Cairns - Lake Placid
One fine day we visited Lake Placid on the Barron River. Forgive me
if I trot out that hackneyed old adjective again, but ‘picturesque’
described Lake Placid to a ‘T’, as did its name. The lake
was sheltered by a backdrop of steep, forest-clad hills and, high up
near the summit, we saw the Scenic Railway train pass across a small
bridge as it twisted and turned its way up to Kuranda.
Looking across Lake Placid. See the Scenic Railway
train up near the top of the mountain? Two giant
diesel locos and fourteen carriages . . . up there!
There were canoes on the lake and a lot of water birds, possibly because Placid is designated a ‘fish refuge’ - fishing is banned. We noticed a small white sign nailed to the trunk of a tree, too high for my eyes to read unaided. The zoom on the camera picked it up, though, and I've included it as an ‘inset’ on the picture below.
Lake Placid with cormorants
on the rocks and a hard-to-spot duck. Can you see the small notice on
the tree trunk?
It beggars belief that the water level could ever reach that height! It doesn't say so anywhere, but I imagine the culprit was Cyclone Rona which hit the area in 1999. The Barron Falls must have been worth seeing that year.
Cairns - Lake Morris
Another ‘must see’ attraction, quite close to the caravan
park, was Lake Morris, Cairns’ main reservoir. It is also known
as the Copperlode Dam. Back in the early 20th century it was realised
that the water supply from the two creeks that supplied Cairns would
become inadequate as the city grew. The City Engineer, a chappie called
F. R. Morris, tramped all over the densely forested Lamb Range of mountains
looking for a suitable place to build a new dam. Got him out of the
office, I suppose. In 1935 he finally settled on the location of the
Copperlode Falls. Subsequent surveys confirmed that his choice was a
good one. The cost of building the dam was estimated at $3 million (peanuts
today). However, the dam wasn't completed for over forty years and the
eventual cost was around $6.5 million. The resulting lake was named
after Mr. Morris for his excellent work.
Driving up the 16 kilometre access road to the dam is quite an experience in itself. The word ‘switchback’ might have been coined just for this narrow road with its continuous hairpin bends, cliff faces and sheer drops. Just to make it more exciting - as if it needs it - there are frequent warnings of falling rocks. I wasn't sure what precautions I could take to minimise the risk of a rock descending from above. But it was nice of the Council to warn us.
Left: Looking down
on the Cairns outer suburbs from the lake access road gives some impression
of the gradient.
Right: Fabulous views
of rainforest and mountains from Lake Morris Road.
The amenities provided at the dam were excellent and the café staff were exceptionally helpful and friendly. As frequently occurs though, we were unable to discover the origin of the name of the Copperlode Falls - even the Cairns Council didn't know, so we were told.
When we visited the dam it was full to its maximum capacity with a little water still slopping over the spillway. The rainfall in the catchment area is far greater than that which falls on Cairns city. Good old F. R. Morris chose wisely. A few years ago, in 1999, over 800 millimetres of rain fell on the catchment area in just two days! Can you imagine that? Back home in Perth the average rainfall for a whole year is only 860 millimetres and this area copped almost that amount in two days. How about that for a shower? The culprit would be Cyclone Rona again, I expect.
The view of Lake Morris from the café.
Wouldn't you love to build a house on that site?
Lake Morris holds 45 gigalitres of water, that’s 45 and nine noughts in litres. Or, if you prefer imperial measure, it’s ten billion gallons. A controlled quantity of water is released from the dam, not into a pipeline to be pumped to the treatment plant, but back into Freshwater Creek where it tumbles down the hill to be picked up again lower down and fed into the treatment plant.
Cairns - Green Island
At huge
expense we visited Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef, just to bring
you some pictures back. Hope you appreciate our efforts. We sailed over
on a large and powerful catamaran. Just us, the crew . . . and fifteen
thousand Japanese tourists. The first picture we took was of Cairns
looking back from the boat as it set out for Green Island. The water
was as still as a mill pond, except where our boat’s screws churned
it up. Impressed by the nautical terminology?
Cairns from the catamaran.
We saw a yellow seaplane with
blue floats on the water as we departed from Cairns. Then there was
one moored when we arrived at the Island. Same one? Dunno. It was taxiing
out to take off when we left the island but I wasn't able to get a pic
'cos this great white catamaran chose that moment to get in the way.
To my shame I can't identify this
seaplane. A DeHavilland Otter
perhaps? Doubtless somebody will put me right.
The crossing took about fifty minutes and was uneventful. Even the swell wasn’t sufficient to upset Mrs Bucket’s stomach so that will give you some idea. Our fellow passengers were nearly all Japanese and were good natured, polite and friendly. Mostly shorter and slimmer than the few 'European' passengers, they served to emphasise the folly of this bare midriff fashion so popular amongst Australian girls. Do these young things not have mirrors in their homes? Do their parents not advise them? Do their neighbours not fall about laughing as they see them sally forth with acres of blubber bulging, or worse still hanging, over their oh-so-low belts which they, in their youth and innocence, believe looks sexy? Surely here is justification for the invention of the digital camera. “Before you go Kylie dear, take a look at this picture. A beached whale? No, it's you dear, squeezing through the front door on your way out just now.”
People were having a great time as we arrived at Green Island, swimming, scuba diving, and out in glass bottom boats. Even flying - well, sort of.
Looks a heap of fun, doesn't it? And so colourful
too. You next, Mrs B?
I heard somewhere that this was the only island on the Barrier Reef which is covered in rainforest. Though small - and let's face it, over commercialised - it is still a beautiful island. The water was crystal clear and the fish and birds plentiful (feathered and otherwise). The feathered ones were so tame that they became a nuisance around the food outlets and it had been made an offence to feed them. However, if the lunch we were served was any guide, that rule was most certainly in the birds' best interest. The meal was a total rip off and pretty disgusting.
Left: Do not leave food unattended - it
may poison the wildlife.
Right: An
offence to feed this to the birds? Damn well should be too!
Apart from the lunch it was a wonderful day. The glass bottomed boat trip was very interesting. We could see a wide variety of fish and coral as the boat drifted along, and the guide explained all about the different threats to the health of the reef. Photography through the glass bottom was not very satisfactory because of reflections off the glass and loss of colour. Pictures taken looking directly into the water were even worse because of both light reflection and distortion.
Left: Fish seen through
the glass bottom of the boat.
Right: Pam holding a real live crocodile.
On the island was an attraction described as Marineland Melanesia. There we watched sharks, turtles and crocodiles being fed and had the opportunity to hold a small croc which Pam was very keen to do. The sharks were only small and not very exciting. There were five large turtles, their shells up to a metre in length. The size of the crocs varied from much smaller than the one Pam is holding to great scary giants. There were dozens of them at all different stages of growth.
Cairns - the Tablelands
The
little town of Atherton lies high in the region known as the Tablelands,
a flattish area up in the mountains. From Cairns, the road climbed steeply
some 2,500 feet and though wider and better-surfaced than the
‘switchback’ access road to the Copperlode Dam, it was very
similar. There were numerous hairpin bends and steep drops. We were
delayed for some time by maintenance crews working to stabilise both
sides of the road. It seemed that the hillside was tending to slide
down onto the road in some places and in others the road was trying
to slide down the hill. There were several attractions on the journey;
the two we liked most were giant fig trees.
Left: At the time
we visited, the Cathedral Fig had dropped its leaves which scientists
estimate would have weighed one tonne.
Right: Pam was dwarfed by the immense root system.
The first had been named the Cathedral Fig though it didn't resemble a cathedral in any way as far as we could see. The data I've used (below) was ‘borrowed’ from an information sign so it's probably somebody's copyright. However . . . The tree is of the green fig variety. It started life around five hundred years ago as a tiny seed dropped into a hollow or crevice high in the canopy of a ‘host’ tree by a bird or bat. There it germinated, drawing nutrients from leaf litter and rainfall. In due course the young fig sent long tentacle-like roots down to the ground, a rich source of food. Other tentacles twisted around the trunk of the host tree. As the fig continued to grow it may have eventually strangled its host which then died and rotted away. By that time the fig had enough roots stretching down into the earth to support itself. The Cathedral Fig has grown to 150 feet tall, the height of a five storey building, and if twenty four people linked hands around its base they wouldn't quite meet together. Fig trees, as we learned from an elderly Aboriginal man when we visited Kuranda, are home to a multitude of other plants. The Cathedral Fig is home to at least ten different species. However, we now learned from the information sign that it isn't just plants that reside high in its branches and among its roots - so too do a wide range of birds, insects, bats and other mammals. The red fruit and fleshly leaves of the fig are rich in nutrients.
The other fig specimen we visited was a curtain fig. It began life in much the same way as the Cathedral Fig but after dying and starting to rot, the host tree toppled over until its fall was arrested by an obliging neighbouring tree. The dead host became lodged at an angle. The fig continued to drop roots down vertically from its trunk which formed the curtain-like appearance in the picture below. In due course the host rotted away but by then the fig was quite strong enough to stand on its own two thousand feet.
Left:
Mr Very-Full-Of-Himself Brush Turkey.
Right: The Curtain Fig was a popular and interesting
attraction.
Hanging about in the vicinity of the Cathedral Fig's parking area were several Australian Brush-turkeys. They were probably hoping for food scraps but, in their own best interest, they didn't get any from us. One of the males was a fine specimen, strutting about in his colourful mating plumage as the picture shows. He kept chasing the dowdier females into the forest, possibly to keep any food for himself. Horny or hungry? An arrogant fellow, either way.
We also visited a ‘crater’ on our journey to Atherton. Whether caused by volcanic action or perhaps a meteorite, we didn't know. There was no rim, just a hollow filled with rain forest vegetation. When we found an explanatory sign we were surprised to read that the ‘crater’ we were in was probably not a crater at all. At the bottom was a stream where I unwittingly adopted a blood sucking leech which Pam later spotted on my foot. I flicked it off but it left its head behind. Serve it right! I suppose it had some anti-coagulant properties ’cos my foot dripped all over the place for a while.
We found nothing of exceptional interest in Atherton itself, so meandered back to Cairns.
Cairns
- The Butterfly Santuary at Kuranda.
The
Kuranda Butterfly Sanctuary resembled a mini-rainforest with a stream
tumbling through it, lush green foliage and the air full of brightly
coloured fluttering wings. We followed winding paths between butterflies
of all sizes settled on leaves, chasing each other through the air,
and even landing on us. Being just a little ‘follically challenged’
I was frequently able to feel butterflies crawling on my head. They
tickled.
A selection of the butterflies at the Kuranda
Butterfly Sanctuary.
Insects coloured orange, yellow or red, we were told, are frequently poisonous. If you eat them, that is. We tried not to. On the other hand, many butterflies use those colours to fool predators into thinking they are poisonous, when really they are not. We also discovered that it is a myth that butterflies only live for a day or two - some live for three months. The ones that are most active have shorter lives because the powder on their wings falls off as they flutter until they can no longer fly. Males are more active than females because their role in life is to catch as many females as possible and mate with them, therefore males have shorter - and you might think, merrier - lives. The females, however, are very choosy about which male they mate with, and once fertilised, will not mate again. I just hope that the males embrace the philosophy that it is better to travel in hope than to arrive.
A special area is set aside for the females to lay their eggs. Each will lay around five hundred eggs at a time. To persuade them to lay in the designated place, the plants most favoured by the butterflies as food for their future caterpillars are all grouped together, away from public access. The staff periodically collect the eggs and transfer them to a private breeding area where they hatch. The caterpillars are nurtured as they grow, protected from predators. This system ensures the highest possible success rate and enables the emerging butterflies to spread and dry their wings without ‘help’ from little humans. It also has an added advantage. The foliage in the public enclosure through which we walked was beautiful - pristine. If many thousands of hungry caterpillars were allowed to feed on it, there soon would be no greenery left.