Elad’s blog

Today we woke up by the birds. This is not as tranquille as it seems - the damned creatures started singing by our tent at 06:00 in the morning, just when the rain finally ended. However, as soon as we went out of the tent (with full intention to throw stones on the birds, those lousy creatures that howl like monkeys) we saw a most surealistic scene: a red kangaroo was standing on the grass, just a few meters from our tent, and watching us intentionally. A few minuts later he was gone - not a big loss, as it was just the first and not the most interesting kangaroo of the day.

The storm is over, and the weather today was my favorite: grey sky packed with clouds, a bit cool but not too cold, no rain at all and clean air from yesterday - including that wetness on the vegetation. We spent most of the day exploring the Atherton Tableland - a pictorious agricultural environment that combines wet rainforests every now and then with green meadows and lakes. A refreshing change from the coast’s endless sugar cane fields. The meadows resemble Tuscany, especially when taking into account the free wine tastings we got at a local winery (and if we easily ignore the amount of cows here). The real beuty, however, lies in the forests. We found several nice sites there.

The ‘Crater’, as the locals call it, is actually a volcanic pipe. Most people think of volcanoes in terms of spectacular eruptions or gaser activity. Though less famous, volcanic activity also takes place in the form of gas explosions - where gas bubbles escape the pressure inside Earth to the surface, and undergo massive expantion when climbing through cracks in the rocks - which most commonly ends up as a big explotion that cuts a pipe in the rock. This so-called crater is such a pipe - a deep, circular hole in the basaltic soil, some 30 meters in diameter, which is now full of water. It is located in the middle of a rainforest, and on the way there I spotted the more interesting kangaroo of the day - the tree kangaroo.

Tree kangaroos are a kangaroo species that lives high on the trees in rainforests; rather than jumping on the ground, they prefer doing it on trees. I spotted a colony just by the crater, some 20 meters above the ground. I am very proud of this - all the other persons around just didn’t see them because they were so high. These kangaroos have a rather different fur color: more red than the common grey one. In the forest there were also Cassowarry warnings, but we didn’t see this large flightless bird anywhere.

After the crater we went to the curtain fig tree. It is a fig tree that created with its roots a curtain of some 20 meters. The explanation to this unique phenomena is that it first grew on another tree, strangling it to death; when the other tree got rotten it fell aside on another tree, creating a bridge that enabled the fig to take over the other tree as well. The result is an enormous tree, that creates this huge curtain with its roots.

We also went to two nice lakes, with very clear water, but we didn’t feel like swimming; so we continued driving until we finally reached Cairns.

I started looking for information about my next destination here. It is not as easy as it seems. I probably want to go to Papua, where plenty of festivals as special events are being held in the next two weeks (see the link I added at the right bar of my site). The problem is, I need to arrange myself a visa to get there, and this might take a long time and cost a lot of money - I will only find details about this tomorrow, when official offices will be open.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 29th, 2005 at 10:39 and is filed under Travels, Australia East Coast. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.