Rainforest Residents - I

We stopped at a beach cafe to use the loo and there were a whole family of these hanging menacingly over the wash basins when I emerged from the cubicle.

I composed myself enough to take the photo but did I wash my hands?

Rainforest Meets the Reef

I could bore you for ages with facts about the Daintree section of the Australian rainforest but it's somehow not as photogenic as the turquoise of the ocean so I'll stick with the main points again.

Right, well it's the oldest continually surviving rainforest in the world and it's more than 100 million years old, which means it's like stepping back into the past and looking at what the earth might have looked like at the time. Dinosaurs used to live here - ecologists and botanists and other beardy-type people love it.

The rainforest covered much more of Australia than just this Daintree section but then the climate changed and much of it receeded to the parts of the continent that were warmer and more humid, which explains why you won't find trees like this in Sydney.

Have I mentioned that Sydney is bloody cold in the winter?

It's been on the world-heritage protection list since 1988, along with it's neighbour the great barrier reef, which means both are national parks and both have strict rules about what you can and can't do, things like you can't take anything away and you're not supposed to destroy anything. This doesn't extend to the chocolate pudding fruit, which you are welcome to take away if you can smuggle it past customs at Sydney airport without them thinking you've got a fruity-shaped bomb in your suitcase.

You can drive through the Daintree on a sealed road as far as Cape Tribulation but then it's dirt track all the way to Cooktown. Beyond that I don't know. Perhaps it's donkey or nothing.

Anyway, the forest is so dense that it's a bugger to photograph and you can't just wander into it either. These are a couple of shots I took while we were driving through but they don't really do justice to the heights and depths and the sight of all those ferns and palms when the sun sneaks through the canopies. They've built the occasional boardwalk and a visitor's centre so you can get closer, but I'm boycotting on account of it reminding me of something you'd find in Delamere Forest, and seeing as I'm in Australia then no, I don't want a Magnum and a Diet Coke while I'm admiring the view, but thanks.

Is a rainforest the same as a jungle? We've been debating this and Darren thinks it is but I think a jungle has monkeys in it, you know, like in Jungle Book. He looks at me like he thinks I'm an idiot. I know I'm not likely to run into a singing bear but I genuinely don't know what the difference is.

Ooh-hoo, I wanna be like you-hoo......

The Daintree

Wednesday 11th July

"Right, so we'll have a few days mooching about Port Douglas then"

"Yeah, I suppose so"

"I mean, it would be nice to drive up into the rainforest but not with Ella, and anyway, we've been there before"

"Yup"

"And there's a playground at the end of the road and the beach right next to it, and there's a little steam train down by the marina"

"Yup"





"Oh sod it, you only live once, let's go"

1. The view from Alexandra Lookout, looking towards the Coral Sea.
2. Crossing the river Daintree on the chain ferry - mangroves and rainforest

Chocolate Pudding Fruit

Tuesday 10th July

So you thought I was joking when I told you they have a custard apple fruit that tastes of Ambrosia in a pot.

And now I'm pleased, no, I'm ecstatic to introduce you to the so-called chocolate pudding fruit, or the Black Sapote to use it's proper name.

I saw the chocolate pudding fruit on a programme on the ABC channel a few months ago. ABC is the Australian equivalent of the BBC, which is handy because they seem to buy most of their programmes from them on account of being unable to come up with ideas of their own.

Anyway, it was an actual Australian programme about tropical fruit that you might like to grow in your garden and we sat laughing at it and wondering which of these tropical delights we might feasibly cultivate on the windowledge of Ella's bedroom back in Warrington, you know, seeing as it gets the sun in the morning.

And then the bloke comes up with this little beauty and he bites into it and says "mmm - just like a chocolate pudding". And because I've tasted several custard apples I know there's a good chance he's not joking so then I spend the next four months trawling the greengrocers and specialist organic shops of Sydney in search of this delicacy, but hardly anybody has heard of it, even when I call it by it's proper name.

And we go to Queensland and no, I can't get it in Brisbane either.

But now we're in the tropics and yes, you can buy the black sapote in the specialist fruit shop behind Coles supermarket in Port Douglas, so here it is.

The only fly in the ointment here is that my beautiful fruit isn't ripe yet. It's hard as nails and as it's illegal to transport fruit across the border into New South Wales, we face an agonising few days waiting to see whether we'll be eating it, chucking it, or, heaven forbid, attempting to smuggle it back to Sydney.

Ripen, dammit, ripen.

Four Mile Beach

Four Mile Beach, Port Douglas.

I'd have measured it to make sure but I was too busy thinking about designs for a communication passport.

Tropical

And this is our holiday flat at Port Douglas. I took a photo because Darren's memory has become addled through drinking too much VB (Victoria Bitter) and he can no longer separate Port Douglas from Fraser Island from the beach cabin at Murramarang.

This is a worrying development because it puts me in mind of communication books or communication passports, the sort of things speech therapists make to enable their patients to tell people about themselves, you know, like "this is the house where I live" and "this is my goldfish". I shall be watching his intake of VB over the next six months very carefully because, what with all this blogging, I've hardly time to set about making a sodding communication passport as well.

Anyway, the flat was lovely, though it was kitted out with cane furniture to make us feel, well, tropical. Cane furniture is never comfortable after a hard day's trekking through the rainforest and anyway, the cluster of enormous green tropical ants on the balcony did the trick just as well.

Rex Lookout

Continuing north along the Captain Cook highway we reached Rex Lookout. You can go hang-gliding off the cliff here, if you're feeling up to it after the journey along the winding road.

Palm Cove

Like Sydney, Cairns lays claim to a series of so-called northern beaches. If you're swanky and loaded up with cash then you can probably afford to stay here at Palm Cove.

Last time we came we were backpacking and we stayed at Yorkey's Knob further south, which tells you everything you need to know about the state of our finances at the time. I mean, it was okay, but what we saved in accommodation costs we probably shelled out in tropical-strength insect repellent to ward off the sand flies and the blowies (blow flies), both of which are partial to nibbling on pale European legs.

I suspect they have mosquito nets at Palm Cove.

We still probably can't afford to stay here but we can afford to have lunch and the flies aren't interested in us since we developed a good bit of aussie immunity. It was a bit windy down on the beach, but Ella had a great time.

The Cane Train

Monday 9th July

It's goodbye Cairns today as we head north up the Captain Cook Highway to Port Douglas, an hours drive on a road clinging to the edges of the Coral Sea. As holiday routes go, it knocks the Cornish section of the A30 into a cocked hat.

As I've mentioned before, they grow sugar cane up here in Far North Queensland. Both times we've been here it's been mid July, the height of the cane-crushing season, which is when they cut it all down and load it into cages on little narrow-gauge railways.

Then the cane trains wind their way across the fields and across the main roads at little unmanned crossings to sugar mills like the one at Mossman (open for visitors but alas, not visitors with children under five years old), where they boil it up and make all sorts of things out of it, no doubt including Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate, which seems a lot of effort to go to for something so plainly wrong.

They even have public information films on telly at this time of year warning people to watch out for the cane trains, which are all named after famous prostitutes who serviced the needs of the men who worked the cane industry in nearby Mossman back in the days of old.

Here's some photos I took as we drove up to Port Douglas today. This is Ivy, which puts me in mind of Ivy Tildesley from Coronation Street and the late great Lynne Perrie and conjures up all sorts of horrible images about the era of prostitution in this far colonial outpost that I really wish it hadn't.

Sunset

Right then, who's for Malibu?

Nemo, Bought

The return journey to Cairns was just as bad and the children and Japanese tourists were just as sick (I'm assuming the latter have some sort of aversion to medication - if you ever saw Clive James' take on their TV show Endurance you might see the connection).

Anyway, feet back on dry land, we bought Nemo, which brought a smile to Ella's otherwise pale face. And then we walked over to the esplanade and listened to the rainbow lorikeets, who go absoulutely crazy about sunset, squarking passionately and swooping from tree to tree in huge numbers. Quite a welcoming committee really.

The Drop Off

Especially this one - the "drop off" behind Moore Reef, where the coral ends and the rest of the ocean begins again.

Helicopter

After that I got to ride up in the helicopter, which lands on the smallest floating helipad you've ever seen.

The views across Moore Reef were stunning.

Captive

Meanwhile, Ella and I were in the children's swimming enclosure, which clings precariously to the side of the pontoon. And Darren's dive took over an hour, so I even got to dry her off and walk her pushchair fifty times around the pontoon until she fell asleep.

It beats the local park I guess.

Nemo, Found

Ella was given "Finding Nemo" on DVD for her birthday and it's been an instant hit. Anyway, after our trip out to Moore Reef today I can tell you that Nemo is no longer stuck in a dentist's fish tank on the north shore of Sydney Harbour (yes, I've watched the film and narrowed down exactly where I think that animated dentist's surgery is, as clearly I have nothing better to do).

After lunch Darren had his second introductory dive and found Nemo, much to everyone's relief. There are all sorts of anemone fish and Nemo is the "clown" type. The coral he's sitting in is poisonous to the other fish but he has a special coating that makes him immune.

Smorgasbord

Anyway, like I said, it was lunchtime back at the pontoon and here's Ella in her XXS wetsuit tucking into her smorgasbord lunch; the same child seen clutching her tummy less than three hours ago.

Not such a bad mummy after all then?

Maori Wrasse

Being a braver soul, Darren opted for the first of many so-called introductory dives, though by the end of the week he'd done so many of them he was practically training the instructors.

Here he is meeting Wally, the resident Maori Wrasse at Moore Reef (I say this because every reef on the outer section appears to have it's own Maori Wrasse and more than one is called Wally. For all I know it's the same fish and he swims bloody fast).

I saw Wally myself while I was snorkelling and eventually plucked up courage to touch his tail which freaked me out so much that I went steaming out of the water muttering about it being almost lunchtime.

Well what would you have done?

Snorkelling - Moore Reef

We went out to Moore Reef with a company called Reef Magic. Moore Reef is on the outer section of the great barrier reef and it's a patch reef, so after the previous post you'll know what that means.

So they tell you it's suitable for children but what they don't mention in their glossy leaflets is the thing about the sea-sickness on trips to the outer reef. They save information like that until you've actually boarded the boat and then offer to flog you tablets as $3 a throw, if you'll pardon the pun. Of course, being married to a medic I take anything I can get my hands on, but not everyone shares this enthusiasm and those that don't spent a good deal of time looking at the bottom of a brown paper bag (which you have to chuck over the side of the boat, you know, down wind, to avoid return to sender).

My advice if you are ever considering a trip to Australia and coming out to the barrier reef (and I think this blog is leading some people in that direction) is that you take two tablets on the way out and two more at lunchtime and don't even bother with the homeopathic rubbish like ginger or whatever it is but go for the hard stuff and you'll rock up feeling fine.

Anyway, the other thing they don't metion in the leaflets is that children under eight can't take sea sickness tablets and that your 1.5 hour journey to their so-called stable pontoon (not sitting on drill platforms as I had imagined but weighted down with a few ropes, which challenges the semantics of the word "stable" to say the least) will inevitably mean lots of sick bags and ill-looking babies and whinging toddlers, in Ella's case unable to say "I feel sick" and therefore resorting to "I got sore mouth" and "I got sore tummy" and "I want take top off".

Oh yes, and "waaaaaaaaah". And then you feel like the worst and most irresponsible parent in the world for dragging them thirty miles out to see in the hope you can find Nemo, which I didn't.

Still, I cut quite a dash in the wetsuit, at least, once I'd exchanged the size they gave me for one I could actually zip up over my thighs without calling for reinforcements. And no, it's not customary to go snorkelling in a lifejacket, I'm just a bloody great girl as the Aussies would say.

Moore Reef

Sunday 8th July

Now I could tell you all sorts of things about the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, or about coral reefs in general, but I'll stick to the main points in case you desert me in my hour of geographical waffling.

Well, the most obvious thing to say is that the Great Barrier Reef is the only living thing on earth that can be seen from space, and here's the picture to prove it.

The second thing is that it takes up an area greater than the UK (which the Aussies love to repeat over and over) and that it's home to squillions of fish of all different sorts and lots of types of coral, some hard and some soft; brain coral, staghorn coral, anemone - that sort of thing.

The third thing is that there are three main types of reef; fringing reefs (which lie about the edges of the coast and islands), patch reefs (which look like, well, big patches of coral in the sea) and ribbon reefs which hang about places like the edge of a continental shelf, sort of in a line.

And finally, if you come to the great barrier reef, the trick is to go to the outer reef for the best coral and the best fishes. At least, that's what all the tour operators say, and as it's further away and more expensive to get there, they must be right.

Chillin'

Saturday July 7th

We deliberately didn't do much today, given that we were tired and given the temptation to rush straight out on a trip to the barrier reef. Instead we unpacked the cases a bit and found our feet, quite literally in Ella's case because we finally give in and bought her a pair of Crocs, which she's modelling in the first photograph. I hear the kids in the UK are wearing them this summer (which is surprising because they're a bugger for letting in water), but the Aussie kids have been wearing them for years.

The clothes in our suitcases felt even more damp in the context of a nice dry hotel room so I draped them wherever I could find space in the hope they'll dry out enough for us to wear them over the next few days.

We had a wander along the esplanade at lunchtime, through the touristy market selling an assortment of brazen Australiana, including canvas bags with aboriginal prints and hand-crafted glass necklaces and baby clothes with prints of kangaroos all over them. Then we stopped for a while at a water park on the seafront where Ella went splashing around with the locals, a significant number of whom were aboriginals or Torres Strait Islanders - not a situation she'd find herself in in the uber-smart eastern suburbs of Sydney but a situation I like because I think aborigines are beautiful and I could look at them all day. The kids are canny though because even with my long-distance lens they seemed to know when I was about to capture them and managed to look right down the camera almost every time.