July 10, 2006

Cape Tribulation & The Rain Forest

For my second week in Australia, I was going up to Cape Tribulation in Daintree National Park, which a couple of hours north of Cairns.

Now this time of year is meant to be the dry season, the drought season in fact. However it rained over night and was still a little wet when we left at Dawn on the Monday—Not that encouraging...

The trip up included a wildlife park and forest board walk tour. The Wildlife Park was to be honest crap. The animals looked mangy and were in really small enclosures. We saw a crocodile, two kangaroos and a couple of snakes and that was pretty much it. In the first picture you can see the circular ferns that are unique to the area. The leaves of which feel like plastic and, as I was to find out later, if you stand under them they make very good umbrella's even in the heaviest of rain!

Tree from the dinosaur era

The rain forest board walk, on the other hand as pretty good. The Daintree Rainforest is the oldest forest on the planet and produces about 10% of the world's oxygen. You can actually smell the Oxygen, it's quite different to other forests I've been in.

I think the best part was seeing some of oldest trees on the planet. The tree shown here only grows 1 inch every 100 years, this one is just a young sapling—it's only about 20,000 years old! The leaves of this tree are identical to those found in the stomachs of fossilized dinosaurs!

Posted by Matt at July 10, 2006 3:57 PM

Fraggle Chitter Chatter

Have Your Say

Remember me?



 (not displayed on site)