Rainforests and plantations

Finally it has stopped raining in the north, and finally I am in Cairns, staying with Pam and Garry Maher. This really is the tropics, and while the rain has stopped, it is still very humid. Cairns is located on a narrow strip between the ocean and the Great Dividing Range of mountains. The hills of this range are dense with tropical rainforest – a beautiful thing to see. The valley below is fertile sugar cane land.

On Thursday, Pam and I went driving over the range to the Atheron Tablelands – a highland plain formed by volcanic millions of years ago. This was very active volcanic range – that activity blew the tops off the mountains and filled in the valleys with lava; today you see this high plateau of beautiful undulating hills dotted by old volcanic craters. Some sight I can tell you. It is extremely fertile county and it has for about 150 years been plantation land. First it was tobacco, but the tobacco farms are all but gone now (yay). In their place are bananas, mangoes, coffee, tea, avocadoes and other fruits and vegetables.

We visited both coffee and tea plantations – now I know: coffee beans grown on trees and tea leaves grow on bushes. Wares were sampled. We also bought fruit and avocadoes. Yum.

The Tablelands are also lands of many, many waterfalls. Pam and I followed the Barron River and stopped often along the valley to photograph the waterfalls as the river meanders down from the highlands to the ocean. We also stopped in at several of the many little villages that had a strong agricultural past, but are now falling into disuse as Cairns has become the regional hub and travel across the mountains is so easy.

On Friday, Pam went to work and I did some fun sightseeing on my own. I took an hour-long cable car ride up the mountains to a pretty little village called Kuranda, which is Australian for tourist-trap. It is actually very cute and filled with markets and gift stores – and also is the gateway to the rainforest. On the cable car ride up, there are get-off points from which you can take interpreted pathway walks into the rainforest. It is quite amazing to stand in the darkness of the forest floor where only one percent of the sunlight penetrates, and then get on the cable car and see the same forest from the canopy which is a solid mass of green foliage. Everything struggles up from the forest floor toward the light, and in between is a world of tangled vines living creatures that struggle between the darkness and the light. Kind of like humanity. We’d all like just a little more light, so we keep struggling up.

After a day in the rainforest and Kuranda I took a train back down the mountain to Freshwater (the suburb in which Pam and Garry live). A nice cold glass of Chardonnay awaited me when I walked in the door. Thanks Pam.