Engineer Andy's Journal: Weekends in the tropics

Saturday found me in a better mood than Friday night (I had been thinking that i would need to come in to work on Saturday, to tidy up some loose ends, and I was none too keen to do that). I decided that the amount of work that i needed to get done was small enough to belt out either on Monday morning or Sunday afternoon.

I had the loan of a company car, and was directed that petrol was on the company fuel card, as a perk of the secondment. The weather was a little dicey in terms of a bit of cloud cover, so i decided to head north to the Daintree. It's a world heritage wilderness area north of Cairns. I'd heard a lot about it, but wanted to see how it compared to the hype.

I drove up to Port Douglas, spotted what was meant to be a wet tropics information centre, which turned out to be more of a wildlife sanctuary where you could see all manner of wildlife, not in the wild. It makes sense in that most wildlife isn't really happy to hang round while a hundred rowdy tourists wander through talking loudly. It's a survival instinct. For most of the time since the world was created, loud noises tended to indicate that something was coming which was liable to eat / trample / otherwise kill you.

I decided to give it a miss, driven mostly by the fact that it would cost about $30 or so, and that i was still some distance from the end goal (the actual rainforest rather than an interpretive centre based on it). I drove on to the Daintree Village, which i presumed would be the hub of all things Daintree. It turned out to be a small village, with very little there. I paused, turned round, and carried back to a place where I had seen some river cruises. One of them advertised itself as eco-certified (or similar), and I'd sat next to a woman involved in this scheme on a plane a while ago.
It turned out to cost $22, took about an hour, and during the course of it I learned a lot:
* If you want to see wildlife, go to the Daintree in winter. then the water will be cool, and the crocs will come out of the water to sun themselves on the banks.
* Mangrove plants can process about 90% of the salt in the salt-water. the other 10% is pumped into sacrificial leaves which drop off.
* A large python can eat a pig.
* White lipped tree frogs are quite happy being picked up and looked at by tourists (one was perched under a seat on our boat, and the guide gently placed it on the top of the seat for all to look at - but not touch as their skin is sensitive).
* there is a type of plant (I think it was called "blind your eye mangrove), which has its sap under positive pressure. If you break off a branch, the sap will squirt out. It will seriously blind you - for good!
* During a storm in the mid 90s, the Daintree river had about 2m of rain over three days.
* One of the local mountains has about 10m of rain a year.

Anyhow - at the end of the cruise, i drove to a river crossing where a ferry takes cars across. rather than motoring itself across, the ferry uses a continuous wire loop across the river to pull itself from side to side. Fast, regular service, and only $16 for a return ticket.

I had a look in one of the local information brochures about the area, and was disappointed to see that pretty much all of the walks that were mentioned were guided and on private property. It may have been a function of the type of rainforest that is in that area (letting hordes of japanese tourists loose without guides in an area next to feeding grounds of 5m long crocs is probably not clever). I wouldn't mind paying to go on a long guided walk, but it felt like a nice wilderness area was being turned into a kind of McWilderness experience.

It is snobbish to say that the wilderness should be experienced in one way or another, but it did seem to me to be a sad thing that it was packaged up. It would not be impossible to have some sort of department of conservation type centres where there would be a bit more focus on education, and less on how many crocs your guide can get you close to.

having ranted about that, it was none the less very beautiful. Mangroves are typically thought of as smelly and not that nice to be near. These were very clean, and i could see lots of little fish dipping in and out among the roots. I went on a short walk that was mostly an elevated boardwalk. It was great as it allowed me to get a view of the mangroves from close up without worrying about getting feet wet, crocs etc. it only took about 20 mins, but with the heat and humidity, it was all that could sensibly be done in the middle of the day.

Lunch was fish and chips (hoping it was local, but whatever the case, it tasted very good), I sent my folks a post-card from up at Cape Tribulation, where the paved road stops in QLD.

One thing that really impressed me was how the rainforest came down to the sea level. Literally. There was rainforest thick, then you took a step or two and you were on the beach. No sand dunes. No transition. Very nice. I'm not the type who can laze easily on the beach without some effort (if there are others and there is peer pressure to relax, i can be coerced) so i didn't hang round very long, but did appreciate it a lot.

The drive back was enlivened by a touch of sunstroke or similar caused by too much sun, not enough water, and probably a long hard week preceding. It was only a nasty headache, but made driving a little more challenging. A bit of sunscreen which found its way into the eyes made life fun as well.

Got back to town, headed to bed for a nap, and woke up to catch the rugby in town at a pub(All Blacks playing England). good game - relatively well balanced from what i could judge, but a bit crowded. Took a cab back to the hotel as i didn't feel safe walking the streets alone in the dark. It may sound prejudiced, but there were many people seeming to live on the streets, and a guy by himself, not looking too tough, late on a saturday night, would be an easy target if there was malice.

Sunday I tried to get served coffee in the bar at the hotel, but the bar staff were flat out in the restaurant, so i figured i could wait, and started a book i got for my birthday (a series of thought experiements, examining moral issues). Church was nice. Not too eventful, not too many people. Will return in the evening. Aa quiet day all round. Dropped in to work to synchronise my organiser, and that was about it.