North Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef

I don’t want to be precipitous or to precipitate a debate, but I’ve seen more precipitation in the past three days than I’ve ever witnessed in such a short period of time.  The other night we got six inches, which washed out the bridge to our resort and compelled a relaxing day of game-playing and reading.  I could almost hear Crocodile Dundee saying “you call that rain?  This is rain.”

This is Australia.  Leave 100+ degree heat and bone-dry desert, fly two hours, and end up in a cross between a sauna and an out-of-control jacuzzi otherwise known as the Daintree rain forest.  Normal rainfall is 120 inches annually.  A month ago, however, Cyclone Jasper came through, followed by record rains, which dumped 96 inches over five days. 

The flooding rendered the main coast road (the Captain Cook Highway) impassable.  It remains closed, which meant our ride from the Cairns airport to our hotel meandered through blink-and-they’re-gone town, around hairpin switchbacks, and past cars and boats dumped willy-nilly in new resting places by floods and mudslides.

Having said all this, the past few days have been terrific.  Not far from Cairns, we stopped at the Skyrail Rainforest Cableway and took a gondola line five miles into the Daintree rainforest.  This extensive ecosystem has endured since the time of the dinosaurs; it’s believed to be the oldest rainforest on Earth.  Deep in the rainforest there’s a spectacular waterfall (Barron Falls, known to the indigenous people as Din Din).  The line ends at a visitor’s center with a well-presented natural history of the area.  It’s definitely worth a visit.

Two hours farther on, outside the small town of Mossman, lies the Silky Oaks Lodge, where our group enjoyed three days of beautiful surroundings (misty mountains, lush vegetation, acres of bright green cane fields), good food, comfortable cabins, and moderate-to-Biblical rainfall. 

The staff is very friendly and the hotel even offers free self-service laundry, which is a real plus on a long trip.  Silky Oaks has lots of hiking trails, but they were closed because of the rain and mud.

Aside from the rainforest, the main attraction of this area is one of Australia’s most famous features, the Great Barrier Reef.  On our third day, once the waters flooding the bridge receded – I guess if the rains were truly Biblical we’d’ve been marooned for thirty-seven more days – we headed into Port Arthur and boarded a boat to the reef.  The waters are pristine and the sea life (day glo fish, giant clams, reef sharks, rays, otherworldly coral) is spectacular.

Alas, I don’t have an underwater camera, so I can’t share any pictures.  I’m not a great swimmer, and at the first place we stopped I couldn’t overcome the current to return to the boat.  Fortunately, the tour operator (Quicksilver) had plenty of staff in the water to assist guests who were struggling.  If you go, and I hope you do, be cognizant of your limitations and wear a comfortable life jacket.

Our final stop in north Queensland was in the town of Kuranda, a bit less than an hour from Cairns.  Kuranda is home to the Kuranda Koala Gardens and Birdworld Kuranda. 

These attractions, which are next to each other, fall somewhere between zoos and nature conservatories.  I’m not a particular fan of zoos, but these institutions have an educational and scientific mission in addition to showcasing charismatic animals.

In addition to koalas, the Gardens have other typical eastern Australian fauna, including several species of macropoda (“big feet”) – kangaroos, wallabys, and pademelons (which I’d not heard of before today) – quokkas, wombats, crocodiles, and various reptiles. 

Birdworld features riotously colored, raucously-squawking avians – parrots, cockatoos, ducks, and the star attraction (for me), a cassowary who bears the same fierce gaze as Buckbeak, the hippogriff from the Potterverse.  I gingerly fed this escapee from Jurassic Park a grape, and am happy to say all ten fingers remain attached and intact.

I’ll stop here and let the pictures carry the story; come back in three days or so for my write-up of Sydney.