The night before (Tuesday night) we arrived to Jourama Falls (national park) very late. We had gotten a late start after our Magnetic Island adventure and arrived to the area around dark. Jonathan had to jump out of the car to close some windows as we were entering a 4WD road (and the associated dust). As we stopped we were able to smell the potent aroma of the sugar cane from the surrounding fields. After fording two small streams, we finally arrived at the campsite. We had an easy dinner of sandwiches and instant chicken soup as the campsite was overwhelmingly buggy. As we spent the evening inside of the camper we heard every sound imaginable outside. A few times we heard distinct flapping of wings (a ‘swoosh’ ‘swoosh’) that led us to believe the wings and the body to which they were attached were quite large. Our guess was that it was one of the flying fox fruit bats we had seen back in Sydney swooping down for some of the insects around our camper. Nonetheless, it left us with images of pterodactyls dancing in our dreams.
The morning brought a cacophony of bird sounds and some BOLD brush turkeys that harassed us while we ate breakfast. We left our campsite and went for a bush walk to the nearby falls – they were really cool. We walked over streams with huge boulders and followed a well-maintained trail leading to a lookout to the Jourama Falls. They reminded us of the slot canyons from the US west, as there were intermittent pools of clear water before the rocks dropped off again.
Heading out of that national park we made our way, you guessed it….north…but also a little bit west. Our inland detour led us to Wallaman Falls – the largest single drop waterfall on the continent. The 18+ mile winding road that we took to the top made me a bit carsick, but it was amazing to see the change in environment. About halfway up we entered the Wet Tropics – a World Heritage area. The vegetation became very dense and we started to see road signs to beware of cassowaries – these crazy looking endangered flightless birds that live in the rainforest. Apparently they are kind of like velociraptors and can injure (kill?) humans with their huge talons. We didn’t see any in the wild, but had glimpsed them at the Australia zoo a few weeks back.
Wallaman Falls were very impressive - a 900 foot drop. We passed on the lookout point (next to the parking lot, too easy) and instead took a hike through the rainforest to the bottom of the huge gorge. Going back up was not quite as fun, but the view from the bottom was worth it. Jonathan lamented that the falls was not frozen and that he didn’t have his ice axes with him.
Content with our waterfall viewings, we passed onwards to Russell River National Park to look for camping at one of the remote spots. After seeing notices for “extremely high croc risk” in the creek adjacent to the campsites, we (I) decided that it was in fact too remote and we settled for a small campground in a nearby beach town – complete with showers, bathrooms and (hopefully) no crocs.
Sarah laughing and gasping for breath after our hike up the hill from the falls.
One lucky Python! We ran him over with the truck! We wanted to go back to see what kind of snake he was and luckily he was still alive and didn't appear to be hurt! This picture was taken from inside the Toyota!
A very loud laughing Kookaburra sitting on top of a common sign!
What can you do here?
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