The Daintree Rainforest

We are so lucky to have the Daintree Rainforest right on our doorstep, and boxing day (the day after christmas) we decided to take a drive up north.

Just about 20 minutes north of Mossman is a turnoff to the Daintree ferry.  This is a cable ferry and runs every 10 minutes or so - the cost is 18.00, at the moment.  Locals can get a season ticket - hope that never changes.....   I find that as soon as we are off the ferry and start driving through the avenue of trees I feel utterly relaxed.

Alexandra range lookout

 is always a good place to stop and on a clear day you can see all the way back to Port Douglas.

Further up the range there are some lovely walks - I can never decide which is my favourite.  There is also the Daintree canopy for which there is a charge.  It is an elevated walkway and a high tower which you climb up and then can overlook the rainforest from on top.  They have  little recorders that you can carry around with you and get information on everything around you.  We stopped at Myall boardwalk, and today it was my favourite!

All the walks are so well maintained, and this one is a wetland area so is very shaded which is an especially lovely thing on a hot day.  These common ferns are all over in the trees and are called birdsnest ferns for obvious reasons.  they sometimes get huge!

this is a detail of the underside of the older leaves which die back and create the "nest" effect

As you can see there are often more than one birdsnest fern per tree!

I love these gnarly roots!

This is a curtain fig which grew around another tree and strangled it.

I love the way the light filters through the fan palms. 

There is also a  fan palm walk (maybe that is my true favourite) but that is being renovated.

the last stop was cape trib where we walked along another boardward to  a great lookout.  Scared a huge iguana along the way, but I was not quick enough with the camera for that!

A long lazy drive home brought to an end another perfect day spent in paradise!

The little town of Mossman

Yesterday afternoon we took a walk through Mossman and along a newly finished path towards North Mossman.  As you leave the town and head North you have a georgous tunnel of green raintrees.  These are very old huge trees that sweep across from one side of the street to the other.   On the one side under the trees is a grassy area that turns into a bustling market every saturday morning.  There is fresh local produce, crafts and plants.   Even a massage tent.  The old stone Anglican church is there and they have some tables and chairs where you can share a cuppa and a bikkie for a dollar or two!  How Australian is that!

Walking along the path which is separated from the road by a landscaped bed I notice my favourite tree in flower - the Poinciana.  Huge bright bunches of flowers and long arching seed pods.

The trees have such a beautiful shape.

The flower beds have wonderful really tropical flowers - this one a lobster claw heleconia.

The setting sun behind the park on the other side of the road reminds us that it is the wet season.... do these clouds mean rain tonight?   No matter - that is what makes it so green and lush.

Cairns Fletcher Botanic Gardens

Whenever we are in Cairns I love to pop into the Fletcher botanical gardens. It is not a huge area, but so cleverly designed that there are plenty of paths to wander back and forth, up and down, beside little streams and you feel at times totally lost in a tropical jungle. The torch ginger is perhaps one of my favourite plants.

Then again this ginger with variegated stalks looks a bit like a bamboo, but then it has these lovely red and yellow flowers that rise up at the base.....

Here is a detail of those lovely stalks..

These orange gingers look like stacks of orange slices

I called these poached egg orchids, but no matter what you call them they are lovely.

The tropical skyline - there is just something about a palm tree against the sky

Swathes of grass just call out for visitors to lie down and admire the view from another angle

Huge arching branches over the path give a lovely shade, and then these huge arms of Heleconias drop down at the side.

A detail of the flowers..

and one more...

I hope you enjoyed a taste of the Fletcher Botanical Gardens and that you plan to include a walk around here if you are ever in Cairns

Oh wait - did I say that the torch ginger was my favourite? - then the beehive ginger comes along. I don't believe you can choose just one.

For more information on times and location: http://www.cairns.qld.gov.au/cairns/services/botanic_gardens/fbg_main.htm

Mt Malloy

There was a permaculture house open for display in Julatten so we loaded up the grandson in the car seat and headed up the range. It is a long winding road which often makes everyone carsick, but luckily the little one nodded off to sleep. They look so cute when they sleep:) It was dirt road which we had not expected, and the house wasn't much to write home about so we thought we would continue on to Mt Malloy and explore. This is a tiny little town - don't really know what makes something a town - 1 post office, 1 pub, 1 restaurant, 2 schools and 2 churches. We walked down "little road" to a park with a lake full of waterlilies. Very pretty, but I wonder if there were not crocodiles lurking under all the green stuff! The whole area is extremely dry, but gosh that must be perfect weather for bougainvillea - such lovely flowers. We saw cows , and horses - even a pony right on the veranda of someones house, and a couple of kangaroos. A couple of slides in the school playground and then we settled on the pub for lunch. In order to try both meals we ordered one fish and chips and one steak sandwich - we should have both gone with the steak sandwich - it was delicious. Overflowing with lovely lettuce, tomato and beetroot. (That is an Aussie thing to put beetroot on hamburgers and steak sandwiches). We should have taken more photos, but here is one of little street which heads down next to the post office. Someone maintains those post office gardens very well.

Mossman Gorge - truly a spiritual experience

We recently went to the gorge for a long walk only to discover that the suspension bridge has been closed for maintenance. Scheduled to be re-opened about May 2010. I will miss it, the 2km walk on the other side of the bridge was very foresty and quiet.

they are also talking about having little shuttle buses to take visitors to the start of the gorge area. that is not a bad idea as sometimes it is hard to find parking and the narrow one lane road can get a bit hairy when people go too fast. Not expecting to come face to face with another vehicle, when you pull over in some areas there is quite a drop off to the side. The worst thing is coming face to face with a huge tour bus. We walked from the information centre/gallery and it was lovely - will be even better when there are only walkers and little shuttle buses.

This is what you see when you are walking along the road, and you are completely enclosed in a tunnel of green, so it is really lovely.

The sound of the water rushing over the boulders is very relaxing.

General overview of the Port Douglas area

The Douglashire County in North-eastern Queensland, Australia is described as “where the rainforest meets the reef”. I have always believed that one can be happy anywhere – we carry our happiness within ourselves, but it sure does help to be living in such a beautiful place.
Cairns is the closest airport to fly into, and is considered the big shopping hub by those of us that live in a town with no movie theatre or fast food restaurants. Heading north, Captain Cook Highway veers suddenly towards the coastline and your breath will be taken away by the sight. You will want to stop and stroll along every little beach, or just stand and stare at the endless blue water.
The Habitat is located on Captain Cook Highway at the turnoff to Port Douglas. Here you will be able to get up close and personal with animals like kangaroos and wallabies. You can have a lovely breakfast with the birds, or lunch with the lorikeets. You have to get up earlier for the breakfast, but it is worth it as there you will be able to sample a vast array of strange tropical fruit.
The Sunday Markets are perhaps the most famous happening in Port Douglas. Every Sunday morning this park is filled with a huge number of stalls offering all manner of local products and crafts. The Marina is chock a block full of boats to take you out to the reef, which of course is top of the list of things to do there. On Sundays there is the last steam train ever built in Australaia called the Balley Hooley. For 4.00 you can do a one way trip through the mangroves and along past the hotels, and then have a lovely walk back along tropical shaded sidewalks, or do the return trip back to the marina by train.
Anytime from June to October you will see the sugar cane being harvested and occasionally be stopped on the road by cute little locomotives, with names like “Douglas” or “Faugh-a-balaugh”, carrying their load to the Mossman sugar mill. A trip up to the rainforest and a walk through Mossman Gorge takes you back to the primal earthly way that this wonderful world of ours was put together and continues to grow and feed itself in magnificent balance. You will leave this place feeling inspired and renewed – I guarantee it!

Weekend in Cooktown

What a lovely weekend – it is a real treat to be sharing a life with someone you love and someone that loves the same things as you do! Weekends we mostly plan to do at least one thing away from the humdrum of housecleaning, cooking and looking after other people.
We are also always finding new and exciting things to do as we live in a beautiful part of the world. Sunday morning we set off early as planned to drive just up to the top of the mountain range and have lunch at the Mount Malloy pub and drive back down again. Mount Carbine Quarry, was a half hour up the road and so we drove on to there to check that out. The Quarry is much bigger than the one I work at, but really there is no town there. That mine was for Wolfram which is used for carbine tips on tools etc, but went out of business when China started importing carbine. Now China has run out and so they are thinking of re-opening the mine. Looking at the map I made the statement that we were almost a quarter of the way to Cooktown! We have been planning a trip to Cooktown for ages so we both looked at each other and said "why not?" We called mum and the kids and told them they were on their own and figured we would be able to buy a toothbrush and deodorant some place along the way. :)
What fun! We felt as though we were on a voyage of discovery! DH had been up there many years ago, and we actually discovered not much had changed. Once on top of the range the weather was lovely and cool and the scenery fantastic. The road has just been paved - up until about 3 years ago you could really only get there driving a 4 wheel drive. There were the most amazing colours of grass and I think it may have had something to do with the colour of earth as there was sometimes quite yellow earth and sometimes just as red as the Transvaal. Lots of cows along the side of the road that would just walk out onto the road as it was all unfenced. We also saw quite a few kangaroos that had been hit. There were some crops growing alongside the road that looked like peanuts, and lots of little anthills that we learned were built facing all the same way as ants needed to hide in them to avoid the temperature extremes. It was extremely windy all the time – just beautiful watching the green, gold and red grasses waving with the breeze. Then just before we got to Cooktown there are these amazing mountains called black mountain - some kind on volcanic rock that grows a black fungus and nothing really grows on them - they look quite unreal and imposing.
Then suddenly we were there in Cooktown – little Queenslander cottages with their filigree edges on wide porches and perched up on high stilts, each one had a little flower garden.
We went into the museum once we got into town - it had originally been a convent so was a beautiful building but was a bit uninteresting as far as museums go. Much nicer collections are scattered around at little roadhouses along the way. We asked the lady at the museum about hotels and she said there was one right on the waterfront so we went there first. We got a wonderful room at the seaview hotel right up on the side of the cliff overlooking the harbour where Captain Cook first landed- it had a lovely balcony where you could sit and look out across the bay - little sandy islands dotted around - very picturesque, and quite cheap to boot! We walked from one end of town to the other - there were lovely little sidewalks where they had inlaid tiles with stories on them, and a park along the waterfront with huge old trees. Very sleepy little town - we did find a supermarket so bought some bread and cheese and a few toiletries. I had thought I might buy a new shirt, but had to make do with the same clothes, as it was Sunday and everything was closed. At sunset we drove up to the lookout where Captain Cooks lighthouse was and it was so beautiful watching the sun set from up there reflecting onto the river winding like a snake into the bay and all the sandbanks. Then we walked to the RSL (returned servicemen’s league) for dinner - they always have a good home cooked meal at a good price - roast pork or sausages with lots of vegetables. DH was totally enamored by all the military memorabilia on the walls - they had caps, and flags and weapons - all donated by ex military. When we walked home at 10 the streets were deserted - I reckoned you could quite safely sleep in the middle of the road!
Monday morning (Labour day – no work) when we were having our breakfast on our little front porch we struck up a conversation with our neighbours doing the same thing - they were from England so of course DH got chatting about genealogy. She has a little permanent caravan in the lake district and said if we go over there we can use it! They are going to stay at a friends house in Wonga Beach in a couple of weeks so will have them over for a meal sometime. Funnily enough they had met online through a lonely hearts club and had actually come over here to get married! After we had booked out we went to the botanical gardens where Captain Cooks botanist had assembled a variety of native plants. Lovely and very natural - we walked down a path lined with peeling eucalyptus trees and then the path opened up onto a peaceful secluded beach lined with those big black rocks. I picked up a few natural pumice stones and then we slowly made our way back home, stopping off at Palmer river where they used to pan for gold, they have a great display of old tools at the roadhouse. Now we are home - I had a lovely soak in the bath with lavendar scented bath oil - back to work tommorrow, refreshed and renewed.