Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Kangaroo Island to Port Douglas: March 20 - 26
Greetings to all friends and relatives. We've had very limited internet access, so I haven't had a chance to post anything recently. I'm at an internet cafe in Port Douglas now, on our last night in Queensland, and I'm going to post notes for several days (below). If time permits, I'll add another post regarding more recent events. We're doing well and have had a great time in this tropical area. Needless-to-say, I've been taking a lot of photographs (over 1 GB's worth on one recent day!) but uploading image files as I did in Hawaii isn't easy here in Australia. Cheerio, mates.
Port Douglas and Mossman: March 26
Beautiful day! No rain. Drove to Port Douglas and spent some time in the outdoor markets next to the harbor (Lynn bought jewelry). Afterwards we walked on Four Mile Beach and saw the “stinger” nets set up to create safe swimming enclosures by excluding the lethal box jellies. About noon we drove to a tasteful Port Douglas institution, Rainforest Habitat, which maintains populations of Australian birds and mammals in open-air spaces. After seeing and photographing many interesting organisms (including female kangaroos and smaller macropods with young in their pouches), we drove to nearby Mossman Gorge, part of the Daintree National Park and adjacent to an aboriginal land grant. Mossman Gorge forms a channel through the rain-forested mountains for a river which was now swollen by recent heavy rains and filled with dangerous white-water rapids. When we arrived at one traditional swimming hole, we found that two young women had been carried downstream and were calling out for help. Several young men tried to swim across the fast-moving river, but before they could reach the girls, one disappeared into the rapids. Within a minute she reappeared further downstream, pressed against a large boulder next to the water’s edge. She was lucky to have survived her immersion in the turbulent waters but was now paralyzed with fear, unable to move out of the water. Eventually one of the young men reached her and pulled her out of the water. All around the accessible parts of the river were signs warning of frequent drownings in the area and cautioning against swimming. After this drama had been resolved, Lynn and I followed a 1.5 km hike through the rainforest. We were very impressed by the extraordinary buttressed trunks of some of the mahagony and strangler fig trees.
This evening we drove into Port Dougls for dinner at a restaurant named Zinc, where our lovely young waitress, Nicky, proved to be a friend of our proprieters. She had recently worked as an extra and double for a television remake of South Pacific and told us stories of her interactions with the lead actors. As we left the restaurant to walk to our car, we discovered a bandicoot in the bushes outside an ice cream joint, where a woman was feeding this odd marsupial ice cream cones.
Rainforest: March 25
We were picked up this morning by Peter, a Daintree wilderness guide, who took us in his 4W-drive Land Rover on an excursion through the Daintree River Rainforest, a national park. The north Queensland rainforest is said to be the oldest rainforest in the world, and it contains some of the most primitive angiosperm trees, as well as many tree ferns and figs. Due to recent heavy rains associated with Cyclone Larry, Peter had to ford many streams that flowed across the road, although the Daintree itself was crossed on a ferry boat that was winched across the river. In many places the track was very rough, and a 4WD vehicle was absolutely essential. The Land Rover, like many vehicles in the area, had tall snorkels that extended fro the engine up to the top of the roof, ensuring an adequate intake of oxygen for the diesel engine even if the river water was four feet deep. Pete gunned the engine as we crossed one releatively deep stream, creating a bow wave that nearly inundated the entire vehicle. Afterwards the floor of the Rover was covered by water, which eventually drained away.
We hiked through wet forest, enjoying Peter’s extensive botanical knowledge and folk lore, and eventually drove to to Cape Tribulation (“Cape Trib”), where we went for a walk on the fine sand beach. This area has extensive mangrove swamps, and in one we saw many “mudskippers,” small fish whose complex eyes enable them to see below and above water and that scoot about over wet mud. We also saw a gigantic megapode (primitive bird) nest mound, a pile of soil and fermenting vegetation that was about 4 feet tall. After returning to our B & B for a shower, we ate dinner in Port Douglas, which is a charming and fairly upscale small resort town.
On to Cairns: March 24, 2006
Qantas took us from Adelaide to Sydney and from Sydney to Cairns. Our flight path took us over the “tablelands”southwest of Cairns, one of the areas hit hard by the recent cyclone, and we could see that the rivers below were swollen from recent rains. A town called Inisfail had received the brunt of the Category 5 storm’s winds, but Cairns, to our relief, had been spared major effects. In Port Douglas, to the north, the storm had barely been noticed. Upon disembarking from the plane, we were shocked by the hot and humid air. We picked up our rental car, drove into Cairns, and spent an hour strolling the marine and esplanade. Cairns in located on the shore of a bay surrounded by dramatic headlands, all clothed in thick tropical rainforest. This time of year, the beaches are unswimmable due to the presence of box jellyfish (“stingers”). In the marsh beyond the boardwalk we saw lots of elegant egrets and herons, godwits and curlews, as well as signs warning about salt-water crocodiles. We decided to try to reach our B&B before dark fell, so we drove north towards Port Douglas and checked into the Marae,
Kangaroo Island to Adelaide: March 23, 2006
This morning we packed and cleaned up the lodge. We drove across Kangaroo Island toward Penneshaw via American River, In Penneshaw we ate lunch and drove the car onto t he SeaLink ferry. After a smooth 45-minute crossing, we drove from Cape Jervis to Victor Harbor, which someone had told Lynn was the site of another penguin colony. Victor Harbor, one of Adelaide’s seaside resorts, was quiet in these waning days of the tourist season. Lynn took a horse-drawn tram across a narrow wooden causeway to Granate Island and back. After strolling through the pretty marina park and both blocks of downtown business, we walked back across the causeway and ate at a restaurant on the island. At 8 o’clock we joined a guided penguin tour and saw many of the 14-inch-tall penguins emerge from the sea, cross a paved pathway, and climb up many feet of rocky cliff to their nest burrows. Afterwards, we drove back to Adelaide and checked into the Paringa Hotel, located on a noisy and dirty alley off Hindley St. Despite lots of street noise from the pubs below, we slept fairly well.
Koalas and Penguins: March 22
This morning we tried to drive to Murray Lagoon, recommended for its birding, but we encountered terrible road conditions after leaving the pavement (an unsealed road surface consisting of corrugated hard pan that induced powerful vibrations in the car). After meeting a driver repairing a flat tire on his 4WD vehicle who told us that road conditions were worse towards the lagoon and the lagoon was dry, we turned back and drove to Vivonne beach for a picnic lunch on the sand. There were only a few other people on this fine white-sand beach, but we were the target of large biting flies, and after a long walk (during which we observed a pied oystercatcher), we drove out to nearby Ellen Point, a rocky headland with a small automated lighthouse and low shrubby vegetation. A small fishing pier or “jetty” extended out into the cove from the side of the headland. From the point itself we saw a school of dolphins swimming across the cover.
We drove back to Cape de Coudic for an early dinner, and leaving the dishes in the sink, we drove back to the Hansen Bay Sanctuary, that eucalyptus paradise in which we had early seen koalas and an echidna. Upon arriving, we watched flocks of rainbow lorikeets and galahs (white and pink cockatoos) feeding in the grasses. Raucous braying noises attracted our attention to a large eucalyptus tree, where we saw a large koala descending, only about 5 feet above the ground. This animal was the source of the bizarre sounds, and as we watched, it lowered itself to the ground, ran across the dirt lane, and began climbing another large eucalyptus. It ascended directly, meeting another koala with which it proceeded to mate. As we watched this conjugation, which was transacted in silence and lasted several minutes, Lynn decided that koalas were not paragons of fuzzy innocence. After this unexpected performance had ended, we strolled the grounds, spotting other koalas, a couple of largte kangaroos, and a dozen Tammar Wallabies.
As the sun set, we drove back to Ellen Point, where we had learned that Little Penguins were nesting. After arriving back at the jetty, we immediately heard the gutteral communications of the penguins and saw a pair at their nest cavity about 20 feet above our heads on the face of the cliff. We walked out to the tip of Ellen Point, where we heard many more penguins, and at one point found ourselves standing above some coniferous shrubs, only a couple of feet above a pair of birds who were completely screened from our view by the thick foliage.
We drove back to Cape de Coudic at 50 km/hr; trying to avoid collisions with the many wallabies, kangaroos, and brush-tailed possums that were crossing the road or sitting at the edge of the pavement. Many cars in this area have kangaroo bars on the front of their hoods. The 2-inch tubular steel structures protect the cars headlights and grillwork from damaging collisions with these animals. Sometimes the animals stopped in front of us, blinded by our headlights, and would leave the road only when we turned off the car lights. A large kangaroo can cause considerable damage to a car, so as we drove we scanned the roadsides carefully, stopping frequently to wait for the road to clear; fortunately, we encountered no other cars this evening. At this low speed, our trip home took over an hour, but we avoided direct contact with any of the wildlife, and in the last mile we were lucky enough to see a very primitive bird, a bush stone-curlew, by the road’s edge.
Koalas and Roos: March 21, 2006
This morning we drove to the Flinders-Chase National Park Visitor Center, about 9 miles from our lodge, and spent about 2 hours traversing the Platypus Springs walk. We walked through tussock-grass meadows and eucalyptus groves (with a yacca understory) to a series of pools which support a small but growing number of platypuses. We saw signs of platypus (bubbles inside circule ripples) but never saw one come above the water’s surface. We also saw a couple of kangaroos and a few wallabies, as well as several of the large, odd-looking Cape Barrens Goose (which have a very short black bill covered by lemon-yellow ceres, or nasal tissue. We also spotted a koala high in a eucalyptus, as well as galahs. We then drove to Seal Harbor and went on a guided tour that took us down onto the small beach where the world’s entire population of the endangered Australian sea lion breeds. Two large adults were engaged in vicious combat, and one eventually fled down through the surf, leaving he victor to gloat over his success. There are only about 1,600 Australian sea lions left, and the entire species breeds only on this one beach.
Next we drove to Hanson’s Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, famous for its koalas. We did see several koalas, one of them quite low in a tree, about a dozen wallabies, a large male kangaroo, and one echidna at close range.
Kangaroo Island: March 20
After an early breakfast, we checked out of the Pacific International Apartments on Frome St in Adelaide and drove southwest to Port Jervis, at the extreme tip of a long peninsula. The landscape is hilly and semi-arid and savannah-like. At Port Jervis we caught the SeaLink Ferry for the 45-minute ride to Pennashaw on Kangaroo Island. It was a windy day and the large ferry, which was carrying large trucks as well as cars, pitched back and forth irregularly in the swells. The straits were filled with white-caps and we could see no small pleasuare boats. Fortunately, the sky was blue and the entire day was sunny.
On arrival in Penneshaw, we drove to Prospect Hill, where we climbed about 500 stairs to gain a splendid 360-degree panoramic view of Kangaroo Island and part of mainland Australia. After stopping in Kingscote for groceries, we drove for about 2 hours to the main visitor center for Flinders-Chase National Park, at the western end of the island. As we drove, we spotted kangaroos in the grasslands to either side of the road, but we also saw many dead kangaroos along the roadside. Most of these animals are killed by automobiles at night, after being blinded by headlights. This is the third-largest island off the coast of Australia: it’s about 100 miles long and, at its widest, about 35 miles across. Having been cut off from the mainland by rising ocean waters towards the end of the last glacial perod, it’s acquired some local endemic animal and plant species and many unique subspecies of mainland species. Having been spared many of the alien introductions that have undermined native species in other parts of Australia, it’s also got thriving populations of n native marsupials and monotremes that are in jeopardy elsewhere. Tomorrow we’ll try to arrange some guided tours, so we can see koalas and other native wildlife, perhaps even a platypus. We have seen wallabies here around our cottage, along with a colony of New Zealand fur seals, whose male leadership is constantly and loudly fighting to maintain its rank.
We’re staying in a century-old light-keepers cottage at the most remote western tip of Kangaroo Island, Cape de Coudic. It’s a large stone house with three bedrooms and no telephones or television, so we’ll be out of touch with the rest of Australia and the world for three days. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem, but we’ve just learned that northern Queensland was just hit by category 5 cyclone (hurricane), so we’re not sure if the Cairns Airport will be open for business when we fly in on March 24, or whether we’ll be able to pick up our rental car there and check into our B & B in Port Douglas.
Port Douglas and Mossman: March 26
Beautiful day! No rain. Drove to Port Douglas and spent some time in the outdoor markets next to the harbor (Lynn bought jewelry). Afterwards we walked on Four Mile Beach and saw the “stinger” nets set up to create safe swimming enclosures by excluding the lethal box jellies. About noon we drove to a tasteful Port Douglas institution, Rainforest Habitat, which maintains populations of Australian birds and mammals in open-air spaces. After seeing and photographing many interesting organisms (including female kangaroos and smaller macropods with young in their pouches), we drove to nearby Mossman Gorge, part of the Daintree National Park and adjacent to an aboriginal land grant. Mossman Gorge forms a channel through the rain-forested mountains for a river which was now swollen by recent heavy rains and filled with dangerous white-water rapids. When we arrived at one traditional swimming hole, we found that two young women had been carried downstream and were calling out for help. Several young men tried to swim across the fast-moving river, but before they could reach the girls, one disappeared into the rapids. Within a minute she reappeared further downstream, pressed against a large boulder next to the water’s edge. She was lucky to have survived her immersion in the turbulent waters but was now paralyzed with fear, unable to move out of the water. Eventually one of the young men reached her and pulled her out of the water. All around the accessible parts of the river were signs warning of frequent drownings in the area and cautioning against swimming. After this drama had been resolved, Lynn and I followed a 1.5 km hike through the rainforest. We were very impressed by the extraordinary buttressed trunks of some of the mahagony and strangler fig trees.
This evening we drove into Port Dougls for dinner at a restaurant named Zinc, where our lovely young waitress, Nicky, proved to be a friend of our proprieters. She had recently worked as an extra and double for a television remake of South Pacific and told us stories of her interactions with the lead actors. As we left the restaurant to walk to our car, we discovered a bandicoot in the bushes outside an ice cream joint, where a woman was feeding this odd marsupial ice cream cones.
Rainforest: March 25
We were picked up this morning by Peter, a Daintree wilderness guide, who took us in his 4W-drive Land Rover on an excursion through the Daintree River Rainforest, a national park. The north Queensland rainforest is said to be the oldest rainforest in the world, and it contains some of the most primitive angiosperm trees, as well as many tree ferns and figs. Due to recent heavy rains associated with Cyclone Larry, Peter had to ford many streams that flowed across the road, although the Daintree itself was crossed on a ferry boat that was winched across the river. In many places the track was very rough, and a 4WD vehicle was absolutely essential. The Land Rover, like many vehicles in the area, had tall snorkels that extended fro the engine up to the top of the roof, ensuring an adequate intake of oxygen for the diesel engine even if the river water was four feet deep. Pete gunned the engine as we crossed one releatively deep stream, creating a bow wave that nearly inundated the entire vehicle. Afterwards the floor of the Rover was covered by water, which eventually drained away.
We hiked through wet forest, enjoying Peter’s extensive botanical knowledge and folk lore, and eventually drove to to Cape Tribulation (“Cape Trib”), where we went for a walk on the fine sand beach. This area has extensive mangrove swamps, and in one we saw many “mudskippers,” small fish whose complex eyes enable them to see below and above water and that scoot about over wet mud. We also saw a gigantic megapode (primitive bird) nest mound, a pile of soil and fermenting vegetation that was about 4 feet tall. After returning to our B & B for a shower, we ate dinner in Port Douglas, which is a charming and fairly upscale small resort town.
On to Cairns: March 24, 2006
Qantas took us from Adelaide to Sydney and from Sydney to Cairns. Our flight path took us over the “tablelands”southwest of Cairns, one of the areas hit hard by the recent cyclone, and we could see that the rivers below were swollen from recent rains. A town called Inisfail had received the brunt of the Category 5 storm’s winds, but Cairns, to our relief, had been spared major effects. In Port Douglas, to the north, the storm had barely been noticed. Upon disembarking from the plane, we were shocked by the hot and humid air. We picked up our rental car, drove into Cairns, and spent an hour strolling the marine and esplanade. Cairns in located on the shore of a bay surrounded by dramatic headlands, all clothed in thick tropical rainforest. This time of year, the beaches are unswimmable due to the presence of box jellyfish (“stingers”). In the marsh beyond the boardwalk we saw lots of elegant egrets and herons, godwits and curlews, as well as signs warning about salt-water crocodiles. We decided to try to reach our B&B before dark fell, so we drove north towards Port Douglas and checked into the Marae,
Kangaroo Island to Adelaide: March 23, 2006
This morning we packed and cleaned up the lodge. We drove across Kangaroo Island toward Penneshaw via American River, In Penneshaw we ate lunch and drove the car onto t he SeaLink ferry. After a smooth 45-minute crossing, we drove from Cape Jervis to Victor Harbor, which someone had told Lynn was the site of another penguin colony. Victor Harbor, one of Adelaide’s seaside resorts, was quiet in these waning days of the tourist season. Lynn took a horse-drawn tram across a narrow wooden causeway to Granate Island and back. After strolling through the pretty marina park and both blocks of downtown business, we walked back across the causeway and ate at a restaurant on the island. At 8 o’clock we joined a guided penguin tour and saw many of the 14-inch-tall penguins emerge from the sea, cross a paved pathway, and climb up many feet of rocky cliff to their nest burrows. Afterwards, we drove back to Adelaide and checked into the Paringa Hotel, located on a noisy and dirty alley off Hindley St. Despite lots of street noise from the pubs below, we slept fairly well.
Koalas and Penguins: March 22
This morning we tried to drive to Murray Lagoon, recommended for its birding, but we encountered terrible road conditions after leaving the pavement (an unsealed road surface consisting of corrugated hard pan that induced powerful vibrations in the car). After meeting a driver repairing a flat tire on his 4WD vehicle who told us that road conditions were worse towards the lagoon and the lagoon was dry, we turned back and drove to Vivonne beach for a picnic lunch on the sand. There were only a few other people on this fine white-sand beach, but we were the target of large biting flies, and after a long walk (during which we observed a pied oystercatcher), we drove out to nearby Ellen Point, a rocky headland with a small automated lighthouse and low shrubby vegetation. A small fishing pier or “jetty” extended out into the cove from the side of the headland. From the point itself we saw a school of dolphins swimming across the cover.
We drove back to Cape de Coudic for an early dinner, and leaving the dishes in the sink, we drove back to the Hansen Bay Sanctuary, that eucalyptus paradise in which we had early seen koalas and an echidna. Upon arriving, we watched flocks of rainbow lorikeets and galahs (white and pink cockatoos) feeding in the grasses. Raucous braying noises attracted our attention to a large eucalyptus tree, where we saw a large koala descending, only about 5 feet above the ground. This animal was the source of the bizarre sounds, and as we watched, it lowered itself to the ground, ran across the dirt lane, and began climbing another large eucalyptus. It ascended directly, meeting another koala with which it proceeded to mate. As we watched this conjugation, which was transacted in silence and lasted several minutes, Lynn decided that koalas were not paragons of fuzzy innocence. After this unexpected performance had ended, we strolled the grounds, spotting other koalas, a couple of largte kangaroos, and a dozen Tammar Wallabies.
As the sun set, we drove back to Ellen Point, where we had learned that Little Penguins were nesting. After arriving back at the jetty, we immediately heard the gutteral communications of the penguins and saw a pair at their nest cavity about 20 feet above our heads on the face of the cliff. We walked out to the tip of Ellen Point, where we heard many more penguins, and at one point found ourselves standing above some coniferous shrubs, only a couple of feet above a pair of birds who were completely screened from our view by the thick foliage.
We drove back to Cape de Coudic at 50 km/hr; trying to avoid collisions with the many wallabies, kangaroos, and brush-tailed possums that were crossing the road or sitting at the edge of the pavement. Many cars in this area have kangaroo bars on the front of their hoods. The 2-inch tubular steel structures protect the cars headlights and grillwork from damaging collisions with these animals. Sometimes the animals stopped in front of us, blinded by our headlights, and would leave the road only when we turned off the car lights. A large kangaroo can cause considerable damage to a car, so as we drove we scanned the roadsides carefully, stopping frequently to wait for the road to clear; fortunately, we encountered no other cars this evening. At this low speed, our trip home took over an hour, but we avoided direct contact with any of the wildlife, and in the last mile we were lucky enough to see a very primitive bird, a bush stone-curlew, by the road’s edge.
Koalas and Roos: March 21, 2006
This morning we drove to the Flinders-Chase National Park Visitor Center, about 9 miles from our lodge, and spent about 2 hours traversing the Platypus Springs walk. We walked through tussock-grass meadows and eucalyptus groves (with a yacca understory) to a series of pools which support a small but growing number of platypuses. We saw signs of platypus (bubbles inside circule ripples) but never saw one come above the water’s surface. We also saw a couple of kangaroos and a few wallabies, as well as several of the large, odd-looking Cape Barrens Goose (which have a very short black bill covered by lemon-yellow ceres, or nasal tissue. We also spotted a koala high in a eucalyptus, as well as galahs. We then drove to Seal Harbor and went on a guided tour that took us down onto the small beach where the world’s entire population of the endangered Australian sea lion breeds. Two large adults were engaged in vicious combat, and one eventually fled down through the surf, leaving he victor to gloat over his success. There are only about 1,600 Australian sea lions left, and the entire species breeds only on this one beach.
Next we drove to Hanson’s Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, famous for its koalas. We did see several koalas, one of them quite low in a tree, about a dozen wallabies, a large male kangaroo, and one echidna at close range.
Kangaroo Island: March 20
After an early breakfast, we checked out of the Pacific International Apartments on Frome St in Adelaide and drove southwest to Port Jervis, at the extreme tip of a long peninsula. The landscape is hilly and semi-arid and savannah-like. At Port Jervis we caught the SeaLink Ferry for the 45-minute ride to Pennashaw on Kangaroo Island. It was a windy day and the large ferry, which was carrying large trucks as well as cars, pitched back and forth irregularly in the swells. The straits were filled with white-caps and we could see no small pleasuare boats. Fortunately, the sky was blue and the entire day was sunny.
On arrival in Penneshaw, we drove to Prospect Hill, where we climbed about 500 stairs to gain a splendid 360-degree panoramic view of Kangaroo Island and part of mainland Australia. After stopping in Kingscote for groceries, we drove for about 2 hours to the main visitor center for Flinders-Chase National Park, at the western end of the island. As we drove, we spotted kangaroos in the grasslands to either side of the road, but we also saw many dead kangaroos along the roadside. Most of these animals are killed by automobiles at night, after being blinded by headlights. This is the third-largest island off the coast of Australia: it’s about 100 miles long and, at its widest, about 35 miles across. Having been cut off from the mainland by rising ocean waters towards the end of the last glacial perod, it’s acquired some local endemic animal and plant species and many unique subspecies of mainland species. Having been spared many of the alien introductions that have undermined native species in other parts of Australia, it’s also got thriving populations of n native marsupials and monotremes that are in jeopardy elsewhere. Tomorrow we’ll try to arrange some guided tours, so we can see koalas and other native wildlife, perhaps even a platypus. We have seen wallabies here around our cottage, along with a colony of New Zealand fur seals, whose male leadership is constantly and loudly fighting to maintain its rank.
We’re staying in a century-old light-keepers cottage at the most remote western tip of Kangaroo Island, Cape de Coudic. It’s a large stone house with three bedrooms and no telephones or television, so we’ll be out of touch with the rest of Australia and the world for three days. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a problem, but we’ve just learned that northern Queensland was just hit by category 5 cyclone (hurricane), so we’re not sure if the Cairns Airport will be open for business when we fly in on March 24, or whether we’ll be able to pick up our rental car there and check into our B & B in Port Douglas.
# posted by Ken @ 2:14 AM 
