Cape Tribulation

This part of Queensland is such a treat.

This is the Daintree River from Wulu Wugurigga.  The Daintree National Park is part of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area and this fact has put a brake on the usual Queensland brand of untrammeled development.  Beyond the last of the sugar cane and across the Daintree ferry, you come to an area of such lushness and ancient diversity that it is hard to contemplate how much the rest of Queensland (and Australia) has been changed by settlement. Here there are species going all the way back to Gondwana. Mind you, here there are cane toads as well...The advisory signs in the area give a flavour of what it's like.

Everywhere is this dense, tangly, shady forest, with so many different kinds of trees and plants that it is like a huge botanic garden. The ground is scattered with enormous seeds the like of which I had never seen. Some were from plants that rely on the elusive cassowary for propagation, these huge birds being the only critters that can digest them. Here is one cassowary we did see.

Magnificent photo isn't it? Oh, all right, I admit it.  It was just a life-size model in an education centre. Were you fooled?  Even just for one second? We never did see a real one, despite my having the camera switched on ready to shoot at all times we were out and about.

Sunday morning, we went to the oddly named Cow Bay for a market. No cassowaries en route.  Not much market either, just a few stalls tended by local women dressed in standard issue hippie gear, and interestingly, all smoked. One had these stunning ginger flowers for sale, grown at home, in her garden. They had all seen cassowaries. In their backyards or on the roadside.  Don't go near them, they warned, they can kill you. So, it's not just the crocodiles, the snakes, the jellyfish and the serial killers we need to worry about in this area, it's the birds as well?

How beautiful is this? This is in the Daintree Discovery Centre, a patch of Daintree rainforest that has been set aside for study and visitation.  It features a huge tower you can climb to look at the different levels of the rainforest, from the shaded ferny floor to the dazzling top of the canopy. http://www.daintree-rec.com.au/

Sunday afternoon, no lunch (unless you count the dragon fruit ice cream) and we were more than ready for a fruit tasting experience at Cape Tribulation Exotic Fruit Farm. www.capetrib.com.au/ 

This finally revealed to us the mysteries of jakfruit. Including the correct spelling. Jakfruit.

An earlier blog describes our disastrous attempt to buy and share one of these monsters with some poor unsuspecting German and French tourists.  It didn't turn out well. Little did we know then, that you have to wait until it is really soft, then glove up, oil your hands and slit it and scalp it, as Sarah so expertly demonstrated:

This is the photo moment, she said. The interior reveals creamy parcels around each large seed. You pull them off the latex core and throw the rest away.

It doesn't look so good, but they were delicious.  Not sure I could eat 70Kg of them though, that's how big the fruit can get.

We also tasted Davidson's plum, a potent local rainforest fruit totally unrelated to plums. We plan to grow one of these at Forster, Digby assured us there are local cultivars. Also on the menu were black and yellow sapote, pommelo, breadfruit, sapodilla and rollinia, all new to us. The fruit farm does this as a sideline. It grows mangosteens ("The Queen of Fruit") commercially. They were not yet ripe. Now I really want to try one of those.

This is Mt Sorrow, as seen from the fruit farm. The place names in this area reflect the foul mood Lt James Cook must have been in while writing them in his log: Mt Sorrow, Cape Tribulation, Weary Bay, Struck Reef and so on. The Endeavour had been holed on the reef near here, and they spent weeks in the area doing repairs. And scratching midge bites, no doubt. This photo is remarkable because you can see the peak (no clouds).  It rains a lot here. But not on us - we were lucky!

After the fruit tasting, we did the Marrdja Botanical Walk.  Bit of a plant theme today.

This lattice-like creeper once surrounded a fallen log, now totally rotted away.

This, now this,  is what I call a basket fern! Way above our heads and about 3 metres across. Apparently amethystine pythons favour these as a snoozing spot.

The original plant pot - a mangrove hollow.

One wouldn't swim in this area, no no no. One expected to see salties at every turn. Constructing the boardwalk must have been exciting. But we did swim in the Myall Creek, at a designated swimming hole not far from our camp. Yairs, says the bloke who made our pizza at the cafe, it's a great spot for a swim, no worries. It was only later we read about freshwater crocodiles.  But apparently they don't eat people. Dogs, maybe. Anyway, we didn't see any.