Thursday 18th January – It’s called a rainforest for a reason and the search for a Cassowary

The stormy theme continued this morning and I thought it would be a clever idea to go and get another grey sky view of the beach.   

Timed to perfection, the heavens opened and I was soaked to the skin in torrential rain!  There seemed no end to the drenching, so Simon moved the Cyber Punk right up next to the building so that we could shower and make breakfast in the dry. 

We find ourselves in the tropics during the rainy season, so we really shouldn’t be that surprised when it chucks it down!  Having been warned about how quickly the roads can become flooded, we asked the campsite if we could check out a little late to wait and see how bad the weather got. Apparently not, we either pay for another night or leave at 10am!  There was no flexibility at all.  Disappointing and a bit unreasonable, so we left!

On arrival in this area of coast line, we had started seeing signs everywhere asking drivers to slow down to avoid hurting the local endangered cassowary population. This was an unexpected bonus for me, the chance to see a cassowary, so this became our quest for the morning before moving on.  

One of just three cassowary species in the world, the Southern Cassowary is Australia’s biggest rainforest animal and is only found in very isolated areas of tropical Queensland.  They are solitary, flightless birds that eat fruit, so they need an extensive habitat of dense forest to support them.  So, where were the Cassowaries these signs were warning us about?

I don't think this is true to scale, is it?!

We drove to Mission beach itself, along the coast road and back through the national park where we were hoping to go for a walk to continue our search, before the heavy rain put us off.  What to do? Go to the VC of course!  They gave us advice to head to a campground on south Mission Beach where they have ‘two Cassowaries that are almost resident’ apparently, but also a nice coffee shop.  Off we went. 

The lady at the café who appeared to have had her personality removed told us that the Cassowaries wouldn’t be out ‘in this’ pointing to the storm clouds.  But our best chance would be to try the ‘dump’.  So, we bought our coffees and sandwiches and drove to the scenic location of the local rubbish tip to eat and wait for a cassowary!  There were several wallabies about, but no giant flightless birds to be seen.

Always nice to see wallabies but they weren't what we were looking for today

We headed back to do the rain forest loop walk in the hope that getting out of the car might help.  The pathway was flooded most of the way from the recent downpours, but we waded through.  No cassowaries.  They are endangered, so we can’t be too surprised I guess?!

Navigating the flooded pathways through the rain forest

In the end we had to admit defeat and start making some ground north as we wanted to cross the Daintree river on the ferry before stopping for the night.

The Daintree river crossing - don't try to swim it!

Similar to the ferry we had used to reach Fraser island, this was a cable pay-as-you-board ferry to reach the northern rain forest area of Queensland.  Over the river, the roads were narrow and winding, purposefully built to have minimum impact on the surrounding lush rain forest.

We stopped off at Mount Alexandra lookout, but with all of the low-lying cloud today, the view was limited:

Maybe over the next day or two it will dry out a little?  We headed for Lync Haven Rainforest Retreat where the staff were very welcoming but encouraged the purchase of mosquito repellent.  We headed in to set up our little camper in the heart of the rain forest.