Eclectic Brain Salad

Today was our first day of Queensland action! We had a rainforest trip booked with tour operator On The Wallaby, and it proved to be one of the best days of our holiday. The whole setup was really great - the other guests were very friendly, the schedule was chilled, and the tour rep was simply hilarious. He was called Cousin Rohan and he had dark dreads, beard, friendly demeanour and a wicked sense of humour.

I thought he was cool when the first thing he explained was why he was called "Cousin..." (it is a strange-but-fun naming convention they use in his company, to make the experience seem a bit more personal) and that we should call him "Rohan" or "Cuz", but not "Bus Driver", as that makes him no better than the grumpy bus drivers in the city. We also explained that the bus is called "Wally", and should be addressed as such.

We first headed out to the Tablelands, a beautiful flat area of Queensland. We first saw an amazing, huge colony of fruit bats nested in some trees, then went up a huge windy road into the mountains, which has something like 230 bends to navigate in the 20-odd minute drive. Rohan kept us entertained with some witty and informative banter, and some cheesy old-school tunes from Radio Gus. Near the top of this drive, we stopped at a lookout point and checked out the beautiful view.

The next thing we checked out was a beautiful tree called the Cathedral Fig Tree. This is basically a huge great tree absolutely covered in a parasitic fig vine, which starts to grow in the crown on the tree, then sends tap vines down to the ground to find more water and start to grow. When it finds a good water source it grows massively, and sends down more and more vines to take up more and more water. It also starts to take nutrients from the host tree, and eventually kills it.

We also saw cool mountain cows, which were a cross between the local beef cows, and a hardy African desert brahmin, to create a cow that is hardy enough to survive in the mountainous areas while still yielding meat.

The next stop saw us going on an awesome jungle walk, where we saw some cool dragon lizards, amazing views, and the deadly "gimpy gimpy" (or "bad bad" or "stinging") tree, so-called because it is like a giant stinging nettle on crack, with loads of tiny needles on its surface that can inject you with thirteen different toxins that make it feel like you are on fire (but which you can't put under cold water, because it just makes it feel worse). Rohan told a horrible story about how five US soldiers died during the second world war because they went to the toilet in the jungle and mistakenly used this plant as toilet paper!

Lunchtime was great too - we went swimming in a lovely natural lake that contained archer fish (they can spit water jets up to 2 metres or something, with deadly accuracy) and turtles, then had some gorgeous fresh bread rolls containing chicken, cheese and salad, plus BBQ sauce.

The afternoon consisted of going to two more swimming places, a nice lookout spot and the On The Wallaby lodge. The first swimming place was at the bottom of a huge beautiful waterfall. Kirsty and I didn't go in as the water here was very cold, but a number of our group did, as did Gabriel. It was so nice to see him next to the waterfall! The lookout point was pretty cool and gave us a good view of the Tablelands. The third swimming place was at the end of a nice jungle walk. We first went to a lookout over the top of a huge crevasse, caused by volcanic gasses exploding out sideways and taking a large part of the mountain with it. The drop from the lookout was about 70 metres, and it gave up a huge echo when some of the kids threw branches down to the bottom of it. The swimming place itself was at the bottom of a small waterfall, and was also very cold, although the area was beautiful.

This was pretty much the end of the trail - all tht was left to do was to take the members of our party staying overnight to their lodge (in Yundaburra), and then drive the rest of us home. On the way to the lodge Rohan put on some cheesy songs (such as James Brown's "I feel good") and got the whole bus to perform silly song actions to them all. Even Wally had a dance. At the lodge we all had coffee together, then it was time for us to leave. Rohan drove us back to our hotel in Cairns, picking up his girlfriend and two cute dogs on the way (Elva was blown away by them, and kept squealing), and then we had some food and went to bed - we were absolutely exhausted!

What an awesome day this was...