Looking for Mummy

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DAY 321


The last thing I remember last night is Caroline said do you want me to set the alarm, but I said no, as we wanted, no, needed, to get up early as we were going on the scenic railway, and I can rely on my body clock.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The bit above is where we are asleep.

I wake up at about 6.00 am and spring out of bed, I always boot the lap top up whilst the kettle is boiling to see if we have any e-mails and to see if we have any messages on the blog site. (BUT SADLY WE DIDN’T)

I go and take Caroline her morning tea, and encourage her to wake up, surprisingly not too difficult this morning.

Today, as I have said we are going on the scenic railway from Cairns to Kuranda, I love trains, not in a geeky kind of way, but they are a lovely way to travel, and as I spent a lot of time commuting from Southampton to London I got used to the commuting mentality, but I still love trains all the same.

We have a reservation and our train departs at 09.30 from Cairns Central, we are both looking forward to it.

Caroline is stirring so looking at my watch I know we will make our self-imposed deadline, so I switch the TV on to see what has been happening in the news.

The two snakes that have been found at Yorkey’s Knob Boat yard roof space have been confirmed as an adult male and male off spring, both Scrub Pythons and 5.5 mtrs long, two young guys from Australian Venom Zoo in Kuranda were holding these two big snakes, and they said that “Mummy” was still on the loose, and she is expected to be 7.1, yes 23.5 ft long.

One of the young blokes “Arron” from the zoo said they found her once and they made a hole in the ceiling of the boat shed building but it scared her and she fled and hasn’t been seen since, my question is how do you loose a Python that big?

Caroline has gotten up and is ready we are both watching the news about the Python, and once the article is finished we extinguish the telly, lock the house and head out.

We arrive and park the truck at Cairns Central station, Caroline goes in to the ticket office whilst I get some photo’s of the “Sunlander” loads of people were getting on and when I arrived at the ticket office I asked one of the ticket attendants about the Sunlander and where it goes.

The Sunlander goes from Cairns to Brisbane, the distance of 1681 kilometres and it takes 32 hours, we look at each other and telepathically both think about doing this journey, but not now this is for another time.

We get our tickets for the scenic railway and as we have 35 Minutes to kill we go and get a coffee in Cairns Central shopping area, then a leisurely wander back. Caroline tells me that she has that holiday feeling this morning, it seems to have disappeared lately, but of course it is the excitement that goes with having a day out and doing something interesting.

We see that the train has pulled in, so we walk up the platform and take a couple of pictures of the engines. The lead engine is painted nicely and we find out it has been hand painted with larger than life Murals of Buda-Dji (The Carpet Snake), by a local Aboriginal Artist who tells the legend of Buda Dji who carved out the Barron Gorge, it is believed the train follows along the rim of this geological marvel following the path of Buda-Dji.

Our Car is Number 1 and we have seats 13 & 14, soon we are seated and the train is pulling out of the station. There are not many people on board at the moment, however there is a stop at Freshwater Station, which is more of a tourist station.

The train is now out of Cairns we find ourselves in Sugar Cane country and soon we are pulling in to Freshwater to pick up more passengers. We can see the platform is busy so think that the train is going to be quite full. Once everyone is on board our seat is full, there are four people to a bench seat, there is a family sat opposite us, it is a bit cramped.

The Cairns-Kuranda Railway was constructed between 1882 and 1891 and even today is considered an engineering feat of tremendous magnitude. Hundreds of men were employed to build the 15 hand-made tunnels and 37 bridges that stand as a monument to the pioneers of Tropical North Queensland who lost their lives while working on the railway.

It is a feat of Engineering, originally a supply route through to the gold fields, but the routes were slow and impassable and people were close to starvation. Legendary Bushman Christie Palmerston was tasked to find a good route for a railway to link the rich mining belt with the sea, and in 1887 construction commenced on this ambitious railway project.

Up to 1500 men at a time endured terrible hardships of this unforgiving landscape, who moved over two million cubic meters of earth, and had to contend with impassable swamps, mysterious diseases, deadly creatures, dense jungles and steep ravines. It is also believed that some of the workers that died while building the railway are in fact buried in the foundations.

The 37 Kilometres of track from Cairns to Kuranda ascend 328 meters, crossing 15 tunnels and 37 bridges and 98 curves.

The train climbed more than 300 metres in lush tropical rainforest up the valley of the Barron River, encompassing deep river gorges, rugged mountain ranges and spectacular waterfalls. We slowly passed the highlight of the journey which was the Stoney Creek Falls - then the train crosses the bridge slowly just in front of the falls so that everyone can see and take pictures, then further up the line we stopped and got off the train to look at the Barron Falls Station lookout.

We pull in to Kuranda at around 11.30 it was an excellent two hours on the train, including the stop to see the falls lookout, the sun was shining and the sky was full of dust making it very hazy.

We have received the dust cloud from the South today and you cannot easily see more than a couple of K’s ahead.

Just before we alight, the conductress tells us that the train will be leaving at 2.00pm for those going on the earlier train (which is us) whilst the later train leave at 3.30pm, so we need to be back on time.

We get off and head towards the village of Kuranda, walking down the “Main Street” then strangely enough walk past the Australian Venom Zoo, which we had seen on the news this morning.

Outside there is a guy who is holding a gorgeous Olive Python, and we started to talk to the guy, about his Python and “Mummy” the elusive Scrub Python and he tells us they think they now know where she is, however rather than waste any more time breaking more holes in the ceiling and possibly stressing the Python, they will wait for someone to say that they have seen her and they will then go in and get her. They also need to be cautious, as this python is also capable of crushing and eating an adult.

As the Olive Python is large and obviously heavy, another keeper comes out to swap places and by chance it’s Arron, who was on the TV this morning, he relieves the other keeper of this beautiful Olive Python and casually places it on his shoulders.

We chat some more and we tell him about the snakes we have seen on our adventure he is pleased that we are so enthusiastic about snakes, we talk to him some more about the python he is holding, I ask him if the snake minds being handled and he tells us that it is quite happy and that his name is Ramstein, and tells us that if we would like to we can go in the Venom Zoo for free and have a look at all the other snakes that they have.

We accepted his kind offer to go and have a look around and they have got some glorious but deadly snakes, and are amazed when we see a King Brown.

The King Brown snake is probably one of Australia's most well known venomous snakes. Also commonly referred to by many as the Mulga snake. The term King Brown to many implies that this snake belongs to the Brown Snake family. However the fact that this snake is actually a member of the black snake family and as such requires the use of black snake antivenin should anyone be bitten, but we would not want to be in this position.

There were also a couple of species of Taipan, the Inland and the costal, these bad boys would seriously spoil your day if they bit you, well, you wouldn’t last the rest of the day, for it to be spoiled.

We thanked the guys for letting us look around and we wished them well in the capture of “Mummy” then we went on our way to Centenary Park where we sat in the shade and had our lunch.

We walked slowly back towards the train station and walked by an art gallery and just had to go in and have a look, some of the pictures were brilliant, the Guy who took the photo’s was a master photographer but we find out that he sadly passed away at the age of 49, he had pancreatic cancer, his name was Peter Jarver and the web site is www.peterjarver.com if anyone wants to have a look at his amazing pictures.

We talk to one the ladies in the shop and she asks us if we like anything and some of them we would happily put in our house, sadly we can’t at the moment as we are still travelling, she has a lovely name “Petra Lovey”, we thank here for her help and wander on.

It is such a warm day and I cannot remember the last time we had an ice cream, so today we were going to put that right, sod the expense.

We get back to the station and only have about 10 minutes to wait before we get back on the train again. This time our return tickets direct us to Carriage No 8, we take our seat and await the journey back. We find we are sitting opposite some people who have come up on holiday from Brisbane and have also enjoyed the train journey, to Kuranda and we are equally hoping for a great ride back. This time there are only 3 people to a seat, and there is also more space in between so we have a lot more room.

The train left just after 2.00pm and again stopping at the Barron Falls station for another 10 minute break and some photo’s, this time we don’t get off as we did before, as the photos would not be any different, so we talked with the people we were sat opposite to.

The driver blows the horn and everyone gets back on and she slowly pulls off for the long descent down the mountain.

It is an absolutely gloriously sunny afternoon, and I go to the end of the carriage and stand outside as the train slowly glides down the track, it was just perfect.

We get back to Freshwater station at around 3.00pm and lots of people get off, the people we were sitting opposite also alighted so we had the huge bench seat to ourselves for the last ½ an hour on this great train.

The train cruised into the suburbs of Cairns, people waved from cars waiting at the barriers crossings and walking on the pavements, and kids waved to the train whilst walking home from school and yes we enthusiastically waved back, it was great fun.

The trains arrives at Cairns Central Station, we put all our stuff away and alight the train, we have had a great day, and commented that it was certainly value for money.

It is only a short 15 minute drive back to the house and on route we pick up a news paper and a lottery ticket, still we can live in hope.

We get back and are gagging for a cup of tea; Caroline obtains her favourite Hammock position and reads the paper, whilst I have a late afternoon siesta.

The other day whilst doing some food shopping we purchased a pack of 8 Steaks, I had already frozen 6 of them in pairs so we can take them on the Cape expedition when we go, and the 2 left in the fridge would be tonight’s dinner.

So within an hour I had rustled up a decent dinner, and all that was left were empty plates, we commented on what a wonderful day we had had up at Kuranda.

The rest of the evening was just sitting reading, watching the TV and updating the blog for yesterday. Actually Caroline is watching the Amazing Race, we never used to watch this before, but she has actually got quite hooked on it and tonight is the final, interestingly her 3 favourites were in the final, she is enthusiastically sitting on the edge of the sofa shouting at the television.

So until tomorrow bloggers.

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Photos

Caroline & The Engine
Caroline standing by the Painted engine, for the Kuranda Scenic Railway

The Sunlander
Before she departs to Brisbane on her 1681 K's and 32 Hour Journey

Dusty Horizon
The dust that has blown up from South West Australia, all 8,000.000 Tonnes of it

Caroline Ready to pull out
With her Coffee

Everyone Alight
10 Minute break to look at the falls

Looking Back
At the train Carriages

Our Bridge
This is the Bridge that we cross on our Stoney Creek Walk

Every body Alight
At Barron Falls