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Published: July 27th 2009
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Day 91 - Mission Beach South
When you wake up in a caravan in Australia, the first thing you tend to do is sneak a peak behind the curtains to see what sort of day you are waking up to. That was not necessary this morning because the tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, plop of rain on the roof made it blindingly obvious what was happening outside!
Huuummmmph! Never mind. We intended to visit the Mission Beach Monster Market today so prepared to get wet and with that expectation there’s really no point in drying your hair after a shower so we don’t!
There’s a post box at reception so about 20 postcards got sent off this morning! Some of them are more timely than others I’m afraid, sorry about that!! Nancy on reception also booked us on to a Great Barrier Reef trip for tomorrow as it’s looking like it will be the best day by far weather wise. We’re not sure whether we’ll do an assisted dive during the day too, we might leave that til Port Douglas but it’s something that we’re both curious about!
So off we go to explore what Mission Beach has to
offer in the pouring rain and to hopefully find a Pharmacy or somewhere that sells something for sore eyes - one of Darryl’s is red raw. All the pharmacies are shut, as most other things are in a small town on a Sunday but we do find one small supermarket with some ointment for conjunctivitis so he’s giving that a go! Hopefully he won’t grow another head or anything horrible as a side effect!
We spend some time in the excellent Wet Tropics visitor centre where we fill up with brochures for the next stages of our adventure. In terms of things to do today, we’ve covered quite a lot of the ‘must do if it’s raining’ activities so we spend some time at the Monster Market, filling up with a Pork and Gravy sandwich as our lunch (at 11.30!) and wandering through the stalls with dedicated owners still prepared to display their wares in the pouring rain!
After that we take a trip in the car and see where the road takes us! We find ourselves at the beautiful Lacey’s Creek which is another part of the Tam O’Shanter National Park and could house Cassowaries. The walk
through the rain forest is lovely and includes wooden bridge creek crossings and lookouts at various points. We saw and clearly heard a Green Catbird whilst we were here, their voice is very distinctive and gorgeous to listen to for those of us that miss their kitty cat! There were so many different bird calls in the forest, most of which we’d not heard before so if it hadn’t been raining we would probably have spent some time just sitting and listening but as it was there were leaches around and neither of us wanted to pick one of those up! We met a couple walking the track in the opposite direction and he’d been ‘leached’ twice already and once was on his face! Yurggghhhhh! Gross! Shudder! We saw plenty of fish in the creek, lots of the very important Cassowary Poo but no actual Cassowaries. Nevermind, we’ve seen a notice about a documentary on ABC1 tonight that’s all about Cassowaries and we suspect it was filmed around here so we’ll have to watch that and get our fill that way.
We travelled on to Innisfail which is a very retro small town with a very out of place
but glorious Chinese Temple on the main street! We drove past the harbour and out to Flying Fish Point but there’s nobody about really because it’s still raining. Hey ho, back to the caravan we go and spend time working out the route for the weeks ahead. We are going to hit our first big trips on Developmental Roads soon and these are sometimes not the nicest in the world ever! They are often corrugated or at best are single track bitumen tracks that 50 metre road trains frequent and those buggers stop for nobody! We decide to run up the coast to Cooktown, albeit that we probably won’t go as far as Cooktown with the caravan and then we’ll come back down through the Atherton Tablelands and then out towards Undara and Normanton which will signal the beginning of the end for our time in Queensland. It’s probably three weeks away though but it was a worth while exercise to make sure we do things in the most fuel efficient way! The driver was fairly keen for this to be the case!
We’ve just finished watching the excellent ABC1 documentary all about Cassowaries and it was filmed in
and around the Mission Beach area. It was fascinating and it’s made us realise how fragile their existence really is. The team filmed a ‘family’ from egg production, Mum leaving and on to Dad incubating the eggs by sitting for 50 days and nights only occasionally leaving them to get food and water. It explained how some of the eggs may not even be his but once they are laid he remains committed and will see off even wild boars who pose a serious threat to the unborn youngsters. It then followed the chicks through from hatching to the struggle Dad faced in raising all of them successfully (he lost one when nasty Mum came back and forced them from their rich in food territory - what a cow bag) to him then leaving them when they were old enough and Mum turned up looking for a bit more nudge, nudge, wink, wink action! Talk about role reversal!
The team talk about the damage that Cyclone Larry did when it tore through far North Queensland in March 2006. No lives were lost by the precious rainforest at Mission Beach that is home to this endangered species was ripped apart. In the immediate aftermath the Cassowaries feeding was buoyant with all the fruit blown to the forest floor but when this ran out they were forced from the forest by hunger to the nearby banana plantations. These very territorial birds would not share their findings and that forced several in to town out of desperation. The three weeks after the cyclone saw the death of 4 birds on the nearby roads and they were becoming increasingly threatening to the point that the town children were afraid to play outside for fear they would be attacked. A team came together and set up Cassowary feeding stations closer to the forest in an effort to discourage the birds from going so close to town and gave them a source of food that they didn’t have to share with others. To get them closer to the feeding stations, some had to be relocated and with three huge, enormous claws these are awesome birds to try to re-locate. Sometimes a simple ‘Come on little birdie’ was good enough but at other times a more forceful tactic was needed! It’s a massive effort from those at the Cassowary Rehabilitation Centre at Mission Beach for they are not only helping the under nourished birds but also seeking to regenerate the surrounding forest area. Cassowaries warrant extreme caution when being handled, they are vicious when cornered and their claws could literally open up a person. It took three grown, large men to restrain a bird that had been doped with a tranquiliser dart and they were wearing body armour! On second thoughts we’re now quite happy we didn’t cross paths with a Cassowary on our travels!!!! Crikey!!
They are walking into an uncertain future with climate change also threatening their native forest land but this fantastic documentary has given us a great insight to this bird and the hard work that’s been put into securing a safer future for it. We’ll be visiting the rehabilitation centre to make a donation before we leave.
Well that’s all folks, snorkels ready for tomorrow!
Dar and Sar
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