Wild Places and Open Spaces

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The furthest north that we can travel via car is Cookstown – and that is exactly where we headed. James Cook once docked here in 1770 and stayed a while until he could fix his badly damaged Endeavour (the name of his vessel). The boat had got stuck on part of the reef just south of Cookstown, so he ordered that 6 cannons be thrown overboard along with the anchor to lessen the load so they could get themselves off the reef. The James Cook Museum in town actually has one of the cannons and the anchor on display – pretty neat since they are from the 1700’s!

We stayed at a really neat place in Cookstown – we had planned on only staying one night, but got caught up and stayed two. We drove to a bush camp that sounded more appealing to us than the caravan type parks in town. The bush camp is on 250 acres of property, and the owners have Clydesdale horses and Brahman cattle. We were greeted by “Wombat”, an Australian Cattle dog X that later gave Jim a big scare at 2:30am when he got out of the tent to use the loo. Leanne (one of the owners) took us on a walk around some of the property, and showed us the river that salt water crocs live in. Hmmmm… That night we slept soundly, surprisingly enough, and in the am we were greeted with a friendly hello by Leanne’s husband, Terry. We got chatting, and were kindly invited up to the house for a tea and fruitcake….yup, fruitcake. It was the best darn fruitcake we’ve ever had – we even had seconds. We ended up talking and talking and talking all day, which led us to stay another night. We even drank some homemade rum later that night from Terry’s still – yum. Did I mention that we saw the biggest spider we have seen yet at this camp….a golden orb weaver – huge and beautiful. Luckily it stayed in its web the entire time we were there. This type of spider has little different spiders that also live in its web that help keep the web clean – in turn the orb weaver catches food for them. Pretty neat relationship.

The next day, after visiting some sights around town, including the James Cook Museum, we headed south again, to Cape Tribulation and Daintree National Forest. Our main goals here were to find the elusive cassowary, and to see a salt water crocodile, not to mention visit the rainforest.

Up until now, many Australians had told us that we were unlikely to see a croc, and even more unlikely to see a cassowary. Little did they know how hard we look for these things….and that we often have a little bit of luck on our side. Not long after we had entered the Cape Tribulation area luck prevailed…a cassowary crossed the road right in front of us! We were both in shock, and needless to say, we did not get a photograph. It was amazing to have seen such a prehistoric looking thing…they truly do look like they should be from the dinosaur age.

We found our campsite, and spent much of the night chatting around the fire with two young backpackers – one from Italy, the other from Holland. The Holland chap had spent much of his time in Western Australia working on a farm “station” – the farms here are absolutely huge, as a matter of fact they measure them in square miles. Often they drive for hours to find where the herds are.

While sitting around the fire, a little bandicoot came out of hiding and was nosing around the camp – even walked right up to the fire until it figured out it was too hot to walk on. She was a curious little thing, obviously people had fed her before because she would walk right up to us to check us out with little fear. Jim actually touched her at one point, and we were able to snap a few pics of her – very neat to see such interesting animals that we are not used to!

Next am, we ended up meeting up with the two chaps again, and did the hike up to Mt. Sorrow. This seemed to be the only “true” bushwalk in the area, as many of the others were along boardwalks and were not challenging at all. Well, let me tell you, the sign that said “you must be in extremely good fitness to do this trail” was not exaggerating. The hike was only 7.4km return, but it was difficult. All uphill the way in of course, but the downhill portion was just as tough since in areas the trail was so steep and rough. The view at the top of Mt Sorrow however, was fantastic and well worth the work to get there. The two chaps we hiked with were about 5 minutes ahead of us on the last 1km out, and they had a somewhat intimidating experience with a cassowary – the cassowary had blocked the trail in front of them, being very territorial and would not let them by! You see, cassowaries can rip you apart with their feet if they feel the need, and there were warning signs everywhere stating there was a very territorial one in the area. Finally, after a few minutes, the cassowary took off in the bush, but not before it scared the crap out of them! We were so upset that we missed all the action!

Later in the day we went for a walk to find a salt water croc. Along the way we came across some feral pigs and piglets – they are a huge problem in Australia, but very cute nonetheless. We walked down the beach to an area where the salt water flows into freshwater, as we had heard that some people saw a croc there earlier in the day. Sure enough, not far from the ocean there was a salt water crocodile sitting in just a couple feet of water! He was just a small guy, about 6ft or so long, but incredible to see in the wild. We were able to get pretty close to it…Jim wanted to go closer, but I had hesitations…and we snapped a couple pics. You see, if we hadn’t spotted one, we were planning to go on a “croc spotting tour” later that evening which would have cost us $36/pp…..so that little croc saved us a whole lot of cash!

Next day, with our sore feet and legs, we did all the other walks in the area and managed to see yet another cassowary! Again, this one was crossing the road again, and quickly made its way into the rainforest, and thus we have no pictures to show for it. So, needless to say, we are still on a cassowary hunt so that we can send some pics home to all you folks!

Back in Cairns, it was time for me to get my scuba dive certification. You see, Jim has been diving for years now, and we wanted to dive the great barrier reef together. So, I had class for 4 days (2 of which were on the reef), then we went diving together. My class was fun – only 5 people in it including myself, and I really loved the diving. The GBR is amazing – so much beautiful coral and colourful fish. I was lucky and got to see a white tipped reef sharp – it was just hanging out on the sand at the bottom and had no interest in us at all. It was a tremendous feeling being out on the Great Barrier Reef – somewhere that you always see on TV, and we actually got to go there. We loved it so much that we will likely visit it again, just somewhere more south next time.

The entire time we have been in Cairns, we have been staying with Ngaire and Dave (although Dave just got back today from Bali…he is a pilot for Quantas…) which has really been great. Once again we have been spoiled with the luxury of a place to call home, and because of this we have been able to really get to know Cairns. Believe it or not, even though Cairns is a “city”, we have found it quite nice. It is clean, feels safe, has lots of markets, has pride and is overall just a nice place to be. Last night Ngaire took us out for dinner and a walkabout downtown, and we got to try a didgeridoo….Jim was unable to muster up a sound, but I somehow managed – it isn’t as easy as it looks. Tomorrow we will leave this wonderful place and move on – much thanks to Ngaire and Dave for their friendship and hospitality.

We are keeping our ears open to what is going on in Fiji, as it sounds like there is some military and government unrest….we’ll see what goes on. We are not scheduled to go there until March, but we may have to change our plans!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 3rd, 2006 at 7:29 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.