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.