Atherton Tablelands

My last tour in Cairns took me to the Atherton Tablelands. This is the land in the mountains west of Cairns and since it is at such a higher elevation, it is about five degrees cooler than in the city and is much less humid. I actually got a bit cold at one point in the trip since I was just wearing a t-shirt and shorts.

Getting up to the Tablelands you have to drive along a very windy mountain road which has something like 267 turns in just 11 kilometers of road. So one of the first questions the tour guide, Scott, asked us was if anyone gets car sick. We were safe because no one raised their hand. It was a very windy road, but Scott seemed to keep everyone occupied very well by telling stories or pointing out neat things along the road. Something I found very interesting was about eucalyptus trees that were growing along the lower parts of the mountain road. Once we got up to a higher elevation the vegetation turned to dense rainforest. But Scott told us to notice the dark and almost burned look to the bark of these eucalyptus trees. The reason they looked like that was because they actually were burned. The fire was actually intentionally started, too. Eucalyptus leaves are very oily and extremely flammable and the trees actually need fire to survive and grow. Scott said that if they aren’t burned intentionally that they will actually start a fire themselves (I forget exactly how he said that worked but it made sense). So in order to make sure that the fires don’t get out of control they burned the eucalyptus trees before they can do it themselves. So, I thought that was quite interesting; a tree that can start fire on its own.

Our first stop once we got up into the Tablelands was a lookout on the side of the road that gave a pretty nice view of where we had just come from and how high up we actually were. It was kind of hard to see some things because of the clouds but it was still pretty neat as you can hopefully see in the picture. Then we moved on to a giant tree called the Cathedral Fig Tree. These types of trees look more like a bunch of vines, but actually they are a bunch of roots. The tree begins by attaching onto an existing tree pretty high up in the canopy and then it sprouts roots down towards the earth. Eventually it gets so big that it will actually kill off the pre-existing tree and just continue to get more massive. So this was just one of the biggest ones around, so it was pretty cool. We were also looking for some muskrat kangaroos while we were in the forest, but didn’t have much luck. We saw one but weren’t able to catch it.

From the Cathedral Fig Tree we traveled on down the road for awhile until we came to Lake Barrine. This lake is part of the Crater Lakes National Park which is a group of craters and lakes that were formed from volcanic explosions thousands of years ago. Since the lake is the remnants of a volcano, it is very deep and the land around it is quite fertile. We took a walk through the rainforest around the lake, which unfortunately became a very wet excursion when it decided to rain on us. We were looking for all sorts of neat trees in the forest and also came across quite a few of the forest dragons again. We even got to see some baby ones. But the worst thing about this rainforest was the leeches. Now, at first when Scott warned us about the leeches, I was thinking they were the big, massive ones that bother you when you’re in rivers, but when I finally had one attach to me, I saw that they were just little ones. However, their size can be very deceiving. Not only are they hard to pull off, but most of the time you don’t even realize you have them on you until it’s too late, making it even more difficult to pull them off of you. So, it was a really bad idea for me to be wearing only flip flops because when I got out of that rainforest I was awfully muddy and had about seven or eight resident leeches on my legs and feet.

Our next stop was for lunch, which we had at a picnic area at Lake Eacham, another of the Crater Lakes. Before I sat down for lunch I got a little bit of a surprise. I felt a little bit of an itch on the bottom of my foot and when I looked at it, I realized that I hadn’t quite gotten all of the leeches off of me at Lake Barrine. Now, this guy had been hanging on and sucking my blood for about 20 minutes or so on the ride from Lake Barrine, so he was getting pretty fat and was extremely hard to pull off. Finally after lots of pulling and squeezing on the little mongrel, I was able to get it off. He left behind a pretty nice little hole in the bottom of my foot and it bled for quite awhile and even hurt a little bit. After I rinsed my foot off pretty good, the bleeding finally stopped. Luckily I hadn’t been the worst case because my good friend, Mark, from London, had a massive leech on him that just had a feast on his foot. It was absolutely disgusting how big that sucker was and how long Mark bled after they got it off of him. Anyway, that’s enough about leeches. Lake Eacham was the lake that we could actually swim in if we wanted to, but it was pretty cold and rainy so I passed and there were actually only a couple of people that did jump in. I did get to see some turtles and some kind of big lizard around the outside of the lake though. A neat fact I learned about the turtles that lived in the lake was that they can breathe out of their butts! It actually allows them to be able to stay underwater for longer periods of time. Ah, the resourcefulness of nature.

Then we finally got to see our first waterfall, Millaa Millaa Falls. This waterfall is the most photographed waterfall in the world when it comes to movies and commercials. The reason for that is it’s so easy to get to. You can park right up near it whereas most other waterfalls are deep in the jungle somewhere. You are also normally able to swim in this waterfall, but since there had been so much rain lately it was just a little bit too dangerous for us to take the plunge. Even though it was still raining, Millaa Millaa Falls was a very beautiful place to visit.

Moving on toward another waterfall, Scott realized that we hadn’t really seen a whole lot of wildlife yet, so he took us to an area where he usually sees some tree kangaroos. Sure enough, the spot where he said they’d be we saw one. We only got to see it for a little bit, but it was still really neat. They get spooked very easily so I unfortunately did not get a picture of it. The tree kangaroo actually looked more like a monkey to me, but there are no monkeys in Australia, so the tree kangaroo is as close as we get to monkeys around here. Just up the road from where we saw the tree kangaroo was another lookout, which we stopped at but really didn’t get to see much of anything at all. We were pretty much inside a cloud, so as you can see from the picture there really wasn’t much of anything to look at. The place had a really eerie feeling to it though, which I found to be pretty neat.

Our final destination took us to Dinner Falls and a huge crater which I can’t even remember if it had a specific name, but it was just so massive. This crater, like the lakes, was also made from volcanic activities, but it is much smaller and you can actually see how deep it is. Scott made sure we brought some rocks along from the parking lot to throw into the crater, because it made a huge sound from having such a far drop. That was pretty cool and then Dinner Falls was actually a series of waterfalls, but nothing terribly spectacular.

The real highlight of the day came when we were just getting ready to leave Dinner Falls, head back to the bus and then make our way back to Cairns. However, we were in for a surprise. Cassowaries, as you may know from reading on earlier post, are quite dangerous to humans and have even been known to kill a couple people. Well, a small group of us had walked up the hill from Dinner Falls and were standing there chatting when all of a sudden one of the girls yells out “Oh shit, what is that?” I looked up and standing right there about 10 feet away from us is a big, huge cassowary. Like most tourists would we all run and yell, which is the last thing you are supposed to do when you come across a cassowary. I remember thinking though, like a huge wuss, that as long as there is someone between me and the bird, I will be fine, it will get them first. Well luckily for all of us the bird did not get too excited and decide to run after us. However, the cassowary was now standing right in the middle of the path; our only way out of the forest. So we ended up having to wait….and wait…..and wait until about 45 minutes later it finally wandered off a little ways up into the forest. So we slowly snuck back towards where it had been and as soon as Scott gave the OK, he led the way for us out of the forest. But then suddenly I look up into the trees where it had wandered off to and there is the damn thing running after us! I looked up at Scott and he said to just keep walking, so I put my head down and just kept walking, but it was definitely a quick walk. Well now, I look back behind me a bit and realize that there is no one behind me because the four or five people that were trailing me had stopped because they figured the cassowary was going to cut them off. So much for my plan of keeping someone in between me and the cassowary. When I looked back in front of me, Pier, the big “Italian Stallion” of the group, who had been right in front of me, was now in a full sprint, running past the females in front of him again doing exactly what you are not supposed to do. I started laughing at this, but was obviously still worried about the cassowary coming up behind me. Well, luckily it must have realized that we weren’t interesting enough to keep pursuing because when I looked back I noticed that it wasn’t there anymore. Scott was now waiting for us and told us to just keep walking on by and on to the bus. Eventually, the others that had been separated finally were able to sneak by the cassowary which apparently was still close by. When we all finally made it back to the bus, we all were so worked up and could not stop laughing about the incident. I couldn’t stop laughing about Pier and how he, being by far the largest person in the group, seemed to be the most scared and just jetted past everyone.

So everyone was safe from the cassowary and it really ended up being a great bonding experience for everyone, because on the bus ride home everyone seemed to pretty much let loose. It got very entertaining when Mark sang a few karaoke songs and toward the end everyone was singing to various classic hits. When we got back to Cairns that wasn’t the end of it either, because most of the group ended up going to a pub called the Woolshed which is a big gathering place for backpackers and the like. I even got to see goldfish racing in all its glory. Talk about a funny experience!

On that trip to the Atherton Tablelands, I met some of the most fun people of my whole traveling experience so far. We ended up getting together for the next couple of days and it was really fun to hear of everyone else’s experiences.

I also got to do the kangaroo petting, koala cuddling and see a crocodile show when I took a trip with my roommates, Traci and Gordon, to the Cairns Tropical Zoo. It was really neat, like any zoo, but they did a really nice job of having shows for most of the animals they had there and spread them out so that we were able to see all the ones we wanted. Some of the crocs we saw were enormous. The guy doing the crocodile show also showed us what 3000 kilos of pressure per square inch in a croc’s mouth sounded like. It was very impressive and I even got a little video of it. I also got to see up close the most venomous snake in the world, the Inland Taipan. Seeing all the animals was very neat, but also just spending one last day with Gordon and Traci was really fun, too. I really enjoyed their company and we had quite a few very good laughs.