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Published: September 2nd 2009
DAY 298
With one of the major things we had to do now out of the way, today we decided to go and explore some of the surrounding area in Cairns, so after breakfast Caroline grabbed the local area map (I think she has a map for everything and everywhere) and we headed off to the bat mobile.
We drove out of town and headed for the Copperlode dam which is about 25k’s from the city, it was a spectacular drive climbing for about 16 Kilometres through beautiful rain forest canopy, where the sky just seemed to burst out open when you got to the top.
At the road stops along the road climb we pulled in to take pictures, and looking over the city, which is said to be small is actually spread over quite a large area. The views over Cairns are really quite spectacular with mountains on both sides and of course the sea stretching out ahead of us.
Going through the main electric gates in to the dam facility run by Cairns Water, it clearly said that the facility closes at 6.00pm and you will be locked in, though another
The Road Up
A 16 K climb up to Copperlode Damsign tells you that there is night time security on these premises, and dogs patrol, so at the very worst you briefly will be locked in until finally being mauled by the dogs.
We pulled in and parked the truck, in these this neatly manicured lawns and hedges, grabbing our camera’s we set off for a wander.
Our first stop was in to the visitor’s area telling you about the expanse of water that is called Lake Morris and how it came in to being. We note that a little creature we saw at Henrietta lake was not actually a Bilby but an Atherton Antechinus, it’s like a very large rat like creature with quite a long snout, which we saw on a couple of occasions in the evening at Henrietta Lake and possibly at Lake Tinaroo.
I was really shocked to see what snakes could be found in the area, from Eastern Browns to Northern Death Adders, it was quite a long list, also we are getting to the time of year where snakes will start to come out a bit more, there have even been warnings on television that if the snakes come indoors then
phone expert help in order to deal with them, yikes, I am keeping those doors closed!
The Dam holds back 45,000 Mega litres of water compared to the 407,000 mega litres that Lake Tineroo dam holds back, and in 1935 when city engineer Mr F Morris who initially explored the lamb ranges and found the site at the Copperlode Falls where the Dam was finally built at a cost of 6.5 Million Dollars but all the same it is an impressive facility.
Nowadays the lawns are well manicured and the general state of the facility is first class, but the little coffee shack was closed, we wondered if it is because it is winter, well the first day of spring actually, we also wondered if it would be open in the summer, but that is when it is raining apparently so how many people would visit when it was raining. We think that the surrounding area would be quite spectacular.
We walk down to the concrete jetty the Water Intake Tower, which is positioned a little way out over Morris Lake; this is where they pump air in to the water to aerate the water, which makes
it a better quality, especially at this time of year when there is no rainfall.
We watch Ducks and Cormorants dive in to where the bubbles are rising, they dive down then bob up in a different position, we think there may be more plentiful food due to the increased oxygen levels, or it could be just a great game they have devised?
We left the Copperlode facility, and about 50 yards through the main gate we see a sign for a walk to the Crystal Cascades, we jump out and have a little explore, to see what kind of walk it was, but as we do not have anything with us like our boots, or the camelbak then we will go back and do some research into the walk and prepare properly to do it another day.
The drive down what we think is Mount Sheridan is quite fantastic, the view over Cairns is just awesome and we were soon back at the house in Bayview.
By the time we got back we had a late lunch and a sit down then it was soon time to go and do our walk, just before I
went, being the first day of September I checked our blog site and saw our statistics, and when I logged in the stats were reading 33, the time equated to about 8.30 am.
We walked up the hill and back, it is very humid which makes the walk hard yet satisfying and when we got back we both sat cooling down. I looked at Kangaroojacks blog statistics again and they were at 77 so in half an hour they went up by 44, I told Caroline and she laughed saying that everyone had gone back to work after the Bank Holiday (in England) with those Tuesday morning blues and the first thing they did was log on to their computers and look at the blog site, amongst other things I’m sure.
Today, is Tuesday, so tonight is cheap Tuesday in terms of “Our Dinner” with our love of Pizza, and what we consider the best Pizza in Australia is Eagle Boys who do a “Cheap Tuesday” deal of a Pizza for $5.50 about £2.15 if you convert it in to British currency.
Caroline made the call and we virtually instantly jumped in the truck to go and
collect the Pizza from the Westcourt area, and when we got back we sat and devoured the yummy goods.
The news was on the TV and an article was on about a 5 Meter (Yes! I said 5 Meters) scrub Python found in someone’s back yard, the finders called the “Snake Man” to come and remove it, and the reporter was looking at this most gorgeous creature they had removed looking all nonchalant, in its temporary carton where it was going to be removed to somewhere safe.
They had weighed the snake; it weighed 28 Kilo’s. The reporter had said that it was a meter shorter than one that had been found recently in suburbia that had eaten a whole Wallaby. The reporter also said that with the weather warming up people will start to see more snakes around.
It just sort of made me laugh in a strange way, imagine coming face to face with a 16.6ft long Python.
We sat down for the rest of the evening watching a bit of TV in anticipation of the film at 9.30 which was blades of Glory, with Will Farrell, we have seen it before but it
still is an absolute hoot.
The film finished and thus the end of another day, so we skipped off to bed.
It is a warm night, we left the overhead ceiling fan on to keep cool, I think it is not really warm enough for the air conditioning, more useful in the height of the summer.
Goodnight.
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