Last night we fully experienced the true meaning of the “wet season” in Far North Queensland. The rain woke us up in the middle of night and was coming down in buckets. This amount of rain proved to be too much for our trusty tent, and for the first time on our trip it began to leak. Luckily, when we woke up it was sunny again so we were able to dry most of our stuff.We leisurely drove the scenic coastal route on Captain Cook Highway to the Mossman Gorge section of the Daintree National Park. We walked the 3.5km rainforest circuit track and found a giant standing strangler fig tree. The fig tree is unique because it grows from the sky down. The seed is dropped by other animals at the top of a host tree. The roots spiral down to the ground and end up killing the host tree, eventually leaving it hollow inside. We continued down the highway until we got to a river and needed to take the ferry across. On the other side was the last stretch of paved road into Cape Tribulation (to go any further you need a 4WD). The winding road had lots of speed bumps to prevent drivers from hitting any of the endangered Cassowaries that live up here.
There are only about 1500 left in the wild, so when Willy saw a big black bird in the distance on the road, we were pretty excited and whipped out our camera. It was a Cassowary and it even had a baby with it. Interestingly enough, we learned that it was probably a male that we saw, because after the female lays her eggs, she takes off to look for another mate while the male stays back with the eggs. It was definitely as big as described, and I’m glad we were in the car when we encountered them. We stopped at Mount Alexandra for a lookout over the Daintree River, Cape Kimberly and Snapper Island. We set up camp early tonight at the Cape Tribulation campground and made ourselves a great BBQ chicken skewer feast.
