Our flight from Sydney to Cairns arrived on time, as did the bus at Cairns airport that would be taking us to Port Douglas. It was quite a relaxing one and a half hour drive but the heat outside was a serious body shock. The air conditioned bus was cool enough for both Jill and I to fall asleep straight away though. It’s a shame we fell asleep so quickly because the scenery was a uniquely beautiful thing for Australia. It looked like the sort of thing I’d been seeing in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, the tropical trees and plants I was seeing could have come right from there, I didn’t know Australia could offer this type of environment. It felt like I was in a rainforest while we were still on the road.
We did a couple of big things in Port Douglas, the first was the Daintree Rainforest tour and the second was scuba diving on the wonder of wonders, the Great Barrier Reef.
For the rainforest tour Pete, our guide and driver, picked us up at our hostel at 7:30am. Jill and I were the only ones on the tour and it didn’t take long before our first stop. Barely a couple of minutes from our hostel, Pete spotted a gathering of fruit bats so he stopped immediately and took the opportunity to tell us a few things about them. There was then a brief roadside stop as Pete told us about banana plantations and how they work. Enroute to our destination the next stop again felt like it was by the road but this one was actually a reserve or pseudo zoo of some kind. Pete stopped here to show us the cool green ant colony I’ll mention below. When we were done we continued towards the forest in Pete’s Land Rover. The drive was maybe an hour and a half but Pete’s relentlessly interesting information and engaging style of conversation had (at least) me captivated the whole time. After that, we took a ferry to cross the river. Before we actually got to the forest though there was one more stop; a stunning lookout point the aboriginals (or bama, as they refer to themselves) used when establishing the lay of the land. Pete told us about the cassowary, laciandra, licuala, cassowary plum and mamosa plant (see below). He also showed us techniques to use when testing wild soft skinned fruit for suitability to consume. When he was done here we hopped back in the car and had a few more minutes before we got to the starting point for our forest walk. On the way we had a brief roadside stop to try some wild jackfruit, it was delicious and tasted like banana pineapple bubble gum.
When we finally got into the forest for our bush walk, we didn’t leave for a good 3 or so hours. During that time Pete told us too many interesting things to remember but some that stood out were: triangular spider, davidson plum, spurwood mahogany tree, not sure what they are called but a wispy vine with small, sharp thorns on it, Daintree’s version of poison ivy (this one is much, much worse because it causes the same or possibly even worse agonising pain but the microscopic barbs on the leaves of the plant become embedded in the skin so the pain they cause lasts for about 4 months), parasitic fig trees, one large example of which Jill and I climbed inside, all sorts of trees and leaves that have medicinal and narcotic properties and tarzan vines (one of which Jill and I attempted to climb). Before we got to the fig trees we had to stride through a large stream to reach that section of forest, during that little adventure we picked up a few uninvited guests. Leeches. We knew they were no problem though and as Pete was telling us all about them, he informed us that it’s good karma to leave them on until they’re full, so we did. They were only small but they drink 10 times their own body weight in blood. I’ve got before and after pictures of them and the difference is staggering, the leech is unrecognisable when it’s full. If you allow a leech to get its fill when you find one on you, it won’t need to eat again for another year. Also, this is just by the by but if you ever get a leech on your eyeball you should leave it there until it falls off of its own accord. If you try forcing it off in any way it will spasm, possibly taking some of your cornea with it. This won’t blind you but it will give you distorted vision. After the main forest walk we hopped back in the Land Rover and Pete took us to a little spot he’s been cultivating over the last 12 years. We stopped by the side of the road and came across a makeshift doorway Pete had fashioned to deter visitors from his little sanctuary. He discovered a little stream here 12 years ago and since then, one stone at a time, has been building up an impressive dam that has turned the stream into a lovely natural swimming pool. He’s even fashioned his own ‘furniture’ by stacking some of the larger rocks. This is where we had lunch. After we’d eaten and had a swim, Pete showed us how the bama captured their artwork; they’d use oxidised red stones as chalk and larger flat rocks as a canvas. Pete also showed us the ‘cooee’ stick, an amusing trick that’s sure to entertain anyone, especially kids. We headed to Cape Tribulation beach after that, it was absolutely stunning. We walked through a nice little mangrove on the way there from our parking spot, Pete showed us all sorts of cool and interesting seeds and plants while we were on the beach too. As we walked there, one of the things he had us do was try a berry he found. It was called blue tongue and guess what? It turned our tongues blue. Pete made us lick, taste, chew on or eat at least 8 different kinds of wild fruit, plant or insect while we were out on the tour, it was a really cool way of keeping the tour fresh and exciting. (Green ant, jack fruit, laciandra, davidson plum, small fig, a mushroom like plant growing around Pete’s ‘swimming pool’, blue tongue and the ‘magic fruit’).
As we were leaving, when we waited for the ferry to take us back to the other side of the river, Pete showed us one final thing. He was going to perform a miracle for us. We tried the davidson plum earlier and knew that it was very sour, it has a lemon like taste. When he picked one for us to try earlier in the day he took a second one and popped into his water bottle for what he said was an ‘experiment’. Well it was finally experiment time! Pete had both Jill and I chew on what he called a miracle fruit for six minutes and then had us try the davidson plum again. True to his word, Pete had performed a miracle; it now tasted very sweet and completely different from before. It turns out that Pete’s miracle fruit had temporarily desensitised the sour taste buds on our tongues and made everything taste different. Apparently, it makes beer taste like wine but I didn’t have a chance to test that out.
I (and possibly Jill but I’m not too sure on that one) learned far too much on this tour for us not to share it with you. I got schooled in a lot of stuff during the day so I’m going to drop some steaming hot knowledge on you: Green ants (so called because of their large green abdomens) look more or less like normal ants but if you lick the tip of their abdomen (which we did because Pete told us to), you get a nice little kick. Pete pulled one of the ants off the impressive looking leaf hive they were crawling on and while holding the top half of the ant told me to lick the bottom half, it was sour like a lemon or sort of like putting your tongue on an acid based battery (I did dumb stuff as a kid). Jill did the same but since she isn’t a lemon officianado like myself, had a much stronger reaction to it. (Interjection by Jill: That was not true, Pete made me lick 3 ant butts because he thought I wasn’t getting the right reaction to it.)
Banana is not a plant, tree or palm, it’s an herb. The banana is like a flower, the ‘branch’ is like the stem. Once you cut the flower, the stem will never produce bananas again, you have to cut it down and start again. Despite the fact that Australia has every latitude and type of environment necessary to grow anything that any other country can grow, Australia has no commercial agricultural product; everything that grows here has been brought here from somewhere else.
The cassowary is north western Australia’s large bird. It sort of looks like the large bird from Pixar’s Up. They’re big; the females weigh 60kg, the males weigh 35kg. They’ve got very strong legs and three sharp toes on each foot. When they kick they go back on their tail and kick with both feet, they’ve been known to disembowel humans when they do this.
The biggest crocodiles in the world live in Daintree, there have been 8-9 metre long crocs spotted here and since they’re an apex predator (at the top of their food chain), they live for ages. A 93 year old crocodile was found here. One of many cool schoolings given: you know how old a crocodile is by counting the rings in its spinal column.
The rainforest in Daintree is the oldest one in the world. It doesn’t have the oldest trees, nothing survives here very long before becoming fertiliser for the next generation, but the species of plants and trees here date back hundreds of millions of years. This is a very primitive rainforest. So primitive that the plants here don’t even have fruits. Because of this there are no animals here, just insects and possibly some birds. It is a very forgiving forest, there isn’t much here that can kill or injure you, certainly no deadly snakes, spiders or anything like you’d find in other rainforests.
Things we saw in Daintree: a small pink fruit that looked a lot like dragon fruit on the inside. It’s called laciandra, Pete cut some for us to eat with his Swiss army knife. Various types of tree trunks that have medicinal and sometimes narcotic properties. The licuala plant. It has large, circular, cool looking leaves. They can survive hurricanes and typhoons because in strong winds (provided the barometric pressure is indicative of a big storm), the leaves crumple up like a Chinese or Japanese fan. The cassowary plum. Poisonous so it shouldn’t be eaten. It’s interesting because like the thorny bushes we saw in Namibia they can only be pollinated when eaten by a specific animal. The thorny bushes in Namibia needed to be eaten by a springbok but this cassowary plum is, unsurprisingly, eaten by cassowaries. They’ll eat and evacuate the same cassowary plum up to 8 times so by the last time they do it, the seeds will be quite far from the tree they came from. The plum has to pass through the cassowary at least a few times before all of the inhibitors, the nutrients, are removed and absorbed by the cassowary and the fruit can actually germinate. Pete showed us how to test the suitability of soft skinned fruits for consumption. The first thing you when assessing whether or not you can eat something is to cut off a small piece and rub it on soft flesh like your wrist, wait 20 minutes for a reaction. If nothing happens, rub a small piece on your tongue, wait 20 minutes. Then chew a small piece, ensuring it gets on to all of your mucus membranes and spit it out, wait 20 minutes. The final step is to eat a small piece and wait 2 hours. If you follow this 3 hour cycle, you can be confident that you won’t eat something that can kill you. The closing leaf plant that I first saw in Laos. I didn’t know what it was called at the time but I now know it’s called a mamosa. Its’ leaves are open at first but they close up if you touch them or breathe on them when you have bad breath. To the plant, you always have bad breath. The leaves open up again 8-12 minutes after they were first touched. This plant has narcotic properties. Jackfruit, tastes like banana pineapple bubblegum. The largest tropical fruit in the world, it can grow up to 30kg in weight. As we saw so many insects on this tour Pete dropped some hot knowledge about them on us; insects make up 85% of ALL biomass in the world. Also, after a termite queen is fertilised, she can produce 1 egg a second for each second of her 54 year life.
Triangular spider, as the name would suggest, this is a triangle shaped spider. Its shape is more evident if the spider is stunned because it has an autonomic response whereby its legs are drawn in towards its body. Davidson plum. A fruit that looks just like a normal purple plum but is very sour like a lemon. I loved the taste of this. Spurwood mahogany tree. Has massive ‘spurs’ going out over the ground in every direction for support. It does this because its roots don’t penetrate deep enough into the ground to keep its large structure upright. We saw numerous other things too but it was just too much information to take in over such a short time.
As mentioned above the second thing we did in Port Douglas was scuba dive along the Great Barrier Reef. Truly one of the most generous gifts to the world, the Great Barrier Reef is an absolute marvel and one of the most breathtaking sights I’ve ever witnessed in person. Scuba diving here was an experience I’ll never forget and it was without question one of the best things I’ve ever done.
After that introduction I don’t feel I have the words to accurately reflect what swimming in this wondrous place is like but I’ll try. It’s a shame my pictures couldn’t really capture it either, light entering the water is dispersed and absorbed by the water too quickly. As you go further down in to the water, the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum gets cannibalised by the water. The lighter colours (red, orange, yellow, green) are the first to go, it makes everything look blue and if you go down deep enough, eventually black. I’d need a powerful light to capture what I saw with a camera, even with my eyes it becomes more difficult to clearly see the underwater environment as I descend deeper, especially if another diver has disturbed the sea bed and kicked up sand or silt with their fins. What I did see though was transcendent. If you’ve read my other posts about scuba diving you’ll know that I love it, it’s one of my favourite things to do but this, this was something else. Like the dive sites in Langkawi and Phuket, there were more fish and coral species than I could count, there’s no point in trying after having spent a few minutes down there but where in my previous dives the number of new species I was seeing slowed after maybe 20 minutes, the Great Barrier Reef just kept on producing. Up until the last few seconds I was in the water I kept seeing new species of fish and new types of coral, it was endless. During the last of my three dives I even saw a white tipped reef shark, Jill wasn’t there because she wanted to snorkel at the end of the day but she saw the shark from the surface so things worked out fine.
At each of the three dive sites I visited there was a huge wall of ever varying coral that was seemingly without end. The wall was immense and there were shoals of countless fish, fish of all colours and sizes, passing through. It really was wondrous.
STOP BY FOR POT PIE 