Your Legacy

1 September – Cairns to the Tablelands (Platypode!)

Here’s the summary of our five nights in Cairns – it rained. Day and night. However, we still swam in the resort pools everyday, and we managed one game of tennis. My hair went freaky-frizzy from the humidity and we felt sorry for the holidaymakers who were there for the first time. Cairns just isn’t the same in the wet weather.

Right, moving on…

Today we drove up the winding Gillies Range which took us from sea level to 800m higher. The drive up with cloud surrounding the rainforested hills was quite spectacular, but what really amazed me is how they managed to stick New Zealand up here!  Honestly, once we broke through the top of the rainforest, the land gave way to gently broken hills covered in farmland and cattle. Welcome to the Tablelands. I love it up here – it feels familiar – and my hair is back to normal. We are staying in a wonderfully peaceful caravan park on the edge of Lake Tinaroo at Yungaburra tonight. We chose Yungaburra as this is where Noël and the kids saw some platypode (an acceptable plural of platypus) last year. Today’s goals: to see a platypus and visiting the giant curtain fig tree by day, and by night.

Kids at the curtain fig

The curtain fig tree is quite a sight. Despite our best attempts to spot resident tree kangaroos, the biggest wildlife we saw were golden orb spiders. Beautiful creatures. Of course, that opinion was formed after a local walked past and told us that they were harmless, before that they were downright scary.

We returned to the local river bend at 5.20pm to catch a glimpse of the platypode. There is a viewing area – a latticed wall with small window cutouts where you can sit and wait. It started raining gently again at 5.30pm. At 6pm we were still waiting. Other hopeful viewers came and went, some with tour guides, but we stayed on. An hour after arriving, the sun had gone down and it was getting hard to see the water boatmen skimming across the water anymore. Amy had given up and was waiting in the car. At least it was dry there. But sometimes it pays to be stubborn.

Or, maybe it just pays to be wet and pathetic looking. A young man, part of a small tour group, walked past and called out to us “Excuse me, but you can see one across the bridge further downstream.”

This one was small - the size of my hand

Bless that young man.  Noël, Kelton and I took off in the rapidly falling night as fast as we could.

Success!

The most gorgeous little creature I have ever seen was swimming silently up and down the murky creek. He’d pop up, paddle his little front flappers, then duckdive down again. When it was clear that we weren’t scaring him away, I rushed back to fetch Amy.

Back to the boys as fast as we could to find two platypode swimming around, feeding on the bugs at the top of the water with their toothless little bills. What strange, adorable creatures! They were much smaller than I expected – about 30cm in length.

By now it was dark, so Noël fetched the three million candlepower spotlight from the car. We were standing under a bridge (it was dry there thankfully) watching them by now. The light didn’t bother them, and we watched them happily for another 20 minutes or so while small bats flew all around us.

We had to drag ourselves away really. I’m just sorry that we didn’t have the camera with us.

So, back in the car and back to the curtain fig tree for the night time experience. Unfortunately the rain muted the sounds that Noël and the kids experienced last year. We saw flashing bugs, king crickets and caterpillars the length of my hand.

The platypode were the highlight so far, and Noël’s red chicken curry for dinner was the perfect way to end the day.