Monday, November 26 Crystal Creek to Townsville - Kevin is 60!

That's a big arachnid!

      I awoke with trembling joy at making it to 60! What a glorious day, getting to start my seventh decade in such idyllic surrounds, the birds chirping, a cool breeze blowing through my flowing hair, my beautiful wife asleep next to me ... wait a minute... It wasn't the sound of birds, but rather mosquitoes buzzing, and I haven't had flowing hair for about 30 years. In fact, I pretty much forgot it was my birthday until Diana gave me a kiss upon awakening, but at least the beautiful wife part was true. Oh well, the day had nowhere to go but up.

     With mozzies abounding we did a quick collapse of the tent so we could make a hasty retreat. But first, I had bathroom duties. As I am wont to do, I checked the available stalls to see which was cleanest. The toilet block at the campground had only two choices, and when I looked in the first in the dim morning light, I was startled to see what I thought at first to be a small bird on the wall. But I soon realized I was looking at the biggest non-tarantula spider I'd ever seen. I went back to the tent to tell Diana and grab the camera, and we hurried back to the bathroom. (I can't imagine what our fellow campers would have though if they saw an older couple heading into the men's room with a camera, but I'm pretty sure they were all still asleep.)

Happy birthday, mate

Normally I'd have a finger posed nearby to get a sense of scale

     Not to be outdone, Diana summoned me into her side of the 'amenities' to show me her find (Oh great, now they're going into the women's room with the camera!).

I know, Diana wasn't afraid to point at her bug, but
I'm pretty sure there aren't any poisonous moths in Oz

     Wow, a giant spider and a big moth with eyes on its back, now we're talking! My birthday was starting to look up.

      We drove to Townsville, capital of Northern Queensland, and had breadfast at the Cape Pallarenda Shore. The biggest treat was Skyping with the kids. 

Doesn't he realize we haven't had our T'Day turkey yet?

    Then we looked around the old quarantine center where new arrivals to Australia would wait if their boat had been infected with some noxious disease. After that, I got to see some reinforced concrete gun emplacements from the WWII era when the fear of Japanese invasion was a real and definite possibility, at least until the great naval battle of the Coral Sea began to turn the tide of the war in the Pacific.

A roof over our heads

     We drove into Townsville looking for a place to stay. After a couple months of heat and bugs and wind and no reliable internet, we, or I should say I, was ready to have an air conditioned roof over my head for a couple nights. And since it was my birthday, I had hopes that my wish would come true. (I exaggerate, for the most part our little tent has been very comfortable).  Of course that meant checking out places for the best combination of price and comfort.

     I got very excited when we went into the old Great Northern Hotel, [Diana: at my insistence I should add], a classic veranda lined pub with rooms on the second floor. 

Would this be our home in Townsville?

    We climbed the grand staircase up to the high ceilinged second floor where the hotel rooms were, and found the room that matched the key the bar maid had given. I was elated, this was exactly the kind of place I had pictured us staying since before our arrival in Oz.  I could see us sitting out on the balcony in front of our room, drinking cocktails and watching people stroll by.

     But upon opening the door, I smelled old cigarette smoke, and even if the walls had been brightly painted instead of a dingy gray, and the woodwork shiny and not grimy, and the linens antiseptically clean, which probably hadn't been true in decades, I knew Diana would never go for it. Nothing turns her off more than the smell of butt smoke in a hotel room.  [Diana: Not to mention the gaping 'closet' that was more like something on a factory line. And forget the thought of a dresser or a lamp.] Many of these old pub/hotels serve as long term residences for itinerant workers who come back from their jobs and drink and play pokie (electronic poker) in the pub downstairs until closing.   No, we wouldn't be staying here, especially at the $90 a night price, when we already had tabs on a nice guest house with room rates $20 less. My heart sunk a little, and I knew that even trying to milk my birthday privileges wouldn't work.

Kevin in his birthday suit at the Coral Lodge

     So we walked back to one of the guest houses that we had visited earlier. When we were there the first time a sign said “Be Back at 6”. Well, it was 6:30 and Be was not Back. Diana found a business card and rang the manager up. He was very apologetic and offered to give us the $85 one bedroom apartment for $65, and that he could be there in 20 minutes to show us the place. We waited, and soon he arrived. The apartment had a nice kitchen, separate bedroom, and big bath with a separate toilet chamber. It was spotlessly clean and overlooked palm trees in the back yard. Wow, pretty nice, Diana. Probably not as cool as the Great Northern Hotel, but I can see the attraction. Needless to say, we took the place, I cranked up the AC and took a shower while Diana went to the nearby Wooly's to get our dinner. I put on my new bathing suit Diana bought me earlier at a Big W, and felt pretty spiffy for sixty.

I guess this will have to do

Me in my new swimming trunks.  See the kangaroos?
 Don't ask me why they're upside down.

     Since we had missed Thanksgiving dinner, Diana bought a hot roasted chicken with stuffing, cranberry sauce, bake-at-home rolls at the nearby Wooly's, and while she was gone I cooked the squash, which the Aussies call a pumpkin, that she had picked up a few days ago at a roadside stand. With our standard red wine and candles, it was a wonderful T'Day/B'Day dinner.

Sunday, November 25 Jourana Falls to Crystal Creek

     We survived the night without incident. After coffee and cereal we drove the 2 km up to the parking spot for the walk to Jourana Falls.

     There are a number of swimming holes in the creek, which you pass on the hike. Then the path climbs a short way up to an overlook where you can see the entire series of cascades that make up Jourana Falls.

      As we made our way up, our ears were bombarded by cicada song, a growing bane of our tropical experience.

The buzz on cicadas

     Northern Queensland has major cicada outbreak going on right now. I don't know if that's unusual or not. In the US I've experienced a few peak cycles of cicada emergence, a couple times in Ohio, once while traveling near Washington DC and another while hiking with the kids in southwest Texas.

Cicada nymph exoskeletons

     As opposed to normal cycles when the noise can be merely loud, during peak cycle it's actually deafening, creating temporary hearing loss in the upper frequencies. For the last week or so there have been quite a few times when Diana and I have used our ear plugs or stuffed wads of tissue in our ears to deaden the piercing sound. Here in tropical Oz there are several species of cicada contributing to the din (Australia has over 200 species of the giant bug). There are many different types of 'song'; the typical rasping sound similar to Circada ohioana; a high pitch cricket-like trilling; another with a musical unvoiced twoo twoo twoo repeated about four times a second and the most piercing of all, a non-stop metallic buzz that sounds almost exactly like the engine of an RC airplane.

Cicadas can be petite (photo borrowed from our stay up in Daintree) ...

... or rather large.

Oz has 325 types of dragonflies, most are quite beautiful,
and none of them create a racket

Another Aussie bug, I have no idea what it is

          The cicada song is always present, day and night, in varying degrees of intensity. At night the cicada song dies down considerably, and crickets and katydids add their voices to the chorus. It's very pleasant then, especially when the various night birds add their hoots, songs and barks. As the day heats up so does the decibel level. It begins to drown out the bird calls, and makes conversation difficult. There have been times when we've walked, or even driven, through areas of trees that the noise is so loud as to be painful. That's when we plug up our ears. I'm curious to see if the phenomenon holds up as we head south and leave the tropics. I hope not.

   The Jourana Falls descend a series of large steps as the creek flows over the edge of the gorge.

Jourana Falls.  I bet they're awesome in the Wet.  Not bad
even now.

           Foolishly we hadn't brought our suits, so we walked back to the car to retrieve them.

Ah, nice and refreshing

     It was nice to cool off in the water, and since it wasn't too far back to the car we still carried a bit of the chill in our bodies as we drove off.

     We stopped at a fruit stand where Diana bought this nice pineapple. Notice how the yellow ripeness extends all the way to the skin. I'm not a big pineapple eater, but Diana said it was delicious.

Diana loves the roadside produce stands 

    We had planned to drive up the road to Paluma, and made it part way up, but it was very narrow and twisty and the downhill side quite precipitous. And it was a Sunday afternoon and young guys driving their utes and cars impressing their mates or girlfriends were taking the blind corners too fast and generally expecting the old guy with the Land Cruiser to eat the edge of the road. I turned around the first chance I got and we descended back to the plain.

     We stopped for the night at Big Crystal Creek. The water there was very clear, and families and kids were swimming in the aptly named Paradise Pool. We hiked up to the Rock Slide Pools and a more adventurous group was there, jumping into pools, and a bit further up listening to heavy metal and throwing rocks at each other. I was satisfied to have had my daily dip back at Jourana Falls, so we went back to out camp site. 

Kids ignoring the 'Do Not Jump Into Pools' signs

    Ah, camping near fresh water. You'd think we had learned our lesson back in the desert. No midgies this time, but at dusk the mosquitoes came out in force. We covered up in long pants and shirts, put some Bushman on our exposed parts, and ate salad for dinner. Fortunately we had put up the tent quite expertly, and when we dove in found only one mozzie interloper. At least it was a bit quieter there than it had been the night before.

Saturday, November 24 Wallaran NP to Jourana Falls NP - Hiking the Crater

     We were up, had our coffee and cereal, took down our tent, and pulled out by 7 am. Sounds pretty good, except the sun is up by 5:30. Have I said how comfy it is in our tent? Oh well, we're retired, we've got a lot of time, and what's the rush anyways. We were only planning to hike up a volcano, might as well do it in the midday sun. It wouldn't be the first time.

Climbing Mount Fox

     Our big outing for the day was climbing Mount Fox, a dormant cinder cone volcano of classic proportions and construction, having been formed by the accumulation of pyroclastic rock. It's only around 400 feet tall, but there are no trails leading to the top, other than stray, unconnected animal paths, and climbing it's steep, loose rock sides in 90 F tropical sun, while being on the watch out for deadly serpents, was a challenge. But I love volcanoes, and the effort was worth it. Still, when we got back to the LC a couple hours later we were glad to change our sweaty clothes and sit down in our seats.

Mount Fox, or "Mount Baldy" as it's affectionately called by the locals 

Heading up

Cinder rock

The crater is over 100,000 years old and has mostly filled in with soil.  I'm
standing on the rim looking in.

Diana crossing the crater floor

Descending the cone.  It got steeper further down.

A shady place to rest

Lizard people

     We had some grocery shopping to do, so we headed into Ingham. Stopping in at a Cole's grocery store we saw a woman shopping with her two grade school aged daughters, normal in all respects, except for one thing. When I first saw her I was only a couple feet away and Diana pointed out something unusual about her.  That's odd, I thought, that woman is carrying a large plastic lizard on her shoulder, it must be one her children's toys. Then the creature turned its head slightly towards me, gazed at me with its beady pink eyes, and flicked its gray forked tongue. 

      Yikes! The first word that came to mind was salmonella.  What kind of mother would shop for her family's groceries with a bacteria laden monster clinging to her. Then I tried to imagine her at home getting ready for the daily shopping trip; purse – check, kids – check, car keys – check, lizard – got it. Do you take the lizard for a walk before you get in the car so it doesn't poop on you, or does it only go in a Lizzy litter box? And exactly how much affection can you get from a reptile anyways? It's one thing to see someone carrying a purse puppy while going out about town. At least a dog can get excited about getting out of the house and being with its master. But do you really think a lizard enjoys leaving its quiet glass tank surrounded by its crickets and grub worms to ride around on its owner's shoulder in the bright and noisy outside world? And what about the kids. I bet they resent being yelled at when their reptilian brother gets nothing but loving attention, so close to Mommy's face. Some people are rather odd.

Are we just extras in yet another movie?

     After making a short hike around some restored wetlands in town, we drove out to Jourama Falls for the night. Our neighbors included the ubiquitous young European backpackers traveling in small Toyota vans, a decrepit middle-aged Aussie couple smoking and drinking beer and coughing and sleeping out in the open on their swags, and two men that deserve a bit more description.

      We had bought half a kilo of minced lamb at Cole's, I wanted to make lamb burgers, so when we drove into the campground and saw a spot with a picnic table that was near a barbie, we happily took it. A man was cooking at one of the two grills and when we popped put of the car he said “Ah, just in time for tea”, which in Aussie means dinner. His only clothes were a pair of droopy aqua underpants with a prominent codpiece. His thin, stringy white hair just reached his shoulders. He had a uncharacteristic over-all tan on his saggy, old man's body (I did detect a slight Eastern European accent beneath his Aussie dialect, which might explain the tan; native Aussies for the most part avoid UV like the plague). He figured out we were Yanks and asked if we were illegal immigrants, alluding to our own immigration issues. He was obviously an educated and witty fellow, and I immediately fell into 'repartee' mode. We had exchanged a few observations about national and world politics, when I noticed someone walking over towards us from a nearby campervan.

   A thin figure wearing a knee length sleeveless dark print shift, with blond hair pulled back severely in a short pony tail approached. From a distance I assumed it was a middle-aged woman. The tightness of the dress caused the person to walk in mincing steps, like a geisha. Nearing us, I saw a rather prominent jaw covered with the barest of stubble. Whoa, momma, time to shift to 'carefully observant' mode. The man said to his companion, “I'm preparing something a little different, dear, it'll be ready soon.” The response was a high pitched whine that barely sounded like human speech. The person stayed for a moment, then sashayed back to the camper. We talked to the man for a little longer, but his meal had finished cooking and he too returned to his vehicle.

     Diana and I looked at each other uneasily. It was getting dark, the nighttime jungle creatures were just beginning to sound off, and we had gotten to the point in the movie when you yell at the screen, “Run, you idiots”. I mean, we independently had thoughts of “Psycho” crossing our minds. In fact, it was probably a man traveling with his disabled offspring, and we should have been more generous in spirit. But that's what they say in the movies, too.

     Later I heard them conversing as they sat by their campfire. The man was going on about how the Germans had a plan in WWII to take over Tasmania if the Japanese defeated Australia, and the younger man kept respond loudly in his high voice “F---ing Nazis”. The pair 'talked' for a couple more hours in similar fashion after we went to bed, the older man sonorously lecturing, the younger replying with tirades of cursing , but we couldn't make out what they were saying because the insects and frogs and birds were too loudly spouting off their own conspiracy theories. 

Friday, November 23 Wallaran Campground - Best falls swim yet

     After breakfast we took a short hike to see the rock pools nearby. We never get tired of seeing rainforest plants.

Stalking the wild pineapple

We love strangler figs

Fern baskets, epiphytes that grow quite large on their hosts

     We packed up, then drove the short distance to the Wallaran Falls overlook. The falls have the longest single straight drop in Oz, 284 meters, or 935 feet. Looking at it from across the gorge it's hard to grasp how high that is. After eating roast beef sandwiches for lunch we got drinking water and cameras and swim suits and headed down the trail to the bottom. Because the overlook actually is above the top of the falls we had a steep descent of over 1000 feet. The trail zig zags down through jungle, with the only sunlight getting through spots where big trees had been blown down in the 2006 cyclone.

Wallaran Falls from above

Rainforest plants on the left, savannah plants on right, an interesting
example of the effect microclimates

     The river bottom is strewn with boulders, some the size of small houses. We picked our way over and through them until we found a spot to enter the water. Changing into our bathing suits we got into the cool water. Swimming out into the twenty meter deep pool and near the falls was thrilling, the rush of the wind and spray from the cascade creating small waves. Floating on our backs, we could look up to the top, the falling water arcing out and creating a long thin veil ending in a constant splashing hiss just meters away from us. What a great way to cool off in the jungle! We stayed in the water for nearly half an hour, then climbed out.

The falls from the bottom

Kevin in the pool

   It was a long hike back to the top, but since it was mostly in the shade of the rainforest trees, not too hot. We went back to the same campground, and had 'tasty' risotto with a salad of cucumber, onion, and sun-dried tomato in a sour cream sauce. While we prepared dinner we chatted with two young Dutch guys who had just finished a semester studying in Oz, both fourth year students, one in architecture, the other industrial design. They remarked that the whole of the Netherlands with its 17 million people would fit in just the northern tip of Queensland, and we all agreed that Australia is a big, big country.

Thursday, November 22 Bilyana Rest Area to Wallaran Falls campground

Foul jungle alarm clock

     The rest area where we spent the night had interesting flowering trees with blossoms unlike any I've ever seen. That, and the cocky little rooster strutting around all morning, patrolling the area like a part-time security guard, may not have been uniquely Australian, but it made the morning noteworthy.

Jungle fowl, aka chicken

Raising Cane

     Australia is the 9th largest sugar grower in the world, producing 1/20th of Brazil's total, although it is the third biggest exporter.  Starting north of Cairns and south to northern New South Wales almost all the flat land between the coastal range and the ocean is planted in sugar cane. It's early in the planting season; some fields are still being plowed. Other plots have rows of the fresh grass-like tufts of varying heights, from just above ground level to three or four feet high.

Rows of sugar cane, about four  feet tall

Cane country

      A network of narrow gauge rail lines crisscross the land, allowing the growers to move the cane to processing plants in special mesh-sided box cars.

     From there the processed sugar is carried by train to the small port town of Lucinda. The Sugar Growers Association built a huge storage facility there, as well as the world's longest jetty, 6 km, allowing ocean going ships to be loaded with the sweet stuff. We stopped there to take a look. The jetty is off limits to the public, but we did have a fun walk out on the sandy point, watching birds and scurrying troops of tiny crabs.

Storage warehouses and shore end of jetty

Six kilometers of conveyor belt move sugar out to waiting ships.
Australia exports 80% of the sugar it produces.

Funny little crabs moving en masse during low tide

"Are you going to eat me?"

"Nah, but that fellah out there will if you don't hide."

Going ...

... going ...

... going ...

... gone (almost).

    We drove up to the Wallaran Falls campground for the night, tired of lying in our tent and sweating in the humid night air down by the coast. It was much cooler up on the mountain, and after taking refreshing cold water only showers, we enjoyed leftover spaghetti before climbing into our tent.

Wednesday, November 21 Dingle Cove to Bilyana Rest area

     Wednesday was a fairly lazy day. We took advantage of cell phone reception and did some blogging and emailing.

Kevin 'working'

Diana 'working'

    There is a Wooly's, i.e. Woolworth's, nearby and we did a little shopping. Then we went on a hike to Lacey Creek where we took a short dip to cool off. No crocs there, I don't know why, but if they're calling it a swimming hole we're assuming it's safe to swim there. We still keep an eye out for snakes and leaches, you know, everyday jungle precautions, but in the humid Queensland conditions, you take advantage of opportunities to cool off.

     We drove a short distance, seeing a Cassowary trying to cross a road, then went to another hike in the rainforest featuring a large grove of fan palms. First we had silverside sandwiches. 'Silverside' is a kind of corned beef, and with a little lettuce and horseradish sauce on a fresh baguette it made for a fine lunch. Diana had bought several exotic tropical fruit at the information center and we tried one then. [Diana: It's taste was kind of interesting, but the consistency was disconcerting, even for me.]

Silverside sandwich and tropical fruit

     The hike took us through an area devastated by a cyclone in 2006. The plants and trees there have begun to recover, and the informative signage along the way really helped us understand the dynamics of rainforest growth.

Fan Palm leaf

Fan palms

I see you hiding up there

     Afterwards we stopped at a banana plantation and Diana picked up some bananas for a reasonable price. Not as good as chiquitas, and absolutely not even in the same universe of flavor as the bananas we bought roadside in central America, but not too bad. [Diana: I think they taste just like the bananas we buy at home. I also bought a few bananas at the Wetlands Info Center that are quite different. For one thing, they are a dark red, almost burgundy. And they are a lot fatter than the regular yellow bananas. They taste really good, better than a traditional yellow banana.]

Banana grove

Bunches of bananas heading into washing station

     We spent the night free camping at a roadside rest north of Ingram that compared favorably to some we've spent real money at. Had our own picnic table, nice level grass to set up a tent, and good company with a Kiwi fellow about our age bicycling up the coast from Brisbane. [Diana: He was a WWOOFer – Willing Worker on Organic Farms] Spaghetti with prime Aussie minced beef and grated Tasty followed by Tim Tams was the special on the menu, and we ate it with gusto. If it hadn't been for the railroad 50 meters away, the road 75 meters away, or worst of all, the feral rooster that for some reason called the place home and started crowing from a tree just above our tent at 4 am, the place would have been perfect.