Traipsing through the Tablelands

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After some relatively rough seas and a whale sighting, we sadly departed our floating home and transferred our huge amount of gear (read the list of dressing requirements for Team Awesome from our previous blog, our first one for the Australia trip) to a rental car so that we could drive out to the Atherton Tablelands. On our way into the countryside, we stopped at Granite Gorge Nature Park, where we hand fed wild rock wallabies (small kangaroo-type animals) including ones with joeys in their pouches. It must be a genetic thing – I just wanted to pinch their little kangaroo cheeks. The wallabies weren’t wary of us at all. They come up on their hind legs and put their little paw in your palm to balance while they eat the food. I had more attempts to hold my hand in ten minutes of wallaby time then in the last year of marriage! They, like most things in Australia, did not come with the necessary warning sign. We later found out from the caretaker that she does have to deal with bites when the wallabies get a little overexcited about their food pellets. Luckily, we escaped relatively unscathed. On the way out of Granite Gorge, we took the scenic route through the plains and saw a sunset only rivaled by that of the Serengeti. It just kept getting better and better with vibrant orange, pink and red swirls. We were of course on the brink of heading into the proper outback...but alas, the outback will have to wait.

Our first night, we stayed in Yungaburra at the Kookaburra Lodge. The next morning, we had an AWESOME hike along a creek to hunt for platypode (what Andrew heard the plural of platypus is although it is still up for debate). The first, second, third and fourth ones we saw swam away at the slightest sound. We were worried we wouldn’t glimpse more than three seconds of their brown, billy selves as we walked down the creek, waiting and watching the burrow holes we saw. It was still awesome though and Andrew had the biggest Chesire-cat smile on his face ever, just from a glimpse. It was his goal for the trip to at least see one, and he had left about three days time to accomplish this feat. Score on the first shot! We kept trying for some quality platypus time, but as we walked back we accepted we would likely never see more than a brown outline followed by a ripple in the water as the only evidence it existed.

Then we met our friend Toby.

When Andrew’s dad went to Australia when Andrew was little, he brought back a platypus hand puppet. Andrew named it Toby and loved that platypus to tatters, so Toby seems like a fitting name for the precocious platypus we met in Yongaburra. The platypus there are small, about the size of squirrels, but size doesn’t matter. They are through the roof on the cuteness scale (see pictures). Toby paddled up and down the bank of the creek, towards us at times, posing for pictures and darting down at times, kind of like an otter. The platypus were more graceful than you would think given all of their oddness.

After our platypus watching success, we made quick stops at some strangler fig trees, the Curtain Fig and the Cathedral Fig. Strangler figs are rainforest trees that grow from the top of another tree, sending down roots that strangle the host tree and kill it. The Curtain Fig did this to a few trees in a row, creating a long row of very high roots coming down. The Cathedral Fig is a humungous tangled mess of roots that you can walk through since the tree or trees under it long ago rotted away. A nice easy walk to see trees, right? WRONG. We had to beware of the plant growing along the side of the trail that contained neurotoxins that would be painful for months if you came in contact with a live or dead plant. You can’t make this stuff up! To quote our Aussie liveaboard guide, “If it is beautiful in Australia, watch out, it can kill you. But if it is ugly, it can also kill you.”

To walk off breakfast, we took a walk around Lake Barrine where we saw some butterflies, birds, a black snake that could probably have killed us and a water dragon. Luckily, the water dragon is not a case of danger hidden down under. It’s just a swimming lizard that seemed about the size of a forearm. We finished the hike with lunch and a Devonshire Tea at the teahouse there. There was some kind of local fish called King Salmon that was not salmon at all – it was a white reef fish – but either way it was delicious. Devonshire Tea from what we could tell is really the name for either coffee or tea with scrumptious scones topped with local jam and cream.

To walk off lunch, we traipsed around some waterfalls. Do you see the pattern here? We saw a platypus and met a Jehovah’s Witness at Milla Milla Falls. Driving through the rolling hills of the Tablelands was a real treat. The area has many coffee plantations, wineries and dairy farms. We stopped at an organic and biodynamic dairy farm, sampled cheese there, bought some yogurt and ate possibly the most delicious cheesecake we’ve ever had. The yogurts were creamy without being heavy, and we thoroughly enjoyed all the flavors, including “Davidson plum” made of local fruit from the rainforest. More food, what a surprise. We made it to the car without being mistaken for cows, and headed off in search of a cassowary, which is basically an endangered rainforest ostrich with bright blue and red around its head.

The cassowary hunt lasted that evening and half of the next day, but didn’t take us as far as Paradise Falls (if you haven’t seen the movie Up, we highly recommend it) or end in us finding one of the elusive birds. If we had a feather for every road sign we saw warning us not to hit a cassowary, we could have made up a whole bird. Mission Beach was beautiful on our morning run on which we saw a live kangaroo, and we enjoyed the gardens and bright blue butterflies at Licuala B&B. It was where Cyclone Yasi made landfall, so damage was evident, but it was still a beautiful place.

Lest it actually feel like a vacation (a.k.a. holiday in Australian) instead of a march to see as many places in as short of a time as possible, we set off to catch the ferry to Magnetic Island to go on our own koala safari. One boat out of Townsville, one bus ride up the island, and about two kilometers of hiking equaled five wild koala sightings. The first one we saw clearly was Kingston, a tagged middle-aged male. He scurried up a tree and proceeded to chow down on eucalyptus. We were so lucky that a bunch of the ones we saw were moving around, because they are only active for two to four hours of the day (who wants to die and come back as a koala?). The rest of the day, they are basically sleeping and/or intoxicated from the eucalyptus. And I thought the Grateful Dead just liked the cute bears.

Our favorite koala we came across was a mom and baby that showed off for us – nursing and moving around with the baby holding onto the mom’s belly. There are no words for how adorable this was. Cute and cuddly bears to hug, right? WRONG. They have claws so I resisted climbing the trees to snuggle them. Also, we resisted walking off the trail (a.k.a. track in Australia) because of warnings on the hike. It’s a paved path to see fluffy bears. Simple and safe, right? WRONG. The sign warns of “death adders,” extremely poisonous snakes living in the area. Could you think of a better name for yourself if you were a snake? The sign was especially great because it consisted of a paragraph about death adders, the suggestion to avoid them by staying on the track, and a final sentence that read, “Enjoy your walk.”

Avoiding the death adders, we climbed over WWII ruins and watched the koalas through another gorgeous sunset. The only danger in the sunsets is the kangaroos lurking in the shadows, waiting to hippity hop straight into our hood. While one person dealt with the left-side of the road loony-ness, the other lent a hand with lookout duties.

On Monday and Tuesday, Andrew dove the US Yongala out of Alva Beach, the wreck of a navy ship known to be one of the best dive sites in the world. He saw manta rays, fish the size of a person, and four sea snakes. I sat out due to the prospect of dealing with my ears in challenging conditions. The boat was small and the waves were huge. A few people shared their breakfasts with the fishes. Backed by Bonine (a motion sickeness med), Andrew fared well enough to enjoy the dive and go back for a second one.

A is for Assini, A is for Australia, A is for AWESOME, which this trip has been!

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