On one of my free days, two of the girls and I decided to go to the Cairns Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately it absolutely poured halfway through our walk, and all the way home, but it was still a beautiful place to visit. We even saw a kookaburra!
Saw this ugly bird… not sure what it was, but it liked this flower….
We went to see an aboriginal dance show, saw them throw spears and got the chance to throw a boomerang ourselves! Mine went straight in front of me and then hit the ground. I don’t think this is the type of thing were you can throw it once and think it will do anything much, but then again that’s what I thought about learning to surf and that actually went astoundingly well (that story to come).
One of my biggest fears is heights. I got it in my head years ago that I wanted to go ziplining. Why? I don’t know, challenge the fear maybe? I think mostly I wanted to see the rainforest from a really unique perspective. I was pretty freaked out before we went for obvious reasons, the height, spiders falling on me as I flew through the rainforest… you know, the usual. I did conquer my fear and despite them forcing me to go first (never admit you’re nervous, just sit there and look like you can’t wait to do it. Trust me.), I did try “Jungle Surfing” as they call it in Australia. They tell you to go ahead and just “scoot off the platform”, yeah, right. Just scoot off, 19m above the rainforest floor… try not to think about the enormous Golden Orb Weaver spiders you know live here, because one lives at the Jungle Surfing Headquarters… Overall it was great, a beautiful view, a personal life event checkmark, and I’m so glad I did it!
“Scooting” off the edge.
This was the size of a dinner plate. A DINNER PLATE!!!
Aussies call the bats we know in Canada “micro bats”, I can tell why… they have flying foxes. They’re SO big, I thought it was a crow at first. You could hear their wings swooshing as they flew by. Also known as fruit bats.
One morning at breakfast, my roomates and I saw them in the trees and they started to fight and punch each other while hanging upside down. Fighting over the best spot I guess. I don’t understand why they would hang in the sun and then fan themselves with their wings. Why not pick some shade??
For my Aussie friends, this is what bats look like in Canada (about 7cm long), literally a mouse with wings:
You can’t go to Australia and not see a croc! A few of us decided to go on a croc cruise with a local expert. We saw a few crocs, one which we were told was over 100 years old!
Scenery can’t be beat either:
Croc!
It was usually about 35C, and very very very humid, but so neat to see all the little creatures and beautiful plants and flowers that live in the rainforest.
We were told about the green ant, and how the aboriginals would eat the ants due to their extremely high level of vitamin C. Because of where we were, we weren’t allowed to kill anything, so we couldn’t eat the ant, buuuuuuut we could lick it. So I did. It was tangy. (actual size was comparable to the black ants we have in Canada)
The people that worked on the land would know the day was over and they could go home when the hibiscus flowers started to fall from the trees.
Saw a monitor on a tree:
Fig tree that killed its host:
Mangroves:
One of many many spiders I saw:
A dragon:
When we arrived at the Daintree rainforest, we learned it’s not only a World Heritage site, it’s also older than the Amazon! We stayed at the Ferntree Rainforest Lodge, a really neat place with bright windows and a long porch we sat on each night with a glass of wine before dinner.
It seems like everything there is bigger, grasshoppers, bats, bugs, spiders… spiders… spiders… but the geckos were delightfully the same size as I’ve always seen. They were shy, but I got a couple of shots.
One of them was about 5cm long, and decided to hide in my bed. (I checked my bed every single night with a flashlight before crawling in)
This is about the actual size of the grasshoppers:
View from the porch:
En route to breakfast:
Where we had most of our meals:
We stopped off at the Daintree Ice Cream Company to taste the homemade ice cream made from the fruit right there on the farm!
Jakfruit tasted like “bubblegum fruit salad” apparently. I didn’t really like it. Mango and Raspberry were both delicious, and the Wattleseed was like espresso!
Lots of little lizards around:
There were some really pretty gardens there too:
Mount Alexandra lookout, Walu Wugirriga (wah-lu oo-gid-ee-gah) means “look about”.
We went on several nature hikes en route to Cape Tribulation, and while we were there, too. It was great to learn about all the trees, plants and creatures within the stunning scenery.
They’re big on these suspension bridges…
Fig trees/Strangler trees are a big problem, they choke out the tree that they climb, and eventually the host tree dies and disintegrates leaving a hollow fig tree.
