Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Well, here it is...
Saturday - plane trip great with D, despite getting him up at 5 to get the plane Lots of things to play with. Not much trouble. Arrived in Townsville. Hated it from that moment almost, something unpleasant about it. Arid, dry hot. Went up Castle Hill to see the view. Lots of little yellow butterflies. Went down the hill to the water playground with the big bucket, and the Strand playground with the spiderweb where D had a good time, Played on the beach, rough sand, but sunny. Palmetum was our next destination, but D fell asleep on the way. Disastrous dinner in the noodle place, unfriendly staff and D wouldn't eat.
Sunday - Markets in the am, not as much good stuff as we wanted, but we got there late. D got a coconut leaf fish from an aboriginal dude. Magnetic Island in pm - annoying in some ways, good in others. The Island is big, there is a bus service, but it is poorly signposted. Admittedly we did go into the expedition with little planning, and it all worked out fine in the end. Sea Eagles, one flying around, and one in a tree on the beach. Lots of beach play. 6.30 ferry from Maggie back to Townsville.
Monday - up early to the aquarium. Had a good time seeing all the reef exhibits, sharks are always popular, as was the sawfish, and the turtle. Talked to one of the dudes who works in the tanks doing cleaning and stuff as part of a show. he had noticed D watching him while he cleaned the tank and answered his questions about scuba diving. Hopped in the car around 1 to drive to BB. Lunch in Ingham - into the rainforest felt better than being in Townsville. We got the keys to our apt, and met up with Pete at the campgound and brought him back to our place for dinner. D stayed up late and got cranky (as you do).
Tuesday - D'Arcy and The Beloved played in the pool. Lots of damage from Larry visible, especially around Tully, where I know the terrain and the vegetation a bit better. It is pretty badly broken up around there. Most of the rainforest is gone, in the sense of it being rainforest. Scrubby now. Some tall trees remain, but with not many leaves. lots of epicormic shoots, like after a fire, so the trees are all fuzzy. With the canopy gone, lots of the undergrowth is also gone, and all the vines that make it look really lush. So a scene of devastation all round. Pete went into the tablelands and said that it is the same there. Larry moved really fast , but stayed really intense for a long time. The ageing hippies said that it was all over in about an hour, unlike Winifred in '86 which lasted for 12 hours. We went to see them with Pete and had a cup of tea. Annoyingly the weather was crap, really overcast and rainy. We got wet. So we got in the car and went to Innisfail for lunch with Pete, who had decided to pull up stumps and head north where the weather would be better. We did some shopping for food, and bought D some more thongs, which he doesn't like. Lots of birds around BB, which is a bit of a surprise seeing as there is nothing for them to eat. Chris (ageing Hippy) says she is feeding about 25 at the moment, and they eat about a kilo of honey a week, as well as peanut butter and oats. Before Larry they had a resident cassowary eating their bumper mango crop. they also said that it's been really wet since the cyclone, which has made everything grow like buggery. They have a pawpaw thicket. I got a tick.
Wednesday - still overcast, but the cloud not as low to start with. Lots of rain later in the morning. We went to Mission Beach for a bit, but got rained on, so we went to Tully where we saw the Golden Gumboot in its natural environment (rain), and then went back to the Wet Tropics Information centre where we found out more about cassowaries. The QPWS has been feeding them since the cyclone, at a number of sites away from view. This is a good thing, as it means they get food, but not the stress, or habituation of human beings around. They really are very large and dangerous creatures. I remembered the warning signs at Licuala today, that give detailed instructions of what to do if you are confronted with a cassowary, and at the wet tropics centre, they extend this warning to 'particularly persistent' cassowaries. I picked up the local newsletter, and read about all the volunteer efforts to clean up and give the animals a hand in the area. We wanted to get to the El Arish pub, but we didn't make it. D and Jay played in the pool again, and D got cold, but still didn't really get in the water. The rain is a bit of a bummer, but we always know that you take your chances with any holiday, and especially with a tropical holiday. Article in the newsletter mentions that one of the heartening sights right after the cyclone was all the Ulysses and Cairns Birdwings fluttering around in the wreckage.
Thursday - up and out (in theory) the beloved dropped me and D'Arcy at Bingiil Bay beach in the rain. I found a kite in the pocket of my raincoat (it folds up into a key-ring) so we flew the kite on the beach in the rain. It was great. We got in the car and headed for Cairns. Stopping on the way at our new favourite location in Innisfail - a cafe called JaGaDs (don't know why) where D has discovered the hot chocolate tastes better in a takeaway cup. We also checked out the Innisfail show, in the pouring rain. It wasn't really up and running yet, but we wandered around a bit. Saw the poultry and all the craft displays. Lots of the local schools had made displays, and lots of them were cyclone related ("Larry was strong, but we are stronger") Got back in the car and headed for Cairns. It rained all the way there, and when we arrived we found that the place we'd booked was both a dump and not a suite, so some fast footwork and we found a new hotel/appartment. it was a bit further out of town, and on the main road, but much more sensible - two bedrooms and a proper kitchenette thing. We went out to the Esplanade and hung out, got some dinner, wandered around a bit, then went home for some sleep.
Friday - Fruit and veg market time. We'd seen the market on our travels last night, and got there finally. We found the organic stall and got some veg for dinner that night. We tried to cook dinner at least one night in three, and succeeded pretty well, and we did our own breakfast thing too. D discovered that he really likes Mountain Bread with hummous on it, so he ate a lot of that, usually for breakfast. After the markets and lunch and a lot of vague buggering around we got to our adventure location for the day - we did a DUCK tour of Cairns. Yes, amphibious truck. It was good fun, and D got to drive it on the water, along with the other kids on board. Very touristy thing to do, but I've discovered that travel expectations change with children around so we did some kiddy tourism. The tour was well pitched, the guide told the adults boring facts about Cairns and its buildings and got the kids to play spotto, and in between, told dreadful duck jokes. Apres-duck we wrote some postcards (finally, and apologies to anyone who hoped for one and missed out) and then headed home to cook our dinner. We actually saw the sun on the tour!
Saturday - we got up and went to Kuranda (another tourist thing I'd not thought of doing). We took the cable car up over the rainforest (in the rain, which was absolutely beautiful, but not the postcard pics that you see) and then came down on the train. While we were there we looked around a bit, had some lunch and went into the three wildlife park things that they have up there. We saw koalas at the koala house (and some crocs and wallabies, but D wasn't too into that - he'd seen most of that before) so we went on into the bird house. Lots of birds in the big aviary that you walk into, lots of them are really tame and come and sit on you to be fed. They sell a limited amount of bird food at the door, but we didn't buy any, and by the time we went back for some, they'd sold their allowance for the day, so somebody was _very_ disappointed. Still he found some seed that had dropped on the ground and managed to feed a parrot. Another parrot decided that it wanted to get into my bag, and worked really hard at getting into it. There were a couple of palm cockatoos that flapped around the aviary screeching and scaring everyone. The cassowaries had a separate enclosure inside the main aviary so that they didn't disembowel Japanese tourists - I think they have a reasonable breeding program there. The bird house was D'Arcy's favourite 'cos he could get so close to the birds, and feeding the parrot was one of the highlights of his day. I liked the butterfly house best, which was our final destination in the 'wildlife experience' we were having. A huge aviary full of flapping colour, but surprisingly few varieties. Lots of Ulysses and birdwings, which is what the people come to see, as well as Cruisers from Cape York, which took my fancy. They had Hercules moth caterpillars, but no adults, as they have such a short lifespan (48 hours) so that means that Mum and Pete were really lucky to see the one they saw last year.. I finally managed to get a copy of the butterfly alphabet poster that I've been looking for for about 15 years . They are available online Butterfly Alphabet , but I'd never managed it, so it was great to see it, and buy it! So then it was time to hop on the train. After not very long D fell asleep, which was very sweet. I had to wake him up to get off at Cairns. We met the beloved (who had got off earlier to get the car) and wandered around the downtown area of Cairns, stopping off for dinner at one of the massive restaurants on the Esplanade. Good food (I had barramundi - I'd been hanging out for a big fish feed all week, the beloved won't eat it, so I can't cook it at home) and D managed to behave himself quite well, with the help of a virgin mango/pineapple daquiri. He learned how to pan for gold at the night markets, and we bought some weird tropical fruit wines that took our fancy - we'll see if we still like them when it is summer here!
Sunday - we checked out of the place where we were staying and headed out of town. We were driving up to the tablelands (still in the misty rain) up the Gilles highway, which we soon realised was a mistake when D'Arcy got his first case of car sickness. The road is very windy and rises very quickly, so it was no surprise really. There were, fortunately, lots of places to pull over for a vomit, and when we finally got to Millaa Millaa it was revealed that the best way to get there was via Kuranda - the road it longer but much kinder on small tummies. We put D in the front seat to see if that made things easier, and it seemed to, but he had strict instructions not to interfere with the driver, which he managed to do pretty well. We played a lot of 'I spy' and 'infinite questions' (which is like 20 questions, but with no question limit, and usually restricted to animals). We went to some of the volcanic lakes, where we got to see the saw shell turtle that breathes through its bum. Our goal at Millaa Millaa was Australia's best dairy - Mungalli Creek, where they have a cafe and we wanted lunch. We were not disappointed, it was great, though we didn't get to see any of the dairy stuff at work (Sunday, I guess). The women in the shop said that the production of some of the fruit yoghurts, and jams was affected by Larry, so not sure what the future will bring there. I guess it will take a while for the Davidson plums and the Mangoes to recover. The problem will probably be most evident after this next wet season. After Millaa Millaa we drove down to Innisfail, and D composed a song, based on a comment made by me on some road kill. The Larry destruction was almost as intense up on the tablelands as it had been down on the coast. Innisfail was still good, still wet, and JaGaDs still made good coffee. From Innisfail we continued south to Cardwell, Ingham and Townsville. saw some good signs on the way, warning of the danger of crocodiles on the beach at Cardwell. Lots of rain, most of the way. We pulled up outside The Frosty Mango just before closing and got some wonderful tropical ice creams. It's one of those ironies about Townsville that there is so little good about it. So little, in fact that the locals will drive 70k for a good ice cream. It is very good ice cream, but 70k? We got dragonfruit, mango, passionfruit, and lime&basil. We didn't notice all the other flavours (black sapote, jackfruit etc) until after we'd made our choices, and as the dudes were obviously keen to close up we didn't dawdle. We headed back into Townsville for the night and got some dinner and sleep.
Monday - we got ready to go home, packed, emptied out the hire car, did our last minute shopping in town, though it turned out that the main thing we wanted to get from Plant Essentials still wasn't there, but I can order online (yay!) and headed to the airport. Flight home was good, D didn't get too bored, but it's such a shame that you can't go and visit the pilot these days. D fell asleep just as we landed, which was pretty funny.
Sunday - Markets in the am, not as much good stuff as we wanted, but we got there late. D got a coconut leaf fish from an aboriginal dude. Magnetic Island in pm - annoying in some ways, good in others. The Island is big, there is a bus service, but it is poorly signposted. Admittedly we did go into the expedition with little planning, and it all worked out fine in the end. Sea Eagles, one flying around, and one in a tree on the beach. Lots of beach play. 6.30 ferry from Maggie back to Townsville.
Monday - up early to the aquarium. Had a good time seeing all the reef exhibits, sharks are always popular, as was the sawfish, and the turtle. Talked to one of the dudes who works in the tanks doing cleaning and stuff as part of a show. he had noticed D watching him while he cleaned the tank and answered his questions about scuba diving. Hopped in the car around 1 to drive to BB. Lunch in Ingham - into the rainforest felt better than being in Townsville. We got the keys to our apt, and met up with Pete at the campgound and brought him back to our place for dinner. D stayed up late and got cranky (as you do).
Tuesday - D'Arcy and The Beloved played in the pool. Lots of damage from Larry visible, especially around Tully, where I know the terrain and the vegetation a bit better. It is pretty badly broken up around there. Most of the rainforest is gone, in the sense of it being rainforest. Scrubby now. Some tall trees remain, but with not many leaves. lots of epicormic shoots, like after a fire, so the trees are all fuzzy. With the canopy gone, lots of the undergrowth is also gone, and all the vines that make it look really lush. So a scene of devastation all round. Pete went into the tablelands and said that it is the same there. Larry moved really fast , but stayed really intense for a long time. The ageing hippies said that it was all over in about an hour, unlike Winifred in '86 which lasted for 12 hours. We went to see them with Pete and had a cup of tea. Annoyingly the weather was crap, really overcast and rainy. We got wet. So we got in the car and went to Innisfail for lunch with Pete, who had decided to pull up stumps and head north where the weather would be better. We did some shopping for food, and bought D some more thongs, which he doesn't like. Lots of birds around BB, which is a bit of a surprise seeing as there is nothing for them to eat. Chris (ageing Hippy) says she is feeding about 25 at the moment, and they eat about a kilo of honey a week, as well as peanut butter and oats. Before Larry they had a resident cassowary eating their bumper mango crop. they also said that it's been really wet since the cyclone, which has made everything grow like buggery. They have a pawpaw thicket. I got a tick.
Wednesday - still overcast, but the cloud not as low to start with. Lots of rain later in the morning. We went to Mission Beach for a bit, but got rained on, so we went to Tully where we saw the Golden Gumboot in its natural environment (rain), and then went back to the Wet Tropics Information centre where we found out more about cassowaries. The QPWS has been feeding them since the cyclone, at a number of sites away from view. This is a good thing, as it means they get food, but not the stress, or habituation of human beings around. They really are very large and dangerous creatures. I remembered the warning signs at Licuala today, that give detailed instructions of what to do if you are confronted with a cassowary, and at the wet tropics centre, they extend this warning to 'particularly persistent' cassowaries. I picked up the local newsletter, and read about all the volunteer efforts to clean up and give the animals a hand in the area. We wanted to get to the El Arish pub, but we didn't make it. D and Jay played in the pool again, and D got cold, but still didn't really get in the water. The rain is a bit of a bummer, but we always know that you take your chances with any holiday, and especially with a tropical holiday. Article in the newsletter mentions that one of the heartening sights right after the cyclone was all the Ulysses and Cairns Birdwings fluttering around in the wreckage.
Thursday - up and out (in theory) the beloved dropped me and D'Arcy at Bingiil Bay beach in the rain. I found a kite in the pocket of my raincoat (it folds up into a key-ring) so we flew the kite on the beach in the rain. It was great. We got in the car and headed for Cairns. Stopping on the way at our new favourite location in Innisfail - a cafe called JaGaDs (don't know why) where D has discovered the hot chocolate tastes better in a takeaway cup. We also checked out the Innisfail show, in the pouring rain. It wasn't really up and running yet, but we wandered around a bit. Saw the poultry and all the craft displays. Lots of the local schools had made displays, and lots of them were cyclone related ("Larry was strong, but we are stronger") Got back in the car and headed for Cairns. It rained all the way there, and when we arrived we found that the place we'd booked was both a dump and not a suite, so some fast footwork and we found a new hotel/appartment. it was a bit further out of town, and on the main road, but much more sensible - two bedrooms and a proper kitchenette thing. We went out to the Esplanade and hung out, got some dinner, wandered around a bit, then went home for some sleep.
Friday - Fruit and veg market time. We'd seen the market on our travels last night, and got there finally. We found the organic stall and got some veg for dinner that night. We tried to cook dinner at least one night in three, and succeeded pretty well, and we did our own breakfast thing too. D discovered that he really likes Mountain Bread with hummous on it, so he ate a lot of that, usually for breakfast. After the markets and lunch and a lot of vague buggering around we got to our adventure location for the day - we did a DUCK tour of Cairns. Yes, amphibious truck. It was good fun, and D got to drive it on the water, along with the other kids on board. Very touristy thing to do, but I've discovered that travel expectations change with children around so we did some kiddy tourism. The tour was well pitched, the guide told the adults boring facts about Cairns and its buildings and got the kids to play spotto, and in between, told dreadful duck jokes. Apres-duck we wrote some postcards (finally, and apologies to anyone who hoped for one and missed out) and then headed home to cook our dinner. We actually saw the sun on the tour!
Saturday - we got up and went to Kuranda (another tourist thing I'd not thought of doing). We took the cable car up over the rainforest (in the rain, which was absolutely beautiful, but not the postcard pics that you see) and then came down on the train. While we were there we looked around a bit, had some lunch and went into the three wildlife park things that they have up there. We saw koalas at the koala house (and some crocs and wallabies, but D wasn't too into that - he'd seen most of that before) so we went on into the bird house. Lots of birds in the big aviary that you walk into, lots of them are really tame and come and sit on you to be fed. They sell a limited amount of bird food at the door, but we didn't buy any, and by the time we went back for some, they'd sold their allowance for the day, so somebody was _very_ disappointed. Still he found some seed that had dropped on the ground and managed to feed a parrot. Another parrot decided that it wanted to get into my bag, and worked really hard at getting into it. There were a couple of palm cockatoos that flapped around the aviary screeching and scaring everyone. The cassowaries had a separate enclosure inside the main aviary so that they didn't disembowel Japanese tourists - I think they have a reasonable breeding program there. The bird house was D'Arcy's favourite 'cos he could get so close to the birds, and feeding the parrot was one of the highlights of his day. I liked the butterfly house best, which was our final destination in the 'wildlife experience' we were having. A huge aviary full of flapping colour, but surprisingly few varieties. Lots of Ulysses and birdwings, which is what the people come to see, as well as Cruisers from Cape York, which took my fancy. They had Hercules moth caterpillars, but no adults, as they have such a short lifespan (48 hours) so that means that Mum and Pete were really lucky to see the one they saw last year.. I finally managed to get a copy of the butterfly alphabet poster that I've been looking for for about 15 years . They are available online Butterfly Alphabet , but I'd never managed it, so it was great to see it, and buy it! So then it was time to hop on the train. After not very long D fell asleep, which was very sweet. I had to wake him up to get off at Cairns. We met the beloved (who had got off earlier to get the car) and wandered around the downtown area of Cairns, stopping off for dinner at one of the massive restaurants on the Esplanade. Good food (I had barramundi - I'd been hanging out for a big fish feed all week, the beloved won't eat it, so I can't cook it at home) and D managed to behave himself quite well, with the help of a virgin mango/pineapple daquiri. He learned how to pan for gold at the night markets, and we bought some weird tropical fruit wines that took our fancy - we'll see if we still like them when it is summer here!
Sunday - we checked out of the place where we were staying and headed out of town. We were driving up to the tablelands (still in the misty rain) up the Gilles highway, which we soon realised was a mistake when D'Arcy got his first case of car sickness. The road is very windy and rises very quickly, so it was no surprise really. There were, fortunately, lots of places to pull over for a vomit, and when we finally got to Millaa Millaa it was revealed that the best way to get there was via Kuranda - the road it longer but much kinder on small tummies. We put D in the front seat to see if that made things easier, and it seemed to, but he had strict instructions not to interfere with the driver, which he managed to do pretty well. We played a lot of 'I spy' and 'infinite questions' (which is like 20 questions, but with no question limit, and usually restricted to animals). We went to some of the volcanic lakes, where we got to see the saw shell turtle that breathes through its bum. Our goal at Millaa Millaa was Australia's best dairy - Mungalli Creek, where they have a cafe and we wanted lunch. We were not disappointed, it was great, though we didn't get to see any of the dairy stuff at work (Sunday, I guess). The women in the shop said that the production of some of the fruit yoghurts, and jams was affected by Larry, so not sure what the future will bring there. I guess it will take a while for the Davidson plums and the Mangoes to recover. The problem will probably be most evident after this next wet season. After Millaa Millaa we drove down to Innisfail, and D composed a song, based on a comment made by me on some road kill. The Larry destruction was almost as intense up on the tablelands as it had been down on the coast. Innisfail was still good, still wet, and JaGaDs still made good coffee. From Innisfail we continued south to Cardwell, Ingham and Townsville. saw some good signs on the way, warning of the danger of crocodiles on the beach at Cardwell. Lots of rain, most of the way. We pulled up outside The Frosty Mango just before closing and got some wonderful tropical ice creams. It's one of those ironies about Townsville that there is so little good about it. So little, in fact that the locals will drive 70k for a good ice cream. It is very good ice cream, but 70k? We got dragonfruit, mango, passionfruit, and lime&basil. We didn't notice all the other flavours (black sapote, jackfruit etc) until after we'd made our choices, and as the dudes were obviously keen to close up we didn't dawdle. We headed back into Townsville for the night and got some dinner and sleep.
Monday - we got ready to go home, packed, emptied out the hire car, did our last minute shopping in town, though it turned out that the main thing we wanted to get from Plant Essentials still wasn't there, but I can order online (yay!) and headed to the airport. Flight home was good, D didn't get too bored, but it's such a shame that you can't go and visit the pilot these days. D fell asleep just as we landed, which was pretty funny.
# posted by Mummy/Crit : 5:42 PM
