2010/11 Australia trip - Woonoomooran |
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After all this exposure to civilization we were eager to get to our next destination, Woonoomooran national park in the mountains around Gordonvale, before the crowds arrived for some weekend camping. It was a long drive in through farms and over rickety bridges and flooded causeways but eventually we got to the Goldsborough Valley camping area.
It was a very soggy evening and there were no crowds; we had it all to ourselves, just us, the frogs, and a few dozen hungry flies. These were similar to our deer and horse flies, easy to kill but they died with their teeth in. The frogs sounded like demented daleks, all calling for our extermination. We retreated inside when the rain got too heavy.
Something showed up at dusk to help with our washing up, another bettong perhaps but it’s hard to identify an animal when its head is inside a soup can!
Saturday October 23rd
It rained most of the night, so we took advantage of a sunny morning to try to dry things out. We still had the camping area to ourselves, though some boaters had come into the park at dawn to run the creek’s rapids.
I took a walk up to Kearneys Falls, on my own as Sandie said she’d had enough of walking through wet rainforest. She proved to be right as there was a tree down across the trail and I got very wet climbing through it.
Along the trail I spotted a couple of stinging trees, their leaves a very distinctive heart shape with a vein dimple close to the stem. These trees are one of Australia’s little surprises, and a much more serious problem than
stinging nettles, as their leaves deliver a neurotoxin which has long term effects. A little further on down the trail there was a sign warning against stinging trees, but nature seems to have snuck around the sign.
Another little surprise is a vine that hangs over the trails, covered in curved thorns; once you snag one of these it wraps itself around you, and it’s very hard to break it or get loose. It’s affectionately known as the lawyer vine.