October 13th
Virgin Australia 1421 – SYDNEY TO CAIRNS, QUEENSLAND – 3 hours 4
minutes
A gray day in Sydney! And it seemed as if every resident of the
city was in line at the airport to check in at the Virgin Australia
counter! We waited and waited and waited
as the endless line snaked ever so slowly to the check-in desk where we were
slammed with an exorbitant baggage fee – that’s what happens when you don’t
read the fine print when purchasing your cheap airfare on Expedia! We planned
our departure from Sydney perfectly – the following two days the city was hit
with torrential rainfall, high winds, flooding, power outages and even snowfall
in the nearby Blue Mountains.
When we arrived, it was a rainy,
gloomy day in Queensland, ‘the sunshine state’ of Australia. Cairns is a small city in Queensland that
serves the tourists who arrive in droves to visit the Great Barrier Reef, one
of the seven natural wonders of the world.
The Hotel Cairns, a plantation-style hotel with white shutters and long verandas
set in a tropical garden, is just a few short blocks from the city center. After checking in we scurried over to the
nearest restaurant at the Doubletree Hotel for a surprisingly well-prepared
meal of barramundi, the plentiful local fish.
The restaurant and hotel were home to plenty of stranded Japanese
tourists – their flights back home were cancelled due to the cyclone ravaging
Japan.
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Hotel Cairns |
Frank turned 63 in Cairns and he
was beginning to feel like himself again after battling a chest cold and a
broken toe! With temperatures in the
80’s (finally) and plenty of sunshine, we took a stroll along the Esplanade
fronting the Coral Sea and discovered that Cairns has no beaches, just mud
flats. At low tide there were dozens of
white Australian pelicans comically waddling along the muddy expanse. To make up for the lack of a sandy beach, the
city boasts a seaside swimming lagoon – a huge, inviting in-ground saltwater pool
free to everyone. Further along the
Esplanade is the Marlin Marina – from here the excursion boats leave for day
trips to the Great Barrier Reef.
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| Australian Pelicans |
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| Swimming lagoon |
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| Cairns waterfront |
The Great Barrier Reef is
comprised of thousands of individual coral banks and islands that run along the
eastern coast of Australia. It is 1,600
miles long and covers 133,000 square miles – so large that it is visible from
outer space – and it is often referred to as ‘the largest structure in the
world created by living organisms.’ It
supports a wide diversity of life including 1,500 species of fish! Clownfish, surgeon fish, green sea turtles,
sea cucumbers (resembling large turds), great white sharks, box jellyfish can
all be found living here in the ‘rainforest of the ocean.’
We boarded the catamaran Reef Magic III for a ninety minute
cruise out to the Marine World activity platform at Moore Reef, 50 KM
offshore. For the next five hours the
platform would serve as our base for exploring this area of the Great Barrier
Reef. Non-swimmers could experience the
reef from inside the glass-bottom boat or aboard the semi-submersible reef
viewer. Others could scuba dive and
snorkel.
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| Aerial view of Marine World platform on Moore Reef |
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| Marine World platform |
I have never snorkeled before but
what better place to start than the Great Barrier Reef! Eric, a marine biologist, took timid groups
of five snorkelers for a thirty-minute guided snorkel tour of the reef. He patiently took us through all the
pre-snorkel preparations, making sure we were all comfortable with our masks
and breathing through our snorkels.
Before we knew it, we were out over the reef viewing colorful staghorn
coral, sergeant major fish, surgeon fish and Wally, the Great Maori Wrasse that
hangs out near the dive platform. This
fish is huge and blue and encountering him for the first time is a bit
disconcerting! He seemed to be very
interested in meeting all the snorkelers in the lagoon. (Wrasses all start life as females but when
the male leader of the group dies, the dominant female changes to a male and
becomes the new leader!?!)
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| The newbies get a snorkel lesson from Eric |
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| Wally and an unknown snorkeler - picture from Reef Magic brochure |
A delicious hot buffet lunch on
the platform, snorkeling, enjoying the fantastic weather and awesome views –
what a great way to spend a day! No
wonder that nearly 2 million people a year travel to the Great Barrier Reef.
But the Great Barrier Reef is not
the only natural attraction that lures visitors to Cairns. The other is the Daintree Rainforest, the
oldest surviving rainforest in the world.
Cape Tribulation, north of Cairns, is where the rainforest meets the
reef. Abby from Active Tropics Explorer
picked us up the next morning and we proceeded up the Captain Cook Highway with
24 other tourists bound for Cape Tribulation.
Just outside of Cairns there were
a few barren fields with a small number of grazing wallabies. We drove through vast fields of sugar cane
along the way to Mossman, home of the biggest sugar mill in Australia. This section of northern Queensland provides
1/6 of the entire world’s supply of sugar.
Our first stop was along the
Daintree River where we boarded a small pontoon boat for a close-up view of the
native estuarine crocodile. Lazing along
the river bank – Gump, a young female crocodile. Prowling along the river – Scarface, a 60+
year old male crocodile. Gump was none
too happy when Scarface appeared, turning towards the water and opening her
wide jaws in a menacing pose.
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| Gump |
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| Scarface |
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| Gump reacts to arrival of Scarface |
Our river guide then spent plenty
of time warning us to steer clear of the waters along the beaches and rivers of
Queensland as they are frequented by crocodiles. “If you cannot see a crocodile, assume that
it is near.” He also pointed out all the
crocodile warning signs and explained why the signs start out with two words - ‘Warning’
and ‘Achtung.’ Oddly, a disproportionate
number of German tourists are involved in many dangerous crocodile
encounters. And more oddly, when we
arrived at the beach at Cape Tribulation, who were the first and only members
of our group to hit the water and wade out knee deep? The Germans!!! Go figure!
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| At Cape Tribulation |
Crocodiles are not the only thing
to be wary of! On our guided walk
through the Daintree Rainforest, Abby gave us more information on the many
plants, animals and snakes lurking in the bush of Australia that can quickly
kill, maim and cause misery, pain and discomfort to the unsuspecting
hiker.
“Beware the ‘takes-awhile’ vine
and its sharp thorns that will stick to your clothes and hair and take quite
awhile from which to disentangle yourself.”
“Avoid at all costs the
gympie-gympie stinging tree. While its
heart-shaped leaves may be enticing, its dense covering of stinging hairs and
saw-tooth edges become embedded in the skin and produce an acid-like stinging
pain that can last for many months. It is one of four species of stinging trees
and is said to have the worst sting of all.
Once stung, never forgotten.”
“The flightless adult cassowary
bird can reach a height of six feet and weigh 84 pounds. They are generally shy and avoid human
contact. However, they can be quite aggressive
when it comes to defending their chicks.
It has powerful legs and may kick when it feels threatened. The sharp nails on its inner toes can rip
flesh and so it is quite capable of killing a human.”
Oh great! Let’s all take a walk in the rainforest!!! Or how about a nice dip in the ocean? It’s not only crocodiles and sharks lurking
in the water. There are plenty of
jellyfish that can kill you! Take the
venomous box jelly fish. It has up to 60
stingers on its 12-foot long tentacles.
A sting can result in cardiac arrest within minutes! The tiny irukandji jellyfish, the size of
your fingernail, is also capable of delivering a deadly sting. But not to worry. Many municipalities in Queensland install
jellyfish netting that stays in place from November to May when the threat is
most pronounced. These nets are attached
to floats and extend down to the sandy ocean bottom, supposedly creating a
jellyfish-free zone where swimmers are safe from jellyfish stings. Really?
What kind of netting is going to keep a jellyfish the size of your
fingernail out of the swimming area?? I
think we will stick to the hotel swimming pool!
That is not to say that there was not beauty in the rainforest!
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| Canopy of palm trees |
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| Basket fern |
On our way back to Cairns we stopped at this lookout for a beautiful view of the Coral Sea.
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| The Coral Sea - somewhere out there Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin came to his untimely death |
The television documentary Making Tracks by Wildbear Entertainment,
an Australian based production company, will be filming aboard the Indian
Pacific from Sydney to Perth when we are traveling the Great Southern Railway
this weekend from Sydney to Adelaide. Each
episode focuses on one of the great train journeys through Australia. We have been in contact with Sam and Rebecca
of the production crew and are set to meet them when we arrive back at Sydney
airport on Saturday morning. They are
even giving us a ride out to Central Station to meet the train. Stay tuned for more. . .
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