DAINTREE RAIN FOREST

                                What a Wonderful Stay
       I have stayed and visited several rain forests and I have found them all exciting and delightful. Our accommodations have always been great, but the Daintree facilities were especially nice.

      It was a two-hour ride (160 K) from Cairns to Coconut Beach Rainforest Resort, our hotel at Cape Tribulation in the Daintree Rainforest. We drove onto a small cable ferry to get across the Daintree River. The road after crossing was narrow and winding. It seemed like a long ride as the last hour or so was in the rain.

    It was still raining quite hard so the hotel supplied us with large umbrellas and guides escorted us to our cabins. The first part of the facility opened in 1989. Our large cabin had a gorgeous wooden floor and was lovely, but it was morning before we could see where we were situated. During the night we listened to lots of nature noises. It was great! Waking in the morning, I was quiet so not to waken my travel partner.  While I sat with a cup of coffee in our sitting area I looked out into a forest of greenery and could see nothing but lush foliage! It was beautiful, quiet and peaceful!

     The impressive facility also has a 40-unit villa, large reception area, long house, pool, bar, in-house accommodations for 70 staff, and an education and adventure lodge. There is also a private beach.           Because of its rainforest location, great care had been taken to design the resort to blend into its surroundings, and to be ecologically sensitive to the World Heritage Area. Covering 250 acres, it was designed to have minimal impact on the local flora and fauna.  The cabins were built on high set poles, requiring minimal removal of trees. The use of boardwalks minimized the impact of pedestrian traffic, preventing damage to the forest floor. The facility has its own water supply and generates all its electricity.  It truly was a fabulous place, somewhere I would love to return to!

Capt. Cook named the area Cape Tribulation after his ship ran aground on Endeavor Reef. The rain forest, only 10-20 degrees south of the equator, was named  in 1832 after Richard Daintree, an explorer and businessman. It is all wilderness area, covering 100 hectares, and is 130 million years old. The Daintree National Park, established in 1979, was designated a World Heritage Site in 1988.

The area protects 70 species of animals and over 200 bird species including the cassowary, plus many flowers and plants. It is the only place in the world where two World Heritage Sites meet---the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef.  The Daintree Rainforest is a  coastal rainforest and runs in pockets for 450 kilometers. It is an upland rainforest and is the largest rainforest in the Heritage complex. Thirteen of the 19 flowering plants are found only here, and 60% of Australia’s bat species live in this rainforest. There are no monkeys in the country.

One afternoon a biologist took us on a nature walk to identify much of the flora and was most interesting. She was very animated and it was obvious she loved her job.

Another day we took a catamaran several miles to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. The snorkeling was much better, the reef more alive and interesting here than when I went off from Green Island, a much more popular and busy tourist attraction. Five years earlier Green Island with its tourist mentality had been a big disappointment.  

TASMANIAN DEVIL PARK

                               Interesting Animal
       On our way to Port Arthur in Tasmania, Australia’s only island state, we stopped at Tasmania Devil Park. At the relatively small, but rather pleasant park, we were able to observe three or four devils in an enclosure. It was fun to watch them run around and play.

A park guide told us, “The Tasmanian Devil is a wolverine-like animal extinct on the Australia mainland and found only in Tasmania. It is a carnivorous marsupial. The size of a small dog, black in color, it has a spine tingling screech. Its powerful jaws can crack bones so when feeding it can devour the entire animal. It is fearful rather than aggressive. A picture showing its teeth is usually a yawn rather than an aggressive act. Aggression is shown with loud noises.

“Tasmanian Devils are synchronous breeders, mating in March, the babies are born in April/May. A female can have 6-8 pups, but she only has four nipples so only four pups survive. The gestation period is only four weeks, but the pups suckle in the pouch for another six months. They generally live about five years. Inhabiting virtually all of Tasmania, they survive any and all climates, sleeping by day, and eating at night.”

            We also learned Devils were a nuisance to early settlers, raiding poultry yards. At one time there was a bounty offered for them which drove them to more remote areas. When protected in 1941, they had been hunted almost to extinction. The population has survived, and today is a healthy one.

            Although they have a reputation of killing sheep, they are rather inept killers, preying on small animals when they do kill. They prefer to scavenger, and are very good at it.  When under stress they produce a rather unpleasant odor, but when calm are not smelly but rather and tidy clean animals.

            Walking around we saw several wallabies, emus, and walked through a bird aviary. Then we came upon a park guide who was holding an animal neither of us had ever seen before. It turned out to be Lilly, a baby wombat who was just as cute as can be. About 18 months old she was still small enough to be held in a caretaker’s arms.

       The guide told us, “Wombats grow to about the size of a pig, and they can do a lot of damage to a car if one is unlucky enough to hit one on the road. Wombats burrow. See how their front and back claws are different. They dig with their front claws then throw the dirt back with the hind claws. Also a marsupial, they suckle in the pouch for six months, then stick around with mom for another twelve months. Related to the koala, wombats are vegetarians, and are nocturnal. In the wild they live 5-8 years, about 20 years in captivity. They have a hard steel-like back plate. When threatened, they head into their burrow, placing the hard plate at the entrance, which protects them, as nothing can penetrate it.”

Like the kiwi bird it is unlikely to see either of these nocturnal animals in the wild or in the daytime, so it was nice to be able to see the Tasmanian Devil in a natural setting. They are not the cutest animal in the world, and I don’t think I’d want one as a pet, but it was nice to see them and it was a nice and educational stop.