Port Douglas - Sunday Market and Mossman Gorge
Lovely town. Market day on Sunday. Several old buildings in the town The town runs down a spit on the leeward side. On the ocean side is 4 mile beach. You can just make out lots of sun umbrellas, in the life guard section of the beach. Boards at the ready We have been debating buying stinger suits. Still thinking about it… Paul having a chat with the lifeguard about the stingers. On the left life guard beach buggy all ready to roll. In the afternoon we went to Mossman Gorge. Got in as seniors – most Australians really nice and let us in. Relatively new visitors centre and you catch a bus up to the beginning of a forest walk. The water from the gorge is fed down to Port Douglas and the local aboriginal village. Anyway the walk takes you to a gorge lookout, then a swing bridge and rapids. Imagine the wobble on the Millennium bridge magnified and you have the bouncy crossing! Sometimes Paul is just a kid. This after I kept telling him to stop rocking the bridge. Mentioned lots of epiphytes that you get in these woodlands before. This is the basket fern (Drynaria rigidula). It has two types of leaves. The long arching green leaves are the reproductive fronds, which hold the fertile spores, you can just about make them out. The smaller brown leaves at the base hold the plant together. These are sterile. A nice creeping vine. And some moss which covered the ground in places but never went far up a tree. Another curtain fig tree. Great buttress root. Some sort of vine in flower. |