More excursions!

Yungaburra Folk Festival

22-24 October 2010

Friday night we had dinner at Moni’s house. Her house is very nice. She has 2 cats and SO MANY PILLOWS. The food was great!! We had fajitas with cheese, sour cream, chicken, CILANTRO and guacamole! We also had chicken wings that Charlie, Marcus and I basically devoured. Later that night we went out to the Folk Festival to check out the town of Yungaburra for a while. We had some drinks at the pub and met some friends that we know from the Peeramon. We were back at Moni’s by 10 in order to leave for the Center, because we were to be up early the next day to go back to the folk festival in order to set up our tents and begin our volunteer work.

Saturday morning we arrived at the camp site in Yungaburra at about 8 am, set up our tents, and then went to the volunteer desk to check in. We volunteered for 8 hours so that we could camp for free. The weather ended up being perfect! Sunny and warm and perfect weather for wearing flowy skirts. The Yungaburra markets were going on again because it was Saturday, so we strolled around there for a while, and we also checked out all of the other tents and festivities that were set up. There was an awesome tye-dye tent where I got an awesome long-sleeved brightly colored shirt. I also got awesome leaf earings from a little jewelry stand! They were so pretty… and then I lost one on the bus ride to Maggie Island L. There were food tents set up, lots of jewelry tents and very hippie-dippie styled clothing, artwork and jewelry stands. There were so many different venues where live music was constantly playing, and people we to be found every where you looked. It was such a happy, relaxed time! Saturday I worked at the Whistlestop café, where our artwork from the environmental art project was hung up! They looked so great all laminated. I also worked at the ticket booth selling tickets and at the Chapel checking wrist bands. I met a lot of cool locals who were all there volunteering with me. At night Marcus and I sat with a bunch of people listening to a band called the Blue Ruins. They were so good! This girl played guitar (backwards… she played a left-handed guitar on her right side…?) and her father played back up guitar and she sang. Her voice was amazing! We danced on the lawn and just enjoyed the music. We also got to dance on a HUGE dance floor to a live band. We danced like crazy! We were jumping and spinning and sliding, and having so much fun. I didn’t want it to end!

Sunday we did more of the same… we ate, we drank, we volunteered and we just had fun in the sun. That night there was a free volunteer party at the end of the festival, with live music again and free food! We all went, ate, chatted with the people we had met that weekend and then were brought back on a bus.

What a great weekend!

Daintree

26-28 October 2010

The drive to the Daintree rainforest was a little bit longer than the Chillagoe trip, but actually felt shorter… we stopped in the town of Mareeba, in another town for a field lecture from an Aboriginal woman named Robin, and at Mossman Gorge before arriving in the Daintree. She talked to us about Aboriginal land use agreements and the native title claims that her tribe went through in order to acquire rights to land and such. It’s such a difficult process that I guess I never really thought about before. Currently they are working towards dividing up the Cow Bay area into various land use agreements and such. While at that town we went to a thrift store and I bought an Australian flag hat for only $0.50!

We stopped at Mossman Gorge and were allowed to tour the place on our own. We took a free bus to the gorge from the parking lot, because it is illegal to walk on the streets. It was so beautiful there! Although Marcus and I went off on our own on what we thought was a circuit path… and then ended up getting somewhat lost. But it was alright because in the end we met up with Kenyetta and Natascha, who knew the correct way back. We followed the path along the rapids of the river where there were rocks and boulders, and saw huge golden orb spiders again and crazy, winding fig trees that looked like they would provide the perfect hiding places for hide and seek.

Once we arrived in the Daintree there were so many cassowary signs and speed bumps with rocks in them to seriously deter people form speeding. We got our rooms and our roommates and had some announcements. We were staying at a hostel, where Sophie was my roommate in a two bunk bed room. It was nice to have the room to ourselves! That afternoon, though, I saw a spider crawling on the wall… not a small spider, but a HUGE spider with orange stripes on its legs. I tried to catch it with my disc, but then it crawled SO FAST up the wall that I couldn’t reach it… and then once it was nearly to the ceiling, it lunged itself off of the wall and onto my pillow! Ah!

We got a chance to go to the beach, where I took some great pictures and we played some Frisbee and went for a long walk collecting rocks and shells… it was so beautiful and looked like it was exactly out of a movie. I actually started singing “born free, as free as the wind blows…” at one point, because it looked just like the scene from Madagascar where the rainforest meets the ocean, and the first sight you see are palm trees, white sand and blue waters.

The next day we got a chance to get a welcome to country ceremony performed by Robin at Cow Bay. It is a very rare ceremony that doesn’t often happen to such a large group. She brought us over to the creek that flows into the ocean a little way down the beach. First she stepped into the water, showering her arms and face with water while she spoke to her ancestors in her Aboriginal language. She then asked each of us to step down into the water. When it was my turn, she asked me to step down, and then asked for my name. She continued speaking to her ancestors, telling them my name and showering my arms and face with water. When she was finished, I stepped to the other side of the creek, and she did the same thing for each person in the group. Now her ancestors know each of our names, and will allow for safe passage through the Australian land. What an amazing experience!

Later that day we got to go to the Discovery Center, where we saw an absolutely beautiful rainforest! It was type 1b, which is very complex and has highly specialized life forms like palms, ferns and epiphytes. They had metal diprodonts and crocodiles that roamed this rainforest millions of years ago scattered along the boardwalk. They were absolutely massive! The flat-faced kangaroos at the time were something like 3 meters tall! That’s a 9-foot tall kangaroo!

We got a chance to walk through a type 3b rainforest, which is dominated by fan palms, and is a part of Siggy’s property. She has been maintaining it and catching feral pigs on the property for a while now. It was really amazing to see such a difference in the rainforest types… the fans completely closed the canopy, and radiated bright lime green light throughout the forest. Also on Siggy’s property we got a tour of her house, which is completely sustainable. We learned about how they built their solar panel tower, how every wall in the house makes a difference with the amount of sunlight that can penetrate, their use of few resources to build the house, and how leaving out unnecessary walls can save money and resources! Their bathroom consists of a lone toilet on their veranda and a lone tub. The septic system is all completely sustainable, and they use the compacted sewage for fertilizer on their land! Apparently after 6 months it no longer has a smell… hmm.

Then we went to the mangrove boardwalk, where we saw tons of mangroves with their prop roots, which they call stilt roots here. I had never seen rainforest mangroves before. We walked on a boardwalk through a swampy area littered with snorkel roots and other roots and soft-looking deep brown mud and a low tide. The walk ended at a sort of look out, where the swampy area that we had been walking through met the river, and crocodiles could often be found. 

We also got a tour of an exotic fruit farm. When we arrived there he had fresh squeezed lime juice ready for us, and gave us a brief history of the farm and how difficult it is to grow fruits because of changes in the weather and economy. We got to taste the Davidson plum, a very tart deep red fruit and the jackfruit, which sort of smells like wet socks and feels like goo, but actually tastes pretty good! There was one other fruit that was the best one there! It was called rollinia, and tasted like a mixture of banana and mango. It was so good! After the tasting, we walked through the farm and looked at the sugar banana trees, the jackfruit trees, and many more.

On the way back to the hostel we spotted a cassowary on the side of the road! We stopped the vans for about 10 minutes to get a good look at it. It was eating a dead animal on the grassy area on the edge of the forest, and had a baby cassowary next to it! The cassowary has such a beautiful color to its crest—majestic blue and bright red contrasted with a dark black body. The baby was light brown with black stripes. 

The next day we went on a board walk of the 1a forest, where we spotted bryophytes, relict species and a red-bellied black snake. Awesome! We also went on a boat on a crocodile tour! We all hopped onto this boat, which brought us up and down the Daintree river. Our tour guide taught us about the tree species, the mangroves and all of the different types of fauna that can be seen there. We got to see a tree snake first, which was cool… but then we spotted a female crocodile! She was hanging out in the water next to a log. She was very difficult to spot at first with her perfectly camouflaging brown, black and tan coloring pattern. I was glad that we got to see that! 
As we continued up the river, I just watched the passing trees and looked back at the wake we were making in the water. I was so happy just to be there and was enjoying every minute. The next bit of nature we saw were tree frogs hanging out in a tree by the water’s edge. They were such a bright green! It was a perfect picture—something I only ever imagined in picture books or on TV shows, but some how it was real life and I was seeing this with my own eyes… I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was! All-in-all we had an amazing trip and got to see and explore so many things. That was by far my favorite excursion yet!

and still  more to come...