Reef and Rainforest

When I first started planning this journey, Queensland was not on the agenda, almost every other part of Australia was. But then when my friend Maurene from Jerusalem said she would like to meet up with me for a few days and go to the Great Barrier Reef, things changed. Instead of heading into more arid outback after Darwin, I flew to Cairns on the north east coast and a few hours later picked Maurene up at the same airport after her business day in Sydney. We spent the first 48 hours exploring the Atherton tablelands inland from Cairns and then relaxing in a cabin in the rainforest. Maurene observes Shabat so we were very low key for 24 hours. On Saturday night we dined at the resort restaurant, a great open dining room with part of the swimming pool in it and lots of heavy tropical wooden furniture and of course, palms and other vegetation. I have never been in the wet tropics before so this is all very new and inviting, especially since it is not too hot and humid at this time of the year.

Sunday, the reef trip, was a peak experience. I had heard that the reef is disappointing because it is in decline and especially since a huge bleaching episode 4 years ago. But this little slice of the reef was exquisite, there was hardly any dead coral but a gazillion shapes and types of living coral mostly ranging through the beiges from yellow to grey with a few more colourful types. The fish were brilliant in colour and form, shoals of little ones, and various individuals Then there were the purple starfish and the black sea cucumbers cleaning up the scene on the sandy bottom.
Saw a mantra ray as well but the very best was the sea turtle which the guide saw and beckoned us to follow gently, so graceful with just the front flippers moving we followed (him or her) for many metres. After we got back on the boat she surfaced and hung around as if to say....I did this just for you, go well dear humans.

On Monday, I drove up to Cooktown on the Endeavour River where Captain Cook, a childhood hero of mine, brought the Endeavour after almost foundering on a reef at Cape Tribulation, also named by Cook. They spent 6 weeks there, fixing the boat while Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander collected plants and made various other natural history observations.
I am a bit of a Cook groupie since I grew up not far from Marton where he was born and as a child often walked up to the obelisk known as Captain Cook’s memorial on the north west edge of the North York Moors. I took all the requisite photos, of Cook, the landing site the memorial obelisk and went to the James Cook museum which is small and deals only with Cook’s landing here through quotations from the journals of Cook and Banks and also from the perspective of the local aboriginal people whose oral stories of that time have been captured in text. They referred to the Endeavour as a strange large canoe in which it appeared something was not right.

Then it was south to explore the Daintree Rainforest, a feast for anyone, you don’t need to be a botanist. It is a demonstration of how alive our planet is and how well it does without us, so many species, so many interactions and adaptations, the statistics are staggering, the experience even more so. Huge trees, with buttressed roots, many of them several hundred years old, cycads, idiot fruit, woody vines corkscrewing in the canopy, ferns, mosses, lichen and various flowering plants mostly growing as epiphytes on the trees, then the ubiquitous strangler fig. I saw the phenomenon of cauliflory, flowering and fruiting from the trunk, rather than the tips of branches.
Most of North Queensland’s coast was originally rainforest, giving way to mangrove swamps at the shoreline but the forest was cleared and the flatland of red lateritic soil planted with sugar cane. The Daintree was slated for a similar fate in the 1980s, logging, sugar cane and subdivision. It was saved by a grass roots protest coupled with expanding scientific knowledge that these were the most diverse and ancient tropical rainforests on the planet. Now it is a World Heritage area, and has a reforestation research centre, and a relatively low impact tourism infrastructure. Canopy walks and boardwalks allow human access without damaging the forest. The access road is peppered with signs warning of cassowaries crossing. Alas I did not see one of these curious solitary birds but on a night walk saw bats, roosting birds, spiders and stick insects and awoke next day in my tent cabin to a dawn chorus of birds and insects.

Australian Icons

The last 4 days of the outback trip were spent visiting icons of what is called the Red Centre of Australia, Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Kings Canyon. All spectacular but accompanied especially in the case of Uluru by legions of other tourists, many in airconditioned buses. We felt quite superior as we pulled our dusty rig into the sunset viewing parking lot and cracked open the wine and beer for hors d’ouevres at sunset. A double rainbow appeared after a very brief shower which sent most visitors scurrying back to their buses. We also walked around part of the base of the rock, climbing is discouraged because of the sacredness of the site. At the Aboriginal Culture Centre which has a rather dramatic design we were treated to a very sanitized version of Uluru. The rock is sacred and as such, its stories cannot be shared with people who might abuse them. The whole site is managed jointly by aboriginals from the area and national parks staff. There were allsorts of platitudes describing how they are learning from each other about each other’s ways, illustrated with examples of respecting traditions such as, aboriginals working at the site go barefoot and non-aboriginals wear boots ! My thoughts often wandered to that scene in Priscilla Queen of the Desert “a cock in a frock on a rock”

After sunset at Uluru, we saw sunrise on the Olgas (Kata Tjuta) then went for a walk amongst these red and bulbous rocky hills, up into the Valley of the Winds and then it was on to a bush camp not far from King’s Canyon. The walk around the rim of Kings Canyon was spectacular and a great achievement for she of the broken ankle. It wasn’t the most challenging thing I’ve walked since that fateful day in late December, but close. I walked with the rearguard, Frances, Paul and the delightful Katerina from Prague who helped us over the rough bits. We were only a few minutes behind the younguns and there were others who didn’t even attempt it. And then it was off for our last night in the outback at a site which I will call “between two signs” The first was an aboriginal community sign warning of no this and that, the second, about 500 metres away, was a National Parks sign which we all know brings many conditions. We camped in this no-persons land with some of those iridescent pink eyed spiders and in the morning walked onto a rise through the prickly Spinifex to watch the sunrise on Gosses Bluff. Then there was a leisurely drive though the western MacDonnells to Alice Springs and a final gathering on Anzac Hill before dinner and farewells.

Gums, Wattles and Red Roads

This is the first of two posts about 10 days in the outback
What an experience this has been travelling in a 4WD Toyota Landcruiser with trailer for luggage, food, water swags and emergency supplies. We travelled 3500kms through arid bush and desert from Adelaide to Alice Springs, much of it on red dirt roads or stony tracks By paved road it is about 1200km. “We” were a group of 10, mixed demographic as our guide put it. Ages ranged from 20s to 70s, some European, mostly Australian and others like my friends Frances and Paul, global citizens carrying several passports and residency cards.
Our guide and driver Rick was a free spirit and photographer who started out at 14 racing motorcycles and playing in rock bands, then headed off to China for various entrepreneurial pursuits before returning to Adelaide and discovering a new passion for outback guiding.
Our first two days were in the Flinders Ranges, seeing Wilpena Pound, rock paintings at Arkaroo, our first campsite a bush camp near a camel farm, we rode the last two kms to the camp on camels. There were magical short walks and our first taste of the outback. If I came back to Australia, I’d want to spend more time in the Flinders, it is very beautiful and relatively accessible and not as daunting as the rest.
After a short stop to see the very rare yellow footed rock wallabies we headed north into stony deserts called gibber plains and after crossing a dune called Priscilla we camped on the salty shores of Lake Eyre south. Every night, we slept in our swags, heavy canvas bivvy bags, all with a name, mine was called Monica Lewinsky. It was cold, had to put on all my layers but the sky was a treat, satellites, shooting stars, the Southern Cross and Orion looking decidedly wonky, such is the southern hemisphere.
In the morning we headed along the old Ghan railway, ruins telling of broken settler dreams along the way and a visit to our first mound springs, bubbling up from the artesian basin and creating an illusion of lush possibilities in this arid land. Then it was on to the Opal town of Coober Pedy. We visited an opal mine, usual chit chat, enjoyed a shower and pizza in a restaurant and a night in an underground house which stays at about 22 degrees all the time. It rained a bit overnight, something to be celebrated in this dessicated continent.

A morning walk in the Painted Desert was one of the trip highlights then after a long rattling drive in dust and heat and a short stop for lunch at the Oodnadatta Pink Roadhouse, we came to the Dalhousie ruin on a palm adorned mound spring at sunset. Another broken dream, an Irish family called Bagot lived here from the 1880s to the early 20th century, hoping to make their fortune in cattle The interpretive sign told us that in spite of isolation and many hardships they had an enviable social life.
It was a hot day but bearable until Dalhousie Springs in Witjira National Park where the pool was 37, not cooling enough for me. Then the mozzies set in, not a good night, wore a net and used Deet. This experience spawned a bunch of limericks. There were dingos around the campsite, they stole a flip flop from a neighbouring camper. Rick warned us not to leave shoes outside our swags.


On the dusty rough road to Witjira The night spent at Dalhousie Springs
Our mission could not have been clearer Was tortured by creatures with wings
To jump in a pool It was such a pain
Far too hot, so uncool Don’t go there again
Not worth the diesel said Vera Cos everyone’s covered with stings

Escaping the mozzies we drove through part of the Simpson desert, very beautiful, saw the “mouth” of the Finke River, one of the world’s oldest rivers which of course is dry most of the time but supports magnificent Red River Gums spotted the scarlet Sturt’s Desert Pea, and camped in a magical spot at Kulgera, on sand but surrounded with red rocks and boulders. I am now more familiar with the trees, can tell a gum from a wattle. Most of the latter are in flower, yellow or creamy blossoms. The gums have magnificent bark, ghost gums, pure white are my favourites
We were coming to the end of our real outback experiences, approaching the more visited sites, Uluru (Ayers Rock) Kaja Tjuta (The Olgas) and Kings Canyon. More on that in my next post.