Another fine day in Queensland, which I used to travel north
along the coast. I had bought myself a set excursion, which happened to be with
the same driver I had yesterday. I am beginning to feel home here in Cairns. We
ended driving about 170 km north on the Captain Cook Highway, and on the way there
we had but a couple of stops. Big in the hope list was a sighting of a cassowary
(the one I saw before at the beginning of my trip was an emu), a ruffled
dragon, and an echidna. Alas, we saw none of these very shy animals. The good
news is that in order to look for them we stopped for a couple of nice walks
through the sub-tropical rainforest. I was able to recognize a couple of cycads
(often confused with palms, even though the two genus are unrelated), which are
living fossils that dominated the Permian and Triassic forests. Some living
cycads can be up to 1,000 years old. Now I have a complete set of Gondwana-representative
vegetation!
At the very end of the long drive we arrived to Cape
Tribulation, which is of some naval significance because James Cook was triangulating
from this cape, when his ship Endeavour ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef
on Monday June 11, 1770. He christened this cape Tribulation because this was
the start of a pack of trouble for the ship and its crew. For about a week
after running aground the crew worked like fiends to first free the ship, and
then to keep her from sinking as she slowly worked her way north for a few nautical
miles until it found the estuary of a river he named Endeavour. Here they were
finally able to lean the ship on its side to find a big, sharp piece of coral
reef deeply embedded on the woodwork of the ship. Thanks to their tenacity and
ingenuity, by the end of the month the damage had been repaired and the
Endeavour managed to continue charting the coast to the north.
On the way back, which we did in a more sedate way, we
stopped at an orchard of tropical fruits, which has made some reputation by using
whatever fruits are in season to make ice cream. I got a four balls little tub
of coconut sherbet, yellow sapote, and two other fruits whose Aussie name I
cannot remember. Yummy!
We then went for a one-hour river cruise where we saw the
mangrove, birds like a very small and very blue king fisher, and … the stars of
the estuary, crocodiles! Saw a couple of baby ones, 1 to 3 years old, a young
one of about 4 m (maybe 20 years old), and a monster of more than 6 m (probably
60 years old). We were all suitably impressed.
All this time we had been inside the Daintree National Park,
and as the last visit we went to Mossman Gorge, which is a very scenic river
valley with some nice swimming holes. Unfortunately this was the day in which a
kid slipped and was carried by the current, much to the horror of his parents.
Search and Rescue quickly mobilized, and the kid was found scared to death but
with no serious injuries. Slippery rocks can be very dangerous.
We were back in Cairns by 6:30 pm, I did some quick shopping
for salad and lamb chops, and by 7:30 pm I was having dinner. I must say that
lamb is particularly good here in Australia, because they butcher the lambs
young, so they don’t get that gamey taste so common on lamb from the US or New
Zealand.
Tomorrow I leave Cairns to fly to Port Moresby in Papua New
Guinea. I have no idea what my connectivity is going to be in PNG, so please
don’t be alarmed if I am out of contact for the next two weeks. A new adventure
begins!
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