm that bent so far that the top was bouncing and beating on the ground, and yet when the wind died down, the tree popped back up with only some of it’s fronds missing – even the resident possum remained (the tree did have some really deep claw marks)

As if to test the resolve of the people, Cardwell flooded about 5 weeks later.  The parks rain gauge showed just under one and a half metres of rain within 5 days – that’s 300 ml per day.

Left Cardwell on Monday and moved northwards thru Tully and Innisfail to Cairns, then further to Wonga Beach (25 km north of Mossman).  We stopped at Cairns to have the damage to the van assessed and were amazed at the “retail opportunities” on offer.  Shopping centres, shops, malls, and discount warehouses seemed to occupy every available piece of land.

The road between Cairns and Port Douglas is awesome. Slow and twisty, but with the beaches hard up against one side and the mountains on the other, the magnificent views are so continual and prolific that by the time you are half-way, you become somewhat casual. If there is a weakness it is that Queensland doesn’t have any surf (north of the town of 1770). If it did have some real waves and breakers, this road would rate as one of the World’s modern 7 wonders.

We are now at the Pinnacle Village van park at Wonga Beach, and feeling very relaxed. Wild peacocks (and peahens) roam freely and readily come to you for food. I wonder what the collective noun for peafowl is?  A flock? A mob? A Group? Nah! It must be a Pod. As in a peapod.

Temperatures are around 25 – 27 degrees daytime, but does drop a bit at night – I had to do one of my shirt buttons up last night (while sitting outside sipping a wine).

Daintree River is a truly incredible waterway that supports the most diverse variety of life. We did a boat ride on the upper river and were astounded to find that the river floods a couple of times each ‘Wet’ – not just a metre or two, but 9 to 12 metres. I wonder how Canberra or Sydney’s drains would cope with that.

It was interesting to discover that at Daintree village, the river is mainly freshwater but still tidal!  Local cattle drink from the river, and 15 to 20 times per year, a croc takes one. Tourists only get to see the bigger males because the smaller ones have yet to develop the confidence to be seen in the open. Our guide told of his co-guide who worked all day taking tourists along the river and only seen 2 crocs. That evening, he took his own boat out for a bit of Barra fishing, and when he shone his torch around, he counted 48  pair of eyes. A few minutes later, he explained that even this far up the river, they still regularly see Bull Sharks  - I looked up at the rows of life jackets adorning the roof of the boat, and thought if the boat sinks, I’d want something to help me walk ON the water, not float in it.

A day of rest tomorrow, because this retirement thing can get very tiring.