Wild Places and Open Spaces

The weather has been good – or “fine” as the Australian weatherman would say. Most days are very hot and humid – so hot that according to Jim at times his ‘head was going to blow up’, and the nights are damp as the humidity settles. Last night I woke up to being rained on, but I think it was just sprinkling from the tropical rainforest around us. We were in a terrific spot – Wooroonoonan National Park (say that five times fast) – a campsite in the rainforest and a bush pool just 400m away all to ourselves. We had a very refreshing swim in the afternoon and we later found out we were lucky that no crocs ate us for an appetizer…..just kidding; no crocs in this swimming hole.

We really thought we’d get lucky and see some night creatures in this area. There are even rope bridges crossing above the highway (these ‘ropes’ allow creatures, especially possums, to cross the road safely from canopy to canopy) indicating good nocturnal life. We had even bought an extra powerful torch (or as Canadians would say ‘flashlight’) to help us spotlight. No such luck. The only thing we managed to see was a white-kneed cricket – which actually was a feat in itself. These crickets are absolutely gigantic, quite scary looking, and can jump unbelievably high and long distances. May sound ridiculous, but it truly was a highlight to us that night.

The lack of possum sightings at night was made up by an earlier find…a cassowary!! Yup, we saw another, and this time we managed to get some photos. We saw it in a banana plantation and watched it for a couple of minutes as it made its way to the road and then crossed. I know I said it before; these are truly prehistoric looking birds, and unbelievably breath taking how strange they look. Just don’t get too close or you may get our innards ripped out!

The flashlight I spoke of earlier we bought at K-Mart (yes they have K-Mart shoppers too). While there, we searched all over the store for a lighter…couldn’t find one anywhere. After enquiring at the counter we learned that the lighters are kept locked up and no one under the age of 18 can sell one! Imagine that!

This past week we have spent much of our time in National Parks – those in and around Innisfail area suffered tremendously from cyclone Larry that hit earlier this year. The town of Innisfail looks pretty good – they have done a lot of work and it’s still a work in progress. Most of the houses have new roofs – those that don’t still have tarps over their houses. It appears everyone was hit pretty badly by Larry. Because the town has done such a good job of cleaning up, it may appear to many that not much damage occurred. However, all one has to do is take a walk through the tropics to view all the fallen trees and open canopy that Larry left in his path of destruction. Many tracks (hikes) are still closed and we came across a group of forest service men on one of the tracks who said they have been moving downed trees non-stop ever since Larry hit. One cannot truly understand the work these guys have done until walking in the forest. Anther way to appreciate the damage Larry did is to look at the price of bananas here – $12/kg – this is banana country and the cyclone pretty much destroyed the crop.

We haven’t been without our fair share of bumps and bruises lately – I visited the Doctor to see about my ears as I was afraid I was getting an ear infection – turns out I just bruised my ear drums while trying to equalize diving. Jim nearly included his thumb in our salad the other day when he was cutting up veggies…oh, and today he bit his tongue so hard that he nearly passed out. And of course we have all the expected ailments – bug bites, blisters, scratches, etc. so the first aid kit is constantly in use. But, if these remain our only ailments, I think we are doing pretty darn good, considering all the potentially deadly stuff around us.

Tonight we are in another National Park camping and were once again treated to a light show of fireflies. Thankfully the cicadias here are not as deafening as they have been previous nights – possibly because we are at a much higher elevation. The elevation means a much more comfortable sleep as it is a bit cooler up here.

The next few days we intend on being around the Whitsunday Islands, then off to the Outback to see Uluru (Ayers rock)….but, with us plans change daily, sometimes even hourly depending on who we meet or what places we come across.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 10th, 2006 at 3:42 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.