Kuranda by train

Kuranda by train  

Construction of the Cairns - Kuranda railway was a tremendous engineering feat. Gold was discovered in 1873 in the mountains and the local area thrived, attracting miners and their families and tons were established.

The supply routes were slow and perilous into the mountains and in 1882 a devastating wet season flooded large areas and washed away roads which became impassable. Thousands came close to starvation. 

Legendary bushman Christie Palmerstone was tasked with finding a railway route to link the expending prosperous mining belt with Cairns on the seashore. Construction started in 1887 on one of the most ambitious construction project in the country and completed in 1891 to Kuranda but it took another decade to complete the next section of track going north. At any one time, 1,500 people worked on the project. It covers a distance of just 33 kilometres but took years to build and with the loss of 32 lives.

The railway rises a total of 327 metres in elevation, required excavating 2.3 million tons of rock, 15 hand cut tunnels (totalling 1,746 metres), 55 bridges (244 metres in steel and 1,894 metres in timber).

The railway is narrow gauge at 1,067mm (three foot six inches). Prior to 1901, each of the six colonies in Australia were responsible for infrastructure. Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania opted for narrow gauge. Other colonies, now states, opted for both standard and broad gauge. As a result of these decisions, Australian railways today are a mix of all three.

The first locomotive...

...and the second locomotive. These are 1720 class locomotives built between 1966 - 70 by Commonwealth Engineering, Brisbane under licence from Clyde Engineering and replaced the previous steam power locomotives on the Brisbane suburban services. As locomotives were upgraded, the 1720s were relocated to branch lines such as Kuranda. The are painted in Aboriginal art motifs.

A detail of the locomotive's brand.

The coach that I would be travelling in. These all date back to the early twentieth century,  the three oldest dating from 1909, 1911 and 1913. They are built of Silky Oak but when repairs are needed, more responsible sustainable sourced timber is used.

The inside of the carriage.

The Cairns railway station has occupied several sites over the decades and the original two storey timber building was located on Shields Street but the current building was relocated from McLeod Street in 1995. After leaving the urban sprawl, it was a straight and flat route past sugar cane fields. 

 

We stopped at Freshwater Station and picked up more passengers. This was traditionally the last place that railway builders could collect fresh water before climbing into the hills. They would find several streams en route but they had to build the railway track to reach them.

We passed through Redlynch. The railway reached here after just 17 months of construction but it would take four years for the railway to reach Kuranda.

People looking for work were told to go Red Lynch. Lynch was the Irish foreman who was in charge of hiring and firing workers. He had red hair and hence his nickname but many workers didn't know the reference and thought that Redlynch was the name of the place. 

When the community became large enough to be incorporated, it had to chose a name and Redlynch was already widely known and used. No one objected and it became the name of the town.

After Redlynch is the Horseshoe Bend which is a 180 degree bend and the start of the climb into the hills with a five chain radius curve (100.58 metres). Travellers can see the front of the train...

...and looking back, they can see the back of the train.

Many Australians of a certain age have visited here as during the Second World War when this was known as Jungara, it was the site of the largest field hospital in the southern hemisphere. The area was of major significance at the start of the Second World War when Japanese forces were surging through the Pacific and there was a real danger of a Japanese invasion of Australia.

Queensland was a major staging area for military forces. There was the Battle of the Coral Sea, there was a Japanese attack on Port Douglas and Australian troops tracked through muddy rain forest along the Kokoda Trail through Papua New Guinea just 200 kilometres from the most northerly point of Australia to oppose Japanese forces from occupying the area and using it as a launch pad to invade Australia. The track was probably used by locals but is claimed to have been created by European miners in the 1890s to access the Yodda Kokoda goldfields. 

Some of the scenery.

Soon after the Horseshoe Bend, we passed through our first tunnel, the first of 15 to reach Kuranda. The original plan included 19 tunnels but one was bypassed as the track was rerouted along the coastal plain to avoid a tunnel through a spur of mountain extending from Mount Whitfield and three other proposed tunnels were replaced with deep cuttings. 

At Tunnel No 6 in 1973, asked bandits stopped and robbed a train that was delivering bags of money to businesses in the Tablelands fro wages for staff. They escaped over dirt tracks using trail bikes and were never apprehended and remain at large. 

More scenery. 

Every tunnel has a number and the length of the tunnel in metres.

We passed through Stoney Creek Station. It once was a busy station but it is now just a sign post and an open sided shed to shelter under in the rain. When the railway was being built, a busy town developed in the gorge below. Many workers were based here to work on the tunnels and the bridges. The town had several amusement halls, pubs, it own brewery producing 2,000 gallons of beer a week and a Methodist Church. 

Just after the station is the amazing Stoney Creel Falls Bright, a steel trestle structure on a tight curve and on a rising gradient. On one side is a view down the tributary valley to the main gorge...

...and on the other side is a view of the falls...

...and if you look up, you can see the user section of the falls...

...and if you look back, travellers can see the back portion of the train following them up the gorge.

A little further up the the trail. a look back will show the bridge and the waterfall.

We had climbed up into the mountains and we could look down on the Barron River as it flows out of the gorge. The rivers original name was Bibhoora but was renamed by Europeans in 1875 when two police inspectors, Robert Arthur Johnstone and Alexander Douglas-Douglas named it after Thomas Barron (1835 - 1882) who was the chief clerk of police in Brisbane. 

We should never loose sight of the original occupiers of the land here who were the  Djabugay Bama. There are hundreds of different tribes with different languages, cultures and histories that are liberally collectively described as Aboriginal but I had not taken sufficient notice of all the subtle differences to date to actually name them but had just used the term Aboriginal but each tribe is very focused on their particular group so I must apologise for not not knowing that there are so so many subcultures.

As part of the culture, there are many stories and the one that is relevant here is that the Barron River (Bibhoora) was created by Gudju Gudju, the rainbow serpent.

                                         
A view of the gorge from the side.

A view up the side of the gorge. This part of the trackbed was the most difficult to build as it crossed a section of unstable rock. Workers were lowered on ropes to hack away at the rock to create a route but landslides were common and ruined all the work that they had worked so hard to create. They had to carry on hacking away at the rock until they found some solid bedrock on which to lay the track. This area today is represented by the Glacier Rock and Red Bluff landmarks. 

This is the portal to Tunnel No 15, the longest tunnel on the section at 490 metres and a major engineering challenge due to the length and geology. In order to contrast the tunnel quickly, not only was it mined from both ends but addicts or shafts were dug and there were eight tunnel faces being worked on at the same time. It is a monument to the engineers' skills that all the faces met up dead on true. 

There is a view across the gorge to the Bridal Veil Falls with a 305 metres fall. Down in the valley between the trees, there were glimpses of Barron Gorge Hydro Electric Station surface facilities but none of the station itself as it is constructed largely underground. Construction started in 1932 and it started producing electricity in 1935 as the country's first major underground HEP station. 

Then we came into Barron Falls Station, now being renamed to the original Din Din Falls.

A view of the falls.

And then it was into Kuranda Station.

The Heritage listed signal box at Kuranda.

A view inside the signal box with its 37 lever frame, one of only nine in Queensland that is still operational and used daily. The Kuranda track is a National Engineering Landmark and a tribute to all those that laboured to complete its construction.

The entrance to the station. 

A detail of the ticket office. 

Mossman Gorge

 Mossman Gorge 

We had breakfast at Grant's for the second time in Mossman and then turned up the road to reach the Mossman Gorge Cultural Centre and the start of the Mossman Gorge which is part of the Daintree National Park.

We were driven up the narrow road from the centre by bus to the start of the walk through the Mossman Gorge. Traffic was originally allowed to dive up by themselves but the road is narrow with few passing places and limited parking so it became a bottleneck of a nightmare so only park buses are allowed up although people can park their cars at the visitor centre and walk up the road.

A view of the river...

...and another view...

...and a view of the swimming hole although swimming is banned when water levels are high. Some of their promotional material shows people swimming in the river and relaxing on the boulders in the river but conditions can change rapidly. Several people have been washed away, some never to be seen again, knocked unconscious, eaten by crocodiles or washed out to sea.

There is no physical barrier to stop people swimming, just signs to say that it is unsafe but people are ignorant of the dangers, or full of bravado. Common denominators are young male, alcohol and German. Many of the warning signs are bilingual in English and German to ensure that tourists are aware of the danger. 

Another view of the river.

Some fungus.

An unusual spider and on that our guide had never seen before. It was the size of a man's palm so fairly large.

A swimming hole although it was so small, that it was more of a plunge pool and cooling off place in the height of summer than a place to swim. 

A twisted vine climbing up a tree. We searched every trunk for a sighting of the Boyd's Forest Dragon, a lizard as long as a man's forearm but we saw none. Our guide even encouraged us with a prize of a drink of our choice but we  didn't find any. It was a rainy day and they often retreat into dense vegetation to avoid the rain, so we weren't likely to see any but with a reward in view, I checked every tree but to no avail. 

We passed the local sugar mill which was still owned locally as many have been bought up by huge sugar corporations. Te locomotives are housed in sheds and are carefully maintained whereas the wagons are left out on spurs all across the network.

Some of the cane wagons in the depot next to the sugar mill. Just to the left of the photo is the tail of a huge mound made up of bagasse. Bagasse is a byproduct of the sugar refining process and is the remains of the sugar cane after all the sugar has been extracted. It has several uses such as being weaved into sheets for carpets or screening, for cattle feed, to make paper or to use as a fuel to produce the steam to extract the sugars from the cane and to refine the syrup from a yellow liquid into sugar. 

Next was a cultural tour along the beach and through the forest led by a local called Link whose family have lived here since 1850s. This a native honey bee colony although much smaller than commercial hives.

We were introduced to green ants which make their nest inside leaves that they have sown together. Hold a green ant by the head and lick its abdomen and you have a candy like citrus experience. Some people didn't want to join in with the experience but I had to do it. It was an experience to be enjoyed and it was tasty and I do love to learn bushcraft. But I am not about to brag about licking ants bums in my local pub.

Some of the items that the locals hunt and eat or collect for different uses including boomerangs and musical instruments.  We also had a walk through the forest and Link told us which plants were edible and leaves and berries for medicinal purposes.

Our last stop for the day was at an art gallery where we had a talk on aboriginal art and had some practise the paint our own beans in a traditional pattern.

Daintree Rain Forest

 Daintree Rain Forest   

Our wildlife adventure started before we left the hotel. When we returned the previous night after our evening meal in the town centre, we were met at reception by a cane toad. 

In the morning there were two White Lipped Green Tree Frogs holding on to the stems of the rushes in the pond at reception. There are the width of a man's hand.

We stopped in Mossman for breakfast. It is an old established town and I just had to look at some of the architecture such as this brick built art nouveau style 1955 building and near it...

...the Exchange Hotel built extensively of wood and completed in 1898 with the balcony along the top floor.

We passed through farming country, squeezed into the thin strip of land between the sea and the rising foothills of the Great Divide. Some fields had cattle in them, each with its own pair or more of white ibis. They stand on the back of the cow and peck at parasites or stand on the ground waiting for insects disturbed by the grazing cow.

Just a little further was a large barramundi fish farm. A heron was fishing near one of the ponds. The barramundi is a popular fish with firm white meat although difficult to catch in the wild. Farmed barramundi have a brown tinge but wild line caught fish have white flesh.

We caught the ferry across the Daintree River. I call it a ferry but it is a barge which pulls itself across the river by means of two steel cables. Locals were asked if they wanted a bridge but there was a resounding 'No' as it would create more traffic and make it easier to drive into the area and the locals, farmers, people who love the forest, people who like to live off grid and the wishing to have an alternative lifestyle all declined the bridge.

After driving off the barge, we were in the Daintree Rain Forest and the road started climbing up into the hills via a long series of steep hairpin bends through thick forest.

Part way up was a lookout. We stopped but it was raining heavily and there was not much to see through the rain and low cloud. 

Even later in the day as we retraced our steps, we could make out the estuary of the Daintree River and the waves crashing on the beach and beyond, the Coral Sea but the sights were distance and the growing vegetation is impinging on the view so it remains to be seen whether the authorities will cut back any trees and bushes to preserve an uninterrupted view. The local name for here is Walu Wugirriga. 

We moved on to Coopers Creek, a privately run nature reserve owned by Angie and Neal who are both passionate about the forest. Coopers Creek is within the national park and represents some of the oldest and deadliest rain forest on earth. 

The Amazon is considered to be about 10 million years old but the Daintree Rain Forest dates back to over 180 million years when Australia was part of a massive continent known as Gondwanaland just before it broke up due to tectonic forces. This has given the flora plenty of time to build up their defences against being eaten but in turn, the fauna has developed means to counter the toxins. 

We hadn't even started our tour and in the eaves of the house, there was a deadly spider, slightly smaller than a man's hand which spins the largest web relative to its size and it is so strong that it can catch birds and bats. The spider immobilisers its prey with silk and then injects it with a liquid. The spider doesn't 'eat' the prey but the enzymes break down the inner organs of the prey so that the spider can suck the juices out of the host body. 

Another view of the same spider but with a better view of the web. 

Part of the estate was previously planted as an orchard for exotic fruits. These are immature rambutan fruits, and when ripe, their red skins reveal a pale white fruit similar to a lychee. The numerous fruits available attract cassowaries but we saw one whist we were on site. There are strict regulations about what can be grown or sold within the boarders of the national park. For instance, commercial sale of fruits cannot exceed 10% of total income. They can be used freely for domestic consumption but not for commercial exploitation. The orchards here are slowly being reclaimed by the rain forest and have shrunk by half over the last 30 years to less than four hectares. 

The forest here is ancient, more than 180 million years old when Australia broke away from the supercontinent of Gondwana and it is the oldest surviving ancient rain forest in the world. It has had a long time to adapt and the flora have developed deadly poisons whilst the fauna have developed ways to counter the poisons. It is therefore not surprising that nine of the top ten most poisonous things are found in Australia. In comparison, the Amazon is a mere ten million years old.

We were introduced to green ants who build nests in trees by pulling together several leaves and using their antennae to stimulate aphids to product silk to hold the eaves together. These are called dairies as the ants herd the aphids together and eat their honeydew. In return the aphids are protected by the ants from predators. 

An orchid growing on a tree.

This is a yellow walnut tree but it is unrelated to walnuts but its fruit is similar although deadly and even cassowaries can be poisoned by it. They only eat the fruit after it has fallen off the tree and turned orange by which time some of the poison has broken down and thus they are not affected by it.

Just out of shot are the buttresses. Many trees in rain forests have buttresses and it was originally thought that they were to help support the tree in sometimes soft sediments and as an anchor when hurricanes tear through the area.

There is an alternative theory as not all trees in the same area produce buttresses and not all trees of the same species produce buttresses. The heavy rains leach away nutrients very quickly and wash leaf litter away. I noticed that despite being millions of years old, there was little soil but an abundance of stones on the surface of the forest floor as there had been insufficient time between rainy seasons to build up any depth of soil. 

Buttresses catch leaf litter and vegetable detritus at times of high rain fall and flooding and so the tree benefits from catching this debris and absorb the nutrients as they decay rather than having them washed away to sea.

A cyclid palm which has an interesting way of pollinating. Both male and female palms produce a pod something like a giant pineapple. The male palm excrete a chemical compound that attracts insects who swarm into the pod to fed on nectar but also get covered in pollen. In mid morning, the palm secrets starches which increase the temperature within the pod by 12 degrees centigrade and repels the insects. At the same time, the female palm secrets an attractive chemical so the insects leave the male pod nd walk across the forest floor to reach the female pod to fed and in doing so, they fertilises the seeds.

In the afternoon the female pod warms up just as the male is sending out attractive chemicals and the insects return to the male pod. The process is repeated for several days until all the pollen has fertilised all the seeds.

The female pods eventually explodes and showers the seeds over a wide area and importantly, away from the parent palm as seeds that fall directly under the parent palm would be competition for nutrients and would not survive.

Some of the fruits on the forest floor.

A cassowary plum which is poisonous to humans but it is the cassowary's favourite food. The cassowary digestive system only takes an hour for the fruit to pass through its system before the poison builds up inside the animal. In contrast, the human digestive system takes six hours. In the picture, Angie is holding the fruit but is using leaves to prevent contact with the skin of the fruit which also contains poison so even brushing against it can be deadly.

Another species of tree that is several hundred years old but these trees of this age are hollow. The blotches are caused by a beetle that bores into the tree and lays its eggs inside. It then fills in the hole that it made by mixing a glue that it secrets with the sawdust.

The larva eats the sap and when it is mature, it burrows out of the tree but fills in the hole it escape from with sawdust and poo. It is also a favourite food for possums who have a specially adapted finger to dig out the plug and pull the larva out.

Some areas within the national park are privately owned but still subject to regulations but here is a small but well known tea garden in the middle of the park.

The dinosaur tree, thought to be extinct and lost to mankind but a few specimens like this one were rediscovered in the area and hence the need to preserve areas of ancient rain forest.

This is feral pig damage, an ancient palm that takes hundreds of years to reach maturity. Feral pigs love to eat the heart of the palm at ages between 15 and 40 years. It kills the plant and endangers the future of the species if young palms do nit survive to adulthood.

Feral pigs are active at night time. They can be trapped in the park but have to be removed from the park before they can be destroyed which is a logistic nightmare in the forest and expensive. Pigs on privately owned land can be shot, even within the boundaries of the park but the pigs seem to know where they are safe and sleep during the day in the park and venture into privately owned land at night to forage.

They also make hollows on the forest floor which disrupts the vegetation. They root about on the forest floor and dig in the dry stream beds.When the rainy season comes, the floods of water wash down the disturbed stream beds and carry leaf litter and sediments down stream and out to sea. Here the tannins of the vegetable matter turn the water acidic and kills off coral whilst the fine sediments settle on the corals choking them. There are an estimated 60,000 wild pigs in the park with ineffective controls.

Another cassowary plum on the forest floor.

After lunch, we moved on to Cape Tribulation, so called as James Cook's ship struck a reef and starting leaking, Non essential supplies were jettisoned and temporary repairs were made. The ship had to limp along the coast until a suitable place, now called Cookstown, was found to make effective repairs.

A view of the sand beside Cape Tribulation. It is the only place in the world where there are two adjacent UNESCO sites, the rain forest and the Great Barrier Reef.

One of Australia's deadliest plants, the Gympie Gympie stinging tree, also called the Suicide Tree. It has some fine glass like fibres that carry a toxin that causes immense pain. They are so fine but strong that they can pierce through ordinary clothing. Horses have been recorded as dying within two hours of contact with the plant by cardiac arrest.  Its alternative name arises from the fact that animals and humans will jump off cliffs to escape the pain. 

We hadn't seen a cassowary all day, and this is the nearest that I got to one, a concrete life size sculpture standing as high as a man and the third largest bird in the world today after the ostrich and the emu.

We took the barge across the Daintree River and stopped in the mid afternoon for a crocodile and wildlife cruise along the Daintree. 

We had only left port but after just five minutes we saw our first wildlife, a baby crocodile. It was nearly a metre long although this picture is on zoom so it looks bigger. It was born in 2022 but until it has survived several seasons, it will not be named as just 2% of crocodile eggs that hatch reach maturity out of the 50 - 100 eggs laid. 

A white lipped green tree frog hanging on to an aerial root, but it may not have seen the snake nearby that was moving towards it. It had been seen earlier by another captain and relayed to other captains by radio. We watched for a while but nothing happened. The frog thought it was safe and didn't move whilst the snake never got within striking range and gave up the chase.

We saw several crocodiles who were mostly used to the tour boat and didn't slither away underwater. They just stayed there half asleep. They are like several species including dolphins and whales who can shut down one side of their brain and 'sleep' but the other half of the brain and eyes can stay alert to watch out for danger.

A view of the mass of roots in a mangrove swamp. Tree s send down aerial roots for stability in the soft mud. They also send up snorkel roots through the mud to the air above the high tide mark in order to help them breath.

A nocturnal bird having a sleep near the water's edge but unluckily hard to identify positively due to the vegetation in the way.

Another great crocodile, a female who rarely grow large or over four metres but males can live for 100 years and never stop growing so can become up to eight metres long. They can spring up to half their length so never go nearer than five metres to crocodile infested waters.

A close up of the 4.5 metres long male crocodile, but this wasn't the giant ScarFace crocodile that we had hoped to see.

Another large male crocodile, lazing in the afternoon sun...

...a close up of his face...

...and a very lucky shot of a kingfisher, waiting for a moment to strike.