Cape Tribulation and the Atherton Tablelands

After the expedition, my boss Cass and I decided to stay up in Queensland for 2 days for a little vacation. The expedition was a lot of fun but was definitely hard work, so we wanted a little rest and relaxation before jumping right back into the office work. Earthwatch has a policy that if you work over the weekend during an expedition them you get those days off as time in lieu later on, since it is only supposed to be a week-day job. The expedition ran over 2 weekends and one of those weekends was a long weekend, so we had 5 days of time in lieu after the trip, 2 of which we used right after the expedition ended. On the last day of the expedition, we drove several hours to get to Cairns to drop all of the participants off at the airport. Cass and I then exchanged the rental mini-bus for a little car and we drove back the way we came up to Cape Tribulation. It felt a little silly to drive all the way to Cairns then drive all the way back up there, past Crocodylus and into Cape Tribulation, but a team leader’s gotta do what a team leader’s gotta do. Cass used to work at a rainforest research station in Cape Tribulation for 5 years before she moved to Melbourne to work for Earthwatch, so she has a lot of friends in the town. One of her friends was kind enough to let us stay with her and her family, so when we got up to Cape Tribulation we went straight to their house. Her friend Michelle and her husband have 3 young kids, a girl who’s 5, a boy who’s 3 and baby who’s just over 12 months. We all drove to the local backpackers hostel for dinner…and this is when Cass and I realized that our “rest and relaxation” that we were hoping for after the expedition was not going to happen while we were staying with this family. They were all lovely, and the kids were adorable, but man was it hectic! The kids were all so hyper and loud all the time, and it was fun, but after that night we decided we should go somewhere else and have some peace and quiet for our second night. So the next morning, we thanked Michelle and her family for their kindness and hospitality, and Cass and I made a plan to head to the Atherton Tablelands. The Atherton Tableland is a fertile plateau that’s part of the Great Dividing Range in Queensland. It’s still in the tropics but has a higher elevation that the rest of Queensland which provides a suitable climate for farming, especially dairy farming. Because of the higher elevation and cooler climate, the vegetation and animal species are quite different there than in the Daintree region, where we had been for the past 11 days.

Before crossing the Daintree River and heading to the Atherton Tablelands, Cass wanted to stop in at the research centre where she had worked for years. It’s called the Daintree Rainforest Observatory, and it’s operated by James Cook University. They have a canopy crane, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a HUGE crane that extends above the canopy of the rainforest. The rainforest observatory is a research station that studies everything rainforest-from the microbes in the soil to the condition of the canopy and everything in between! If you want to read more about the research centre and rainforest crane click on this link: http://www.jcu.edu.au/canopycrane/about/JCUPRD_046917.html. They had just re-opened because they had completely re-done the research centre, and she wanted to see the changes. The centre is open to any school groups or research groups that want to come and learn and participate in the research that is being conducted there. They had built more accommodation buildings so that bigger groups could come stay there, and they had redone all of their buildings to make them more sustainable. It was really interesting to see the work they had done-they are almost solely powered by solar and wind energy. They use solar panels and wind sails and all of the buildings have been built in a way that will allow them to capture sunlight to keep them warm but also have good air-flow to cool them off in the summer. All of the water that they use is rain water that has been captured by gutters and flows into a holding tank.

One of the new teaching buildings at the Research Centre 

When we first got there, we were wandering around to have a look at the place, and we ran into a teacher who was marking some papers. There was currently a group of about 40 American university students, from several universities in New York who were staying at the research centre and conducting research there. They were doing a summer semester abroad in NZ and Australia, learning about the environment and culture of the two countries. Cass explained who we were and what we had been doing in the Daintree, and the teacher was fascinated to hear that we work for an organization that is all about engaging citizens in science and promoting awareness in the general public. She said that most of these students are environmental science or biology students and they are struggling with what to do once they graduate. She said they’ve been having trouble seeing how society and members of the general public will be inspired to make a difference-sometimes they feel like they’re trying to win a losing battle. She asked if we would speak to them, a sort of informal presentation, to explain what Earthwatch stands for and to show them that there really are large masses of people on the ground who care and who are helping out with environmental research. She was particularly interested in having them hear from me, since I was in their position just over a year ago and she thought they would be encouraged to hear that there are awesome jobs out there for recent grads if you work hard and are dedicated. We agreed to do it, but had to wait until they got back for lunch since they were in the field at that time so we went and grabbed lunch while we waited. I was actually a little nervous since my mind had been in vacation mode-this was completely unexpected and I didn’t feel prepared at all! 

After lunch we came back to the centre and they weren’t quite done yet so Cass and I walked down to the base of the crane so I could see it. We were thinking we would only be able to see it from the ground, but when we got there the crane operator was there and since he’s friends with Cass he broke the rules a little and let us non-staff members go up it!! It was an amazing and terrifying experience! The 3 of us stepped into a little basket and we put on harnesses and were clipped to the basket. Then we rose way up until we were above the tallest trees! The basket hangs off the end of the crane and since it was a little windy we were swinging around up there, which was more than a little nerve-wracking. The crane can swivel 360 degrees so we moved all around up there and got the most incredible view of the land around us. There were huge mountains to one side, and the ocean to the other and rainforest for as far as you could see in the other direction. He let us stay up there for a while so I could admire the view…it was one of the most amazing moments I’ve had since coming to Australia. It was completely unexpected and most people will never get to do something like that since they usually only let people working there go up the crane-it’s not a tourist attraction at all! I guess it pays to have friends in high places (no pun intended.)

The beautiful rainforest and mountains..these photos are from the ground and not the canopy crane but shows the beauty of it all nonetheless

When we came down we went and met the students who had just come in for lunch and did our presentation.  It was a little daunting standing in front of 40 students basically my age, but it was also fun to be able to talk about Earthwatch and the work that we do and to show them that there are jobs out there for them. It was a really great experience to have to speak in front of such a large group with barely any notice…not necessarily what I would have wanted to do while on vacation but I learned from it so am glad that it happened.

Once we left the research centre we headed to the Daintree Ice Cream Company. We deserved a nice treat after “working” on our day off! The Daintree Ice Cream Company is a local, family run ice creamery that has a tropical fruit orchard out back, and they make all of their ice cream with the fruit from the orchard. It meant that it was the most fresh and tasty ice cream I had ever had! We had been meaning to go there all week with the participants, but we just didn’t have time, so Cass and I decided that we had to go there on our own. They make 4 flavours every day, and they give you little scoops of all 4 flavours for you to try. The flavours we had were blackberry, pineapple, jackfruit and wattleseed. Jackfruit and wattleseed were fruits I had never heard of or tried before, and they were delicious! Wattleseed is a cool fruit because it tastes more like coffee than a fruit. After we left the ice creamery, we started heading to the Atherton Tablelands. We hadn’t gotten far however before we saw something I had been dying to see the entire time we had been there for the expedition…a cassowary! But we got extra lucky because we didn’t just see one cassowary, we saw 3! A father with its two chicks! A cassowary is a huge bird (kind of like an emu) but the colours on the adults are amazing! They have red and purple heads and are one of the most bizarre looking birds. They walked right beside our car and were so close in fact that I couldn’t get a good picture because my zoom lense couldn’t capture the entire birds! 

The Daintree Ice Cream Company! 

A head only a mother could love!

We drove for a few hours, through some amazing rainforests, farm lands and hills and made it to Yungaburra, a quaint little town in the Atherton Tablelands by 8:00 pm. We had called ahead and booked ourselves into a hostel there so we headed straight there to drop our things off. The lady working at the hostel was very helpful and told us about some cool things to do in Yugaburra. First we went for dinner, but it was past 8 so every restaurant was closed except one-and it was a very fancy and expensive French restaurant. We were starving though and didn’t have much of a choice so we treated ourselves to a gourmet meal of duck confit and nice French wine. 

The woman at the hostel had told us that the hostel organises spotlighting tours, but she figured that we would be able to do it on our own since Cass grew up in that area and has been living in the rainforest for a lot of her life (which was really nice of the lady since it meant we could do it for free and didn’t need to pay them). So she gave us some good flashlights to use and told us exactly where to go. Spotlighting is when you walk near trees at night and shine a flashlight (spotlight) into the trees to try to see animals. Many of the animals in that region are nocturnal, so you can only see them if you go spotlighting at night. You can see the nocturnal mammals because when the flashlight shines on them their eyes grow red. You can spot the reptiles and spiders because their eyes glow a bright white. So once we were done dinner, we drove down a deserted road, parked the car and started walking down the road with flashlights in hand. And that’s when Mother Nature decided to play a nasty joke on us and start pouring. We were determined to see cool animals though, so we stuck it out even though we were  looking straight up to the top of trees with water pouring into our eyes and onto our face. It was cold and wet and not the most comfortable, but we stayed out there for almost 2 hours because once you start it’s addicting! We knew the animals were out there so we just had to keep looking to find them! I found it really difficult to see the reflections of the eyes so I barely picked out any of them, but luckily Cass had done this lots in her life and had the eye for it. We saw so many cool things! We saw several types of possums (including the green tail possum which is not very common), a spectacled flying fox (probably the cutest bat I have ever seen in my life!), some agile wallabies, a pademelon (another type of marsupial but much smaller than kangaroos and wallabies), a massive green tree frog and soooo many spiders! You don’t actually see the spiders, but you know they’re there because the trees sparkle like Christmas trees due to their bright white eyes! We also heard a Bennett’s tree kangaroo...it must have been in a tree right beside where we parked the car because as soon as we got out we heard crashing in the trees and it was gone! That was really disappointing because they’re big and awesome and look totally different than the grey kangaroos I had seen. I was dying to see one but it was not to be…we had to be content with the sound of it. We returned to the hostel around 11 pm soaking wet and cold but so giddy about everything we had seen. We didn’t expect to see that many animals so it was really exciting! Definitely an amazing experience to go spotlighting in Australia’s rainforest and one I am not soon to forget!

The next morning we woke up around 5:30 am because we were told by the woman at the hostel that there is a local platypus that sometimes comes up to feed in the river in town around 6 am. Platypuses are incredibly rare to see in the wild and many Australians may never see one in their life so when we heard that we had the possibility of seeing one in the wild we were determined to make it happen, even if it meant waking up at that ungodly hour. We drove to the river where the platypus sometimes surfaces at dawn and walked along the bank for almost an hour waiting for it to come up. We were almost ready to give up since it wasn’t a guarantee that it would come out and dawn had basically come and gone when lo-and-behold, we heard a splash! And there it was! The cutest little platypus you ever did see! It would come up for a few seconds at a time, swim around then dive back under. So it was almost impossible to get a good photo of it…I did get one photo that at least proves that I saw it, even if the quality isn’t good. It only hung around there for about 5 minutes and then we never saw it come back up again but it was an amazing 5 minutes. To watch a platypus swim around in the wild was incredible and really topped off our weekend of cool wildlife spotting! Once the platypus moved on upstream Cass and I headed back to the hostel, packed up and hit the road.

The adorable platypus that came up to say hello!

Our flight back to Melbourne was out of Cairns that night so we had the whole day to head back there and stop at sights along the way. And we hit as many of them as we could! First we went to see a massive 500 year old fig tree called the Cathedral Fig Tree. This tree was so huge (basically actually the size of a cathedral) that it had a boardwalk going around it and it actually took a few minutes to walk around the entire thing. Fig trees are so cool because they have strangler vines climbing all over them so there are just massive vines dangling from every branch. They also have giant buttress roots coming out of them which increases their diameter significantly.

The Cathedral fig tree with hundreds of strangler vines hanging down.

After we had ogled over the tree for a while we hopped back in the car and drove past gorgeous rolling hills and farmers fields to get to Barrine Lake. Australia doesn’t have a lot of natural lakes, but the Atherton Tablelands area used to have volcanoes and now has some ancient volcanic craters which have filled with freshwater forming lakes. It seemed a bit funny to me because this region has several very touristy and popular lakes (Lake Barrine being one of them) and they are quite the novelty. Don’t get me wrong…it was really pretty, but didn’t seem like it would be the most exciting thing to me, coming from the land of lakes in Northern Ontario. Nevertheless, we went to check it out and I was pleasantly surprised, because it was a lake just like we have back home, but it was surrounded by rainforest trees and birds which makes it so different and interesting! We did a little walk through the rainforest, part way around the lake then went to the boat house for breakfast. It is a picturesque little building, with a balcony and glass windows overlooking the lake. At this point we were starving because it was 10 am and we had been up at 5:30 with no breakfast so we both got the Big Aussie Breakfast….poached eggs, bacon, ham, grilled tomato and toast. We sat there with our delicions breakfasts and coffees overlooking the beautiful lake…it made for a very pleasant and serene morning.

The boat house on Barrine Lake..those boats would take people on tours around the lake which was hilarious to watch since it's such a small lake. 

Part of the rainforest walk around the lake.

We then drove towards the Mount Hypipamee Crater, also known as THE crater since it's such a major destination in that region to check off the list. Along the way we stopped at several gorgeous waterfalls and did a few mini walks. The Atherton Tablelands is a land full of lakes and waterfalls so we tried to see as many as we could. Once we got to the parking lot for the crater, we had a short walk to get to it. The crater had been quite hyped up from the guidebooks I had read and the people I had talked to in the area and it most definitely did not disappoint! It is a huge diatreme, a volcanic pipe formed by an explosion of gases thousands of years ago. It’s 61 metres in diametre and 82 metres deep and is extremely impressive. The boardwalk that you stand on goes right up to the edge of it (with a railing of course) but it’s still pretty freaky to be standing on the edge of such a massive and deep crater. It has a thick layer of duck weed on the water at the bottom and the people beside us were dropping rocks down it to give you a better sense of how deep it is. The rocks make a really loud thumping sound when they hit the duck weed and it’s crazy how many seconds pass between the time the rock is dropped and the time it hits the surface of the water. We then walked down a few hiking trails to get to Dinner Falls which were spectacular!

The crater with the green duck weed on the surface of the water.

Dinner Falls 

It was then time for us to drive back to Cairns to get our flight home so we basically booked it straight back there at that point. It was a beautiful drive back because we took a windy route all the way back down to Cairns and had a view of the ocean and city below almost the whole way down. It was sad to be leaving the beautiful rainforest of Northern Queensland but we were both looking forward to heading home to Melbourne since we had been gone for 2 weeks already. I was so glad Cass and I were able to stay up there and have some fun after the expedition because we saw some amazing things (and so many cool animals). It was really great for just the 2 of us to hang out as well since it was great bonding time!