See part of Scott's first missive here.
Here's part of his second trip log where he tells about his and Gretta's adventures in the rainforest. Please note that the ride was very bumpy.
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Ok, so now I'm on to the rainforest, and back to the superlatives.
We had booked a day tour with the Billy Tea company, a family-owned and operated little business with 3 Billy Tea van/bus things that were not as comfortable to ride in as regular modern tour buses because they were 4WD and outfitted for traveling on the bumpiest of back roads I've ever been on. The driver, John, was informative, congenial, funny, a great host, and a nice man.• Then the bus/van thing stopped. The older people put their teeth back in and we got out to walk on an elevated rainforest boardwalk. John the guide really new his stuff and pointed out extremely interesting things we would not have seen without him. Such tall tall trees with the foliage way way up, then medium trees with foliage lower down and then bushes and small trees at eye level. Vines hanging everywhere, looping and curving and twisting (he mentioned that this was the sort that tarzan swung on - I love historical details). The sun broke down into the forest only in places although it was bright enough everywhere - the canopy up top was quite thick. We are here after major flooding just last week, and would not have been able to traverse the road to this place then - so we're lucky. We saw the largest ferns in the world - really huge - predating dinosaurs (or not, depending on your creationist views) - and 800 year old palm trees and poisonous fruit and lethal fruit and scratchy vines one called "wait-a-while" because you have to once it catches you with its backward facing barbs. Strange bird calls from way up in the canopy. No animals in sight. Gretta and I kept looking at each other in amazement that we were here, in a rainforest on the other side of the world. I want to give you a few rainforest facts for your edification. Here they are:
o The Daintree rainforest has two parts, called lowland and upland tropical rainforest (there are 13 different types of rainforest) - the lowland, where we visited, is considered the more luxuriant - often called "jungle" - it is characterized by large, soft-leaved plants, vines, trees with amazing buttressed roots (huge panel-like sections jutting out from the bottom of the trunk into the ground, like divided class sections in a Sunday school room. Some trees produce plants and flowers on their trunks (called cauliflory) (not cauliflowers)
o There were about 160 different species of trees per hectare, with over 1000 individual big trees per hectare, and 800 species in the whole rainforest.
o The recycling process was fascinating - including the natural decay of organic matter, the decay helped along by scores of different kinds of insects and the feral pigs (little black big snouted things) that route around looking for the insects - and, indelicate but natural, all the poop from so many different animals and birds and insects - the whole ecosystem takes care of itself. We just have to make sure we don't get in the way.
o If you're not top tree in the canopy, your job is to capture enough light to live on, so you avoid growing leaves blocking other leaves, and so produce leaves at different angles arranged to gain maximum exposure. A lot of thinking going on under that bark.
o Palms are not to be confused with cyads Just saying.
o Lots of fan palms, with huge fronds growing out in a complete circle and lots and lots of big circles on each plant. Very doctor seuss-ish.
o The black palm (not really black) has feathery fronds and its hard wood was split into thin strips by the aborigines for making spears. I was hit by one of those spears thrown by an aborigine (didn't actually see him, he is good at hiding) and had to be rushed by helicopter to the local hospital where I nearly died from the poison but they saved me and transported me back to the tour in time for lunch.
o 46 species of fern found in this rainforest occur nowhere else in the world.
o The strangler fig wraps around other trees with an intricate web of roots, eventually strangling the host and going on to live an amoral life. I was strangled by one of these strangler figs and had only a few gasps of life left in me when gretta turned on the path, saw what was happening, gave the fig one of those looks, and it stopped.
o We saw the nest of the orange-footed scrubfowl, a mound-builder. The couple builds a huge - like 6 feet high and 18 ft in diameter, honest - earthen incubator for their eggs with their big strong feet. The heat comes from all the decomposing matter in the mound. Both mama and papa frequently stick their beaks in the mound to test the temperature, and scratch out holes in the mound when it's too hot or put more detritis on if it is too cold. We're going to try this with our house.
o We saw several flashes of the electric blue Ulysses butterfly.
o One last thing. Until the 1960's, it was thought that the Australian rainforests were just a continuation of the immense ones in south-east asia, with the flora and fauna colonizing the continent to the south. However, discoveries led to the realization that Australia developed independently in many ways - hence the unique life forms and also an appreciation of the ancientness of the forests. Standing in an environment that looked much the same when dinosaurs roamed was Jurassic parkish and I half expected to see a tyranabrontopteradactarex jump out at me.
• Then it was off to another ranger station place where they rehabilitated kangaroos and wallabies and if they could not get better they cared for them. We patted them and they were very soft and quite gentle. We were told not to touch their ears or they would get mad. We were also told not to feed them too much or they would give us a kangaroo hug which is evidently very hard to escape. I tried to feed gretta too much, but it didn't work. They served a fabulous barbecue (they call it a "barbie" here) buffet which we ate on big log-looking wooden tables. I bought a very good booklet on the rainforest, very detailed and sensitive.
• Then we got back in the bus/van thing and traveled the Bloomfield Track, which necessitated the 4WD I referred to earlier. The road was dirt and rocks and twisty and had many gullies and sheer drops.
• The last destination was Cape Tribulation, where Captain Hook, I mean Captain Cook entered the bay and got stuck. We parked the bus/van thing and walked through a little bit of forest and then out onto a simply vast expanse of beach but in a semi-circle around the big bay. So, it was limitless bright bright blue ocean, a wide and deep beach of cream coloured sand, bordered by a lush rainforest of trees and bushes, with a backdrop of high dark green mountains. It was low tide so we walked out quite a way. The other tour people became little dots. (I mean this visually, they did not actually change form.) Gretta and I stood there in silence, looking all around, taking it all in, overwhelmed by the immensity of space and air and colour. Amazing.
• There was a vinegar stand at the entrance to the beach - just a wooden structure with 2 bottles of vinegar in it to use if one was stung by what they called "ocean stingers" referring to a number of creatures with the capacity to sting you. I had to use a whole bottle on myself and even then the pain was searing and almost unbearable but I bravely trudged back to the bus/van thing so as not to hold up the tour. Gretta checked me out and said she couldn't quite see the mosquito bite but assured me that she believed me.
• Then we drove bumpily to the Daintree River ferry, which uses simple cables to pull cars across the river. (just so your imagination is correct here, the cars board the flat ferry boat, the cables don't pull each car individually through the water, but I'm sure you knew that.) Once on the other side we began our trip south on paved roads to where we started. They dropped us off at our place and drove away taking with them gretta's glasses and shawl, to be kindly returned the next day.
