Beautiful Queensland (2)
We started our day at 7:30am but didn't get to leave before 9am regardless... the b&b owner was going to go to Wales some day and Janet gave him lots of great tips... She is FAR more chatty than I am, if I leave her alone 5mns to go ahead and take a shot, she will have almost always found a fellow British tourist to chat to, swapping tourist tips, etc. Whereas I completely blank everybody out and don't even notice half of the people who cross our paths. Yesterday on the waterfall tour she kept saying 'oh hi again' to a couple who seemed to go to the same spots we did but I never seemed to remember their faces ! I think I'm suffering from (yet another) acute case of anti-social behaviour, hum. Though I don't think that this is the kind that would earn me an ASBO I still feel thoroughly ashamed of myself at times...
Today we thought we'd try to get to Silky Oak Lodge early to make the most of the money we'd spent on it, and so we knew we'd need to leave Youngburra (the colonial town where we stayed) by 2pm. This left us with 5 hours to enjoy the Crater Lakes regions... but no sooner had we got in the car that it started to rain quite heavily. This was SO annoying as we were heading for Eacham Lake which is supposedly the nicest in the area. Janet being more philosophical than I am (I put this down to the fact that she's very British, so: much more flegmatic) figured that we might as well walk the rainforest trail all around the lake since we couldn't really do anything else. None of us are really into museums and though the lake colour was now dark grey instead of lovely blue, it was better than driving around endlessly doing nothing much. She was right and it was well worth it. We both valued the exercice... and we got to see yet another kind of kangaroo, a musky 'rat kangaroo' this time. They are pretty much like... rats and don't really hop but for some reason that escape me, they come under the kangaroo species. We had seen a photo of one earlier at the Info site stating that we might be lucky to see them hence we knew what they'd look like. We were thrilled ! It doesn't take much to make us happy ! :) Granted. But we do share a love of fluffy and cuddly creatures... and some of the Australian Wildlife books here are full of amazing photos of so many other creatures that are equally cute and that we had never heard of before. We keep saying that we'd need to spend at least a whole year here to do this continent justice. Did I tell you that we're already planning to return in about 2-3 years'time ? Time, Fortune and Good Health permitting ! On that walk we also saw new birds we hadn't seen before and... a python sleeping on a rock by the lake. Thankfully we were high up on a board walk so were looking down on him. In fact, we first assumed he was dead because I've never even seen a snake snooze on a rock in the rain, I always assumed they were sun-worshipper. But we were told later that pythons have had to get used to rain if they choose to live in a 'rain' forest and that the stone will have absorbed the heat of the day (prior to the rainfall obviously) and so they will make do with that.
After Lake Eacham we headed for Lake Barrine, which is just 5kms up the road. I had cruised it 14 years ago and vaguely remembered the beautiful coffee shop (gorgeous exotic flowers around the grounds) and the pelicans. This trip to Queensland has actually been a great exercice to test my memory... and so far I'm not doing brilliantly but in a way it keeps me excited about 'tomorrow' as it's like rediscovering it all over again.
We had an early lunch whilst we were waiting for the next cruise to start and enjoyed a lovely table overlooking the lake. A brush turkey even tried to steal our food (ugly things they are -and all over Queensland- so I haven't taken a photo yet - God, I'm so shallow in some ways !!!). It was a pleasant cruise, very relaxing, with just the two of us. So we could pick the best seats ! We saw many turtles (our guide would throw meat in the water as they enjoy that most) and cormorans and two pelicans who kept following us with their beaks wide open, talk about putting on the guilt trip ! They also had some gorgeous purple water lilies which you don't often see, but I never got close enough to take a decent shot, even with my 300mm zoom lens from the deck area. I was most disappointed.
We went back via the Fig tree area trying one last time for tree kangaroos but didn't see any. It is SO frustrating to be 'so near and yet so far' as you will not find them anywhere else in the whole of Australia.
Night has now fallen and the beetles are still singing their heads off. Janet's just returned and is all excited because she saw a beautiful bandicoot right by our tree house, not phased at all by her presence, and I've just spotted a ghecko on the wall by the computer ! Gheckos aren't massively cute either BUT are really useful to keep the insect population under control so we'll welcome them anytime (so long as they don't leave droppings in our suitcases !!!). Oh, the joys of the Wet Tropics...
By the way, talking of creatures and all, I need to make 4 amendments to one of my last post. (a) Rabbits are found in Australia (we've seen a few since I wrote this) but are not found on Kangaroo Island at all. (b) The food I fed the wallabies was good for their stomach by the way and not some rubbish that us humans eat (Janet & I are very strict on that and would never feed them anything they are not supposed to have not to encourage wildlife to beg - it triggers unnatural and eventually agressive behaviour). They sold bags of 'roo food' at the Wilderness Lodge, which was a great idea. (c) Forgot to say too that female kangaroos can raise 2 joeys at once, a few months apart and she will produce 2 different types of milk. One teat will have milk for the more mature joey whilst the other teat will produce milk that a younger joey would need instead. How about that ? Makes ours really boring in comparison ! No ?! (c) koalas' skeletons are designed so that they can wedge themselves in branches quite comfortably (this is why if you & I tried to sit the way they do, we'd have soon have a sore bum... since we were not meant to live on trees).
Voila... I'd better sign off as dinner is almost ready. It'd better be good, I'm starving ! Tomorrow we'll be driving to Cape Tribulation... again, tons to do on the way, we'll have to be massively selective. Everywhere we've been we've felt we could have benefitted from one extra day pretty much... Still, we're not complaining. Honest ! We do realise that we are incredibly fortunate to enjoy so many natural wonders here.
We started our day at 7:30am but didn't get to leave before 9am regardless... the b&b owner was going to go to Wales some day and Janet gave him lots of great tips... She is FAR more chatty than I am, if I leave her alone 5mns to go ahead and take a shot, she will have almost always found a fellow British tourist to chat to, swapping tourist tips, etc. Whereas I completely blank everybody out and don't even notice half of the people who cross our paths. Yesterday on the waterfall tour she kept saying 'oh hi again' to a couple who seemed to go to the same spots we did but I never seemed to remember their faces ! I think I'm suffering from (yet another) acute case of anti-social behaviour, hum. Though I don't think that this is the kind that would earn me an ASBO I still feel thoroughly ashamed of myself at times...
Today we thought we'd try to get to Silky Oak Lodge early to make the most of the money we'd spent on it, and so we knew we'd need to leave Youngburra (the colonial town where we stayed) by 2pm. This left us with 5 hours to enjoy the Crater Lakes regions... but no sooner had we got in the car that it started to rain quite heavily. This was SO annoying as we were heading for Eacham Lake which is supposedly the nicest in the area. Janet being more philosophical than I am (I put this down to the fact that she's very British, so: much more flegmatic) figured that we might as well walk the rainforest trail all around the lake since we couldn't really do anything else. None of us are really into museums and though the lake colour was now dark grey instead of lovely blue, it was better than driving around endlessly doing nothing much. She was right and it was well worth it. We both valued the exercice... and we got to see yet another kind of kangaroo, a musky 'rat kangaroo' this time. They are pretty much like... rats and don't really hop but for some reason that escape me, they come under the kangaroo species. We had seen a photo of one earlier at the Info site stating that we might be lucky to see them hence we knew what they'd look like. We were thrilled ! It doesn't take much to make us happy ! :) Granted. But we do share a love of fluffy and cuddly creatures... and some of the Australian Wildlife books here are full of amazing photos of so many other creatures that are equally cute and that we had never heard of before. We keep saying that we'd need to spend at least a whole year here to do this continent justice. Did I tell you that we're already planning to return in about 2-3 years'time ? Time, Fortune and Good Health permitting ! On that walk we also saw new birds we hadn't seen before and... a python sleeping on a rock by the lake. Thankfully we were high up on a board walk so were looking down on him. In fact, we first assumed he was dead because I've never even seen a snake snooze on a rock in the rain, I always assumed they were sun-worshipper. But we were told later that pythons have had to get used to rain if they choose to live in a 'rain' forest and that the stone will have absorbed the heat of the day (prior to the rainfall obviously) and so they will make do with that.
After Lake Eacham we headed for Lake Barrine, which is just 5kms up the road. I had cruised it 14 years ago and vaguely remembered the beautiful coffee shop (gorgeous exotic flowers around the grounds) and the pelicans. This trip to Queensland has actually been a great exercice to test my memory... and so far I'm not doing brilliantly but in a way it keeps me excited about 'tomorrow' as it's like rediscovering it all over again.
We had an early lunch whilst we were waiting for the next cruise to start and enjoyed a lovely table overlooking the lake. A brush turkey even tried to steal our food (ugly things they are -and all over Queensland- so I haven't taken a photo yet - God, I'm so shallow in some ways !!!). It was a pleasant cruise, very relaxing, with just the two of us. So we could pick the best seats ! We saw many turtles (our guide would throw meat in the water as they enjoy that most) and cormorans and two pelicans who kept following us with their beaks wide open, talk about putting on the guilt trip ! They also had some gorgeous purple water lilies which you don't often see, but I never got close enough to take a decent shot, even with my 300mm zoom lens from the deck area. I was most disappointed.
We went back via the Fig tree area trying one last time for tree kangaroos but didn't see any. It is SO frustrating to be 'so near and yet so far' as you will not find them anywhere else in the whole of Australia.
Night has now fallen and the beetles are still singing their heads off. Janet's just returned and is all excited because she saw a beautiful bandicoot right by our tree house, not phased at all by her presence, and I've just spotted a ghecko on the wall by the computer ! Gheckos aren't massively cute either BUT are really useful to keep the insect population under control so we'll welcome them anytime (so long as they don't leave droppings in our suitcases !!!). Oh, the joys of the Wet Tropics...
By the way, talking of creatures and all, I need to make 4 amendments to one of my last post. (a) Rabbits are found in Australia (we've seen a few since I wrote this) but are not found on Kangaroo Island at all. (b) The food I fed the wallabies was good for their stomach by the way and not some rubbish that us humans eat (Janet & I are very strict on that and would never feed them anything they are not supposed to have not to encourage wildlife to beg - it triggers unnatural and eventually agressive behaviour). They sold bags of 'roo food' at the Wilderness Lodge, which was a great idea. (c) Forgot to say too that female kangaroos can raise 2 joeys at once, a few months apart and she will produce 2 different types of milk. One teat will have milk for the more mature joey whilst the other teat will produce milk that a younger joey would need instead. How about that ? Makes ours really boring in comparison ! No ?! (c) koalas' skeletons are designed so that they can wedge themselves in branches quite comfortably (this is why if you & I tried to sit the way they do, we'd have soon have a sore bum... since we were not meant to live on trees).
Voila... I'd better sign off as dinner is almost ready. It'd better be good, I'm starving ! Tomorrow we'll be driving to Cape Tribulation... again, tons to do on the way, we'll have to be massively selective. Everywhere we've been we've felt we could have benefitted from one extra day pretty much... Still, we're not complaining. Honest ! We do realise that we are incredibly fortunate to enjoy so many natural wonders here.
posted by Sylvie at 8:44 AM
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