Rainforest

In my last post I mentioned that Cairns uses the motto, “Where the reef meets the rainforest,” and I took a day tour with Trek North Safaris to see the rainforest. Unfortunately it rained on and off that day – appropriate for a rainforest, but inconvenient for tourism. We had lunch in a covered area next to a picturesque brook called Cooper Creek; during lunch the rain came down quite heavily and we saw the creek rise a few inches. While Australia is the driest inhabited continent, the eastern coast of Queensland gets a lot of rain during the wet season (November-April).The high rainfall and hot climate means that a continent known for its vast arid interior has a patch of tropical rainforest.

We took two easy walks during the day, with our guide telling us more about the various plants we saw. I quite liked the name of one particular plant. This plant has long creeping tendrils with hooks that it uses to haul itself up to the sunlight, and these hooks will also grab onto hair, clothes, or skin and not let go. Since they get their hooks into you and don’t let go, these plants are known as lawyer palms. There were vines everywhere, some of them impressively thick. Nevertheless our guide informed us that swinging through the trees on vines a la Tarzan was creative license and, while the vines are quite strong, he didn’t think it a very good idea.

The rainforest is very, very green, with lots of little streams running through. Our guide pointed out lots of various orchids, but none were flowering. Birds were hard to spot, but easy to hear chirping away. The largest bird in the rainforest is a flightless one in the same family as emus and ostriches known as a cassowary. The numbers have been declining and cassowaries live in a fairly small area, but they are a beloved animal in the area known as Far North Queensland. Cassowary road signs are common, and I also saw vehicles with bumper stickers showing a cassowary silhouette and the caption, “Take care!” While my group didn’t spot wild cassowaries, I saw them at both the Cairns Tropical Zoo and Birdworld. While undoubtedly magnificent creatures, they don’t look particularly friendly. Apparently cassowaries can seriously hurt humans between their powerful feet and the hard bony protrusion on top of their heads, although tourists are informed (and reassured) that they prefer to retreat into the rainforest. Male cassowaries sit on the eggs and raise the chicks; females have nothing to do with rearing the young.

As part of the day’s events we took a cruise on the Daintree River. This happened during some quite hard rain, but at least it was a reasonably warm day (I’m guessing mid 70s Fahrenheit) so I didn’t think it was that bad. Some of the Australians complained of cold, but this is nothing new. I’m rather used to it by now, having people around me think it’s cold when I don’t. In any case, the main point of the cruise was to see saltwater crocodiles in the wild. These “salties” are technically estuarine crocodiles, and not strictly saltwater dwellers, but Aussies are fond of their –ie words and the term has stuck. The company we went out with did nothing to get a reaction from the salties; they don’t want the crocs to see the boats as a source of food or a source of hostility. I was happy to hear that, although it must be noted that this company doesn’t guarantee a crocodile sighting. We saw two, and one had its mouth open which was interesting. Interesting, from a safe distance in a boat. These weren’t the big older males, which can reach 6 yards long; the ones we saw were ‘only’ 2 and 2 ½ yards long. That was just fine with me.

Tour guides – and I say this from experience with multiple tour guides – love to tell tourists about the salties. Namely, they tell you how only stupid people get eaten by crocodiles. “If you’re on the bank,” explained our crocodile cruise guide, “you’re on the menu.” Nevertheless, fishermen wade into the rivers and then sometimes end up getting eaten. I noticed warning signs along the river informing readers, usually in at least two languages, “Crocodiles inhabit this water: attacks may cause injury or death.” This was accompanied by drawings, one of a croc with its mouth open and another of a swimmer with a line through it. There really wasn’t room for misinterpretation. We were also told the story of a man who wanted a really good picture of a saltie. So he and his wife rented a canoe, went to a river known for having lots of crocodiles, hung a piece of meat out off the edge of their canoe, and waited to get that picture. Unfortunately, the crocodile wasn’t satisfied with the piece of meat. “He probably got a great picture right before he was eaten,” theorized our guide. (The wife managed to swim to shore.) I almost wonder if there is a book published for tour guides, Only Stupid People Get Eaten by Crocodiles: True Stories Guaranteed to Shock and Appall Your Tourists.

For lunch we could have fish or steak. I had the fish, which was barramundi. Barramundi, or barra as the locals refer to them, are a well-known northern Australian fish. They are famous both for being great fun to catch and also good to eat. I liked the barramundi alright, but still prefer haddock. This is just as well since I can get haddock in Maine. Anyway, it’s a decent fish – not too oily – and authentic tucker (that’s Aussie for food) for the region. Our tour guide, who was a fountain of knowledge, told us that barramundi spend the first half of their lives male and the second half female.

After lunch we went to Cape Tribulation. This was named by James Cook the morning after he discovered the Great Barrier Reef. He also named Mt. Misery and Mt. Sorrow. As you might’ve guessed, he discovered the Great Barrier Reef the hard way. You can see it under the water during the day, but Cook had the misfortune to encounter it at night. Later, after giving depressing names to a few landmarks, he was able to save his ship and crew with the desperate effort of throwing most of the cargo overboard. (The cannons are now in various museums.) When the next high tide came, HMS Endeavour floated, and he was lucky because coral stayed lodged in the hull, which kept more water from pouring in. Cook ordered the hole covered with one of the sails and Endeavour limped along northwards for a couple of days until they found a suitable place to land. Repairs took two months. When I visited Cape Tribulation, it was raining again, so the view wasn’t that great, but I could see that on a clear day it would be spectacular.

On the way home we stopped at a little café for tea and coffee. Growing in a pot on the side of the building I finally spotted a flowering orchid. Also, there was a green tree frog on a round light outside the building, attached to a wall. (This light wasn’t on.) Most of us thought it was plastic at first, and even when we saw it breathe one Canadian man thought perhaps it was battery-operated. “As if we’d bother,” replied our tour guide. The green tree frogs are fairly well-known and this particular one now features in lots of photos. Once it was determined this was a real frog, we all whipped out our cameras. The café staff found this highly amusing.

Since we cut one of the walks short due to rain, we stopped in to a place that grows tropical, exotic fruits and uses some of them to make ice cream. They had fantastic ice cream – I thoroughly enjoyed the coconut flavor. I didn’t at all mind having a shorter walk because it was quite good ice cream, and we still got to take the second walk, just a bit shorter. I very much enjoyed my rainforest excursion, rain and all, and learned a lot while I was at it.

Great Barrier Reef

I spent a week in Cairns (pronounced more or less like “cans”) in the north of Australia. It was entirely different from Tasmania, where on a cruise I’ve seen a penguin in the cold waters. It’s hot and tropical at about 16 degrees south latitude – the closest I’ve ever been to the equator. I stepped off the plane at 7 pm, and it was a humid 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cairns uses the motto, “Where the reef meets the rainforest.” It is, tour guides and promotional websites like to point out, the only place in the world where two World Heritage areas are so close to each other. My first full day in Cairns was devoted to the better known of the two, the Great Barrier Reef.

The Great Barrier Reef stretches over 1,600 miles north-to-south off the coast of the Australian state of Queensland. It falls under the management of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, to which day visitors must pay an AU$10 reef tax. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, I was told on my tour, is larger than the United Kingdom! It can apparently be seen from outer space.

Because of its international airport, Cairns is the most popular place to visit the Great Barrier Reef. A plethora of companies offer tours; from budget tours to the more expensive variety which include champagne on the return trip, the options are bewildering. I chose tour company Passions of Paradise for my excursion. This was an affordable (AU$125) but quality day tour and I enjoyed it immensely.

The boats taking tourists out to the Great Barrier Reef are collectively known as the “Reef Fleet,” and there are buses that will pick people up from the many hotels and motels and drop them off at the Reef Fleet Terminal, then bring them back to their accommodation later. There were hundreds of people when I arrived at the Reef Fleet Terminal. It was the tail end of the major tourist season, as the wet season starts November 1st and torrential downpours naturally deter a lot of visitors. I had an ideal day: blue sky with only fluffy, non-threatening clouds, a slight breeze but nothing to stir up the water and make huge waves, water that was in the high 70s Fahrenheit and air just a few degrees warmer.

Everyone was assigned a number for the day, which was used to ensure that everyone returned from both of the snorkel/dive sites (twice in the last ten years certified divers who went off on their own have been left behind; the film “Open Water” was inspired by the 1998 disappearance of an American couple and in May of this year two divers survived being forgotten). I felt safe knowing that I would check in with my number and didn’t have to worry about an inaccurate headcount. Then we headed out to sea, a trip that took roughly an hour and a half. On the way they held introductory diving and introductory snorkel information sessions. Some people chose to take an introductory dive, which is closely supervised, while certified scuba divers could go off on their own. I stuck with snorkeling and spent the extra money diving would have cost on renting an underwater digital camera, which allowed me to take pictures left, right, and center.

Our first site was Michaelmas Cay, a small sand island that’s also a bird sanctuary. This means most of the island was roped off, but I wanted to be in the water anyway. I don’t understand the people who took the little transfer boat out and sprawled on the beach to sunbathe, while fish and coral were just waiting to be explored in the impossibly clear water. This fairly shallow spot was a great place to start snorkeling. For a couple of minutes I was a little jumpy because the fish and coral are really close, but it was so beautiful that didn’t last long. Although I did later get quite a shock when a batfish, about the size of a dinner plate, nearly careened into me. I think I was more startled than the batfish.

Incidentally, it’s illegal to remove anything from the Great Barrier Reef and taking a piece of coral can earn you a fine of AU$7,500. We were informed on the boat that some coral grows only 1 centimeter, or less than half an inch, per year. With the thousands of tourists who go out every day, I can see why the heavy fine is used as a deterrent – otherwise the Great Barrier Reef would shrink daily.

Snorkeling around Michaelmas Cay was magnificent. So magnificent, in fact, that I lost all track of time and missed the glass-bottom boat tour I’d meant to take. That was alright, because I spent more time snorkeling. We had over two hours at Michaelmas Cay but the time just flew by. Only three companies have permits to operate there, so we weren’t all chock-a-block, as Aussies say. Some of my personal favorites were the giant clams (one of which is featured in the first picture above). These are so big that they don’t move from place to place on the sea floor, so now and again the brightly-colored muscles would clench. There were lots of fish in all shapes, sizes, and colors, although the second site had more fish. And, of course, there was the coral. That too came in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors.

Snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef is such an experience that it’s a bit hard to describe. After lunch we went to our other site, Paradise Reef, which is out in open water. There I was floating along just in front of and over a school of small, bright blue fish, but I was so near I felt as though I was swimming in with them. To be sharing their gorgeous, multi-colored, richly textured underwater world is an awesome and magical moment. I saw Clarke’s anemone fish (which I thought were clownfish but later learned are a similar but different species), a single large fish which may or may not have been a Queensland grouper, brain coral, coral that looked like an enormous mushroom, purple coral spiking up like so many fingers, coral that waved with the current, a particularly striking fish with bright blue, purple, green, and magenta, plus numerous other kinds of fish and coral. One of the staff members, who was diving and taking pictures that we could later purchase, brought up a sea cucumber which I got to hold while I was snorkeling. (This worked marvelously as a marketing tool, as I subsequently bought the picture for my mom.) The sea cucumber looked like a giant caterpillar – it was about a foot long – and was a slimy, squishy creature.

We didn’t encounter the elusive sea turtles, but at least neither did we encounter reef sharks. To my astonishment, some people want to get up close and personal with sharks. The fact that these are supposedly not sharks that snack on humans did not at all make me want to get near one without a solid barrier between me and the large carnivore with sharp teeth. A Passions of Paradise crewmember mournfully informed us that some 200 million sharks are killed a year and some species are in danger of extinction. I’m sure that’s bad for the ecosystem, but I personally am not a great fan of sharks.

All too soon we were called back to the boat. On the trip back to Cairns we sailed part of the way with the motor off. This was a lovely way to end the day. It was quiet without the engine, enabling us to hear the gentle splashing of the blue water against the boat. I found a good spot and settled in to soak up some sun. (It was a good thing I soaked in the sun face-up, because not long after this I discovered a rather nasty sunburn on my back and the back of my legs, despite two applications of SPF 30. Lots of people had sunburns in Cairns. I’m sure sales of aloe vera are brisk.) I didn’t want the day to end, but at least I had more fun planned for my vacation…

To Be Continued

Tasmanian Devils

The iconic Tasmanian devil is the largest surviving carnivorous marsupial. Devils are scavengers, not hunters; they play an important ecological role by cleaning up carcasses. After devils are done you’d never know the carcass had been there, as they eat every single thing: hair, bones, feathers and all. Because of this, it was the farmers who first noticed in the mid-1990s when the devil population began to decline. Farmers reported seeing more dead animals lying around.

That was the first clue that something was wrong with the Tasmanian devils. Now the affliction is known as Devil Facial Tumor Disease, and it’s killed half the devil population. Scientists are mystified on multiple levels. First of all, they have no idea what triggered the outbreak. The tumors are a cancer which is spread through contact; devils bite each other when fighting over food and transmit the disease via bites. This, I learned at a public forum on saving the devils, is highly unusual and has scientists quite perplexed. It is a terrible way to die. As the tumors swell, devils struggle to eat and breathe; in the end they die either of starvation or suffocation.

The University of Tasmania is a center for research, with biologists and doctoral students alike racing to find out more about Devil Facial Tumor Disease and how it can be stopped. Some progress has been made about devils from western Tasmania having more genetic diversity and thus greater resistance. (Eastern devils were hunted for years, reducing their genetic diversity.) Other people are working on last-ditch plans to save the species. Some of these plans include trying to have a disease-free zone and keeping in captivity an extensive devil population from all over Tassie. It may be that the disease will run its course and wipe out most of the devils, but the survivors would be disease-resistant and the species could eventually rebound. On the other hand, there are real concerns that within ten or twenty years wild devils may be extinct. That is why captive devil breeding programs are considered important.

Tasmania has already lost its largest marsupial predator, the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger. The last known thylacine died in 1936, in captivity. Thylacines resembled greyhounds in shape, with broad stripes down their sides. Unfortunately, they developed a taste for sheep, which led to their being hunted into extinction. (It was only a few months before the death of the last thylacine that the state government declared thylacines protected.) At least, the mainstream view holds they are extinct. Some people insist that a few remain in the untamed western wilderness, but no proof has ever come out. Tasmanians now regret the loss of the thylacine, to the extent that license plates feature a stylized picture of one and there is a state cricket team known as the Tigers. I believe that this loss spurs the determination of Tasmanians to save the Tasmanian devil.

Devils are nocturnal and fairly shy around humans, but I saw some at a local wildlife park. They are not cute creatures, in my opinion, but somehow I was drawn to them anyway. Perhaps knowledge of their plight was part of it, but devils are the kind of animal with an innate ability to draw respect. Despite their small stature they are commanding. I timed my visit to coincide with feeding time, and while I wish I turned away a bit faster because it was revolting, I learned a lot from the staff worker. She told us that devils are not, in fact, dirty creatures. After eating we saw the devils begin to bathe in a rather cat-like fashion, which put the myth to rest completely.

I am pleased that I got to see these unique and noble animals, gross eating habits aside. For more information on devils and the Facial Tumor Disease, go to http://www.tassiedevil.com.au/.