Friday morning we left for the rainforest. We have a bus again (I miss having the troopies and Ian to drive us), and a resident Ph.D. by the name of John Winters. We also have a lot of stressful anticipation, because we each have two presentations to do during the trip, one on a flora and one on a fauna. The catch is, we could have to present at any time. I have echidnas and Arecaceae (the palm family), and if someone saw an echidna I would have to present. I got the palms over with today (which is Saturday), which I was more concerned about, but echidnas will be later. I really liked researching echidnas, though, so I don't mind.
Friday we stopped in a random alluvial plain of the Mulgrave river, before driving to Eubanangee Swamp National Park, where we took a walk through the rainforest only to end up on a surprisingly North American-looking grassy knoll. Looking over the knoll, however, I was reminded that I was in Australia by the paperbark swamp and bogs. We stopped for lunch on a nice little stretch of beach, and ended at Josephine Falls, a little waterfall in a stretch of rainforest.
We checked in to the Treehouse, our hostel for two nights, and found a nice kitty and a friendly puppy dog (something crossed with an Australian shepherd). Frankly, they could have put us up in a cardboard box in the rain and, had there been a cat, we would have thought it was the nicest place we'd stayed so far.
Let me mention the rain. There's a funny thing about rainforests. It rains here. A lot. An unbelievable amount, in fact. Last night it rained so hard, and was so windy, that we were all up half the night. It's warm rain, and not really very unpleasant, but my, is it ever rainy.
Today, Saturday, we went for a hike up Bicton Hill, where we looked at several different levels of disturbance in the forest along the way. And got rained on. Several of us got leeches, including myself. They fall from the trees, here, as well as hanging out in streams. Apparently they sometimes fall on people's eyeballs. I'm not making that up, by the way. You're not supposed to pull them off of your eyes, because you can rip off your corneas in the process. But they fall off eventually. Leeches are particularly attracted to Shannon, and she's had at least four already.
We also stopped at Licuala Swamp, which is a fan palm swamp (the endemic species being Licuala ramsayi). We just took a look around, and Becca told us about musky rat kangaroos, the smallest critter in the kangaroo family. This is cassowary country, but we haven't seen any here yet. It's only a matter of time.
We got poured on during lunch, which was at Mission Beach, and then headed to a short trail that led down to another, lovely beach. It poured on and off all day, but that was all right. John identified some species for us, and we talked about geology and topography. Then we went beach combing for a little while, and ended up walking to the end of a pier that went about 200 metres out. Got back to the Treehouse a few hours ago, now, and we're about to go out to dinner. At a restaurant. No idea what we did to deserve this, on SIT's dollar, but here goes.
Saturday evening was lovely. We went to an actual restaurant, and quite a nice one at that, although it had the rather silly name of The Shrubbery. Reminiscent of Monty Python. They let us order whatever we wanted, so I had sun-dried tomato bruschetta with goat cheese and mozzarella, and the fish of the day, which was called nanna guy. The fish was served on a bed of sweet potatoes and green beans. Both were very nice. I also split a piece of chocolate mud cake with Karen. We were all a bit touched that Tony thought to take us out somewhere nice, and we had a great time.
On Sunday we started off the day with two cassowaries! I saw the first one in the yard at the hostel, and the second ran out in front of our bus. They are really cool birds. I'll post a photo of the one at the hostel, which was not huge, but the one we saw from the bus was quite large. After the cassowaries, we got to the Mamu Canopy Walk, which is basically a series of catwalks through the rainforest canopy. It was really neat to see the rainforest from a different perspective, and to be able to get a look at what was going on above the ground (which was a lot). We got soaked, though, because it poured rain all day. After the canopy walk, we met Merrell the Brave at a picnic spot and had our lunch. Then we took about a three hour hike up to Nandroya Falls, which is an enormous waterfall. I felt like I was on a movie set. It was pretty incredible. A few people went swimming, but I abstained, as it was pouring rain, the water was freezing, and I was not feeling one hundred percent. Those of us who remained on the bank fended off leeches.
I must pause in my narrative to give a brief introduction to leeches. Leeches are of the class Hirudinea, and there are many species. Nandroya Falls is one of the leech capitols of the Wet Tropics, and although the leeches there are relatively small, they are certainly ambitious. You don't have to be walking through water to get them (although that is an effective method). They have electroreceptors that can sense when fresh meat is coming by, and they can actually jump onto you. They also inch by like little inchworms (only a bit less endearing), and sneak into your shoes and onto your ankles. Becca got the leech award on Sunday, with eight leeches on her feet within about five minutes. The people who went in the water at the falls got them, too, mostly between the toes and on the ankles. I only had three, although there was a fourth rolling around in my shoe, which was rather an unpleasant experience. Leeches don't hurt (they actually secrete a numbing agent so that you don't notice them), but they do secrete anti-coagulants so it's sometimes hard to get the bleeding to stop.
Sunday evening we got to The Lodge, which will be home for the rest of the rainforest trip. The Lodge isn't a hostel, but a series of three buildings (the Main House, the Annex, and the Dairy) way out in the country on the Tablelands. Our closest neighbors are some cattle. So are our next-closest neighbors. And so on. It's really pretty country out here, and sort of looks like Switzerland minus the snowy caps on the Alps. Rolling, very steep hills, lots of cattle, very green, pine trees… but the trees are mostly hoop and bunya pines, which have a distinctly Australian flavour. And the cattle are all Brahman crosses, which seem to do well in Australia.
I'm staying in the Dairy, which is the nicer house, with eight other girls. The other nine people are staying in the Main House, and John and Merrell are in the Annex with Tony. All of the students cook together in the evenings. It's really pretty cozy, although the houses are extremely primitive. There's a woodstove in our house, so I've been starting fires every evening.
Monday started out pouring but, mercifully, cleared up around nine-thirty in the morning. We started out in a spot of tall eucalypt forest, which was pretty impressive. The trees are all scarred by fire, sometimes up to their very crowns. We saw mostly Eucalyptus grandis and red stringy-bark trees. Then we headed off to lunch, before going to see the crater at Hypipamee National Park, which was formed by a hot water explosion. Then we took a short waterfall walk, and saw three very nice, albeit smallish, waterfalls. In the late afternoon Merrell took Natasha to the doctor, as she is really quite sick, and I rode along to see what nasty little virus has been bothering me. I'm fine, though. He said it would be gone in a day or two. I actually feel very well, I'm just coughing a bit.
Today, Tuesday, is beautiful. Sunny and in the lower seventies, with a light breeze. We started the day at a park that abuts a marvelous piece of private land. The park includes a rainforest corridor that a local conservation group has been working on for several years now, and it allows critters, notably birds and small mammals, to pass through the agricultural land of the Tablelands. We also checked out the private land. One retired couple owns the land, and they're incredibly inspiring. Fifteen or so years ago, they started to revegetate their land with native rainforest trees. They have now planted over 25,000 trees. They have both forest areas and crop trees. The crop trees are for "bush tucker" or for lumber, and they have about 20 species scattered about that can be sustainably harvested in about 40 years. We met Jill briefly, and she's an old British lady, out in her sun hat with her gardening gloves.
Then we headed to Lake Barrine, where we looked fruitlessly for musky rat kangaroos, and ate lunch at Lake Eacham. Now I'm sitting in an internet café in Atherton, using the very slow internet with four other people. Hope everyone over there on the home front is doing all right.
~a
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