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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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