Port Douglas - Part 1

The two-lane road north from Cairns to Port Douglas winds 50 km (31 mi) up the coast past sugar cane fields and beach resorts, and through small towns and tropical rainforest. We passed a large group of wallabies (known as a mob) grazing in a large pasture along the road. I parked next to a lawn bowling complex and, camera in hand, walked around the corner of the building and began taking pictures. A man came out of the building and told us to come inside, but to stay behind the fence because "wallabies can be aggressive if you get too close." Inside the open-air facility, twenty people were bowling in a tournament. One of the women bowlers said that a few weeks earlier, a man taking photographs in the pasture was attacked by a male wallaby.

Agile wallabies

Eungella to Cairns: the Coral Sea

We rented an apartment in Yorkeys Knob, a small community on the beach about 20 km north of Cairns. It was named for George “Yorkey” Lawson, a fisherman from Yorkshire, England who homesteaded there. We looked in Cairns, a city of 150,000 on the east coast of the Cape York Peninsula, but chose a more relaxed town on the beach north of the city. Cairns spreads out along a mud flat south of the Barron River. The downtown was crowded with traffic and tourists, and we had to pay to park everywhere. In the morning, a constant stream of buses dropped off hundreds of tourists at the marina where they boarded day-boats going to the Great Barrier Reef. Tourists that didn’t go to the reef wandered the Esplanade eating in the restaurants and visiting gift shops and boutiques. I stopped at three dive shops for information on trips to the Great Barrier Reef, and two underwater camera shops to get parts for my camera. Unlike Airlie Beach, dive shops and dive-boat operators are thriving in Cairns. I made a reservation for a day trip on the Tusa 6, which was recommended by one of the dive shops.

Coral bommie (pinnacle) at Hastings Reef

Eungella to Cairns: the Eastern Highlands

Consider the platypus. It has a duck-like bill covered with specialized receptors for finding its prey; a beaver-like tail covered with fur that is not used for swimming; and otter-like webbed feet for swimming (front) and steering (rear) armed with straight claws for digging (front) and curved claws for grooming (rear). Females lay eggs and nurse their young, but lack nipples. If you didn’t already know that it exists, you’d be hard pressed to believe that it does. Platypus were “discovered” near Sydney by European settlers in 1797 (of course, Aboriginal Australians knew about them for millennia). Bewildered, the local governor sent skins and drawings to Great Britain. British zoologists who examined the specimens in 1798 thought they were a hoax perpetrated by Chinese taxidermists, who were selling mummified monkeys with fish tails as mermaids at the time (link).

Platypus in Broken River, Eungella National Park

Yeppoon to Airlie: the Highs and Lows

In Yeppoon, we stayed at a bed-and-breakfast owned by an Aussie (Lois) and a Kiwi (Richard). At breakfast we talked about living in Australia, politics (mostly Donald Trump) and travel. One of our maps showed a colony of flying foxes near Yeppoon. Richard said that they roost in trees along Figtree Creek and we went to look for them late in the afternoon. The tide was ebbing and boats along the tidal creek were resting on their keels in the mud. An old guy in faded shorts and worn tee shirt introduced himself as Dave; he was tall and slim, and as weathered as his clothes. He said he’s lived in a steel-hulled boat tied to a jetty for two decades, one of the 40 or so boats I could see. The Jetty Club was sponsoring a photo contest with a $500 first prize and he said I could take pictures from his jetty.

Boats in Figtree Creek at low tide