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Published: April 10th 2010
Hope you have a really good day today Danielle ... but I should warn you that you’re making me feel old!! Have a good one, sorry we can’t be with you, but we’ll celebrate when we get back.
Today we set off for Kananda, a small ‘hippy’ village in the middle of the rain forest. It was known many years ago for the hippy market selling their handmade wares. I think the real attraction is the journey to get there, which had been recommended to us by umpteen people. Normally you would go one way by train, but there has been a landslide over the track due to all of the rain, so we had to go both ways by cable car.
It was really good, despite rain threatening throughout the day and low clouds spoiling some of the views - but I really think that added to the scenery. The journey took about 45 minutes, but there were 2 stops on the way over the top of the rainforest. The first consisted of a treetop walk with a ranger who showed us various trees. I was rather put out as he started describing a kauri tree as a
softwood fir tree that only grows to about 50m - I asked, and its apparently completely different to the karri trees that we saw in WA which were deciduous, hardwood and able to grow to 700m ... but both are pronounced in exactly the same way. Cheesh!
He also pointed out a huge spider, which was luckily on a web a few feet away. There were several small dots on the web around the big female spider, and these were apparently the males ... I won’t give you the ins and outs of spider impregnation, suffice it to say there were a lot of lame jokes (you may have noticed!) I did ask and no, she wasn’t poisonous.
The second stop was at the Barron Falls - the most spectacular waterfalls we’ve seen on all of our travels ... probably helped that there was water in them!! I did think it was a waste putting up a sign informing us that we’re in the Wet Tropics - we had already noticed with the rain falling down.
We had a lovely walk round Kananda, and even went tourist by treating ourselves to an aboriginal painting. It was a
lovely place and we actually saw more aborigines than we’ve seen anywhere else. It was interesting walking round the ‘original hippy market’ - I think most of the original hippies were still there with the same original stock!
The buses stood up to the promise - we were dropped off right outside the doors we needed - and John saw kangaroos both ways ... I missed them both times.
Oh well Bella, we enjoyed your birthday!!
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Danielle Jade
non-member comment
Well celebrated!
I approve xx