Visited the old hippy town of Karunda – and did it show it.  One of the camera stops on the way to Karunda.  Cairns airport  is to the left of the first mountain.  The range in the background is part of the mainland with Green Island in the far left hand corner.  It’s a tossup whether we will come to Cairns as instead of sailing north we will have to make a 8 nm detour to the West.

This papaya was growing just down from the lookout.  First time seen one in flower.

Here’s Karunda – looking very tired and closed up.

From Karunda you can go to Barron Falls – which we did.  This whole area is a World Heritage Site and part of the wet tropics of north east Queensland.  There are little patches of it preserved throughout the east coast.    Areas are being linked together to form wildlife corridors. There are lots of vine types of plants.  This is the lawyer cane – presumably litigation – which takes advantage of disturbed areas when a tree falls down.  The stems are really prickly and it sends up shoots with grappling hooks (literally) which circle around until they catch on to something.  It then uses that for support to pull itself up.  It’s a climbing palm (I didn’t know you could get those).  Aboriginals used the leaves to make baskets and huts.  Sometimes they would wrap the vine around themselves to climb up trees – what they did about all those hooked hairs who knows.

A great example of the epiphyte elk horn thorn.  This one is growing half way up a tree.

This is a large woody vine.  The empty coils are a result of young vines winding themselves up and around saplings, which have later died.  Vines provide a special role in rainforests as they act as highways and bridges for a variety of animals as they cross the rainforest.  Haven’t managed to get a photo but all the major highways that cross through rare habitats have rope walks suspended over the top of them that act like the vines and provide animal thoroughfares.

There is an old railway – diesel not steam – that winds its way up here.  You can catch the train up to Karunda and a cable car back down.  We drove up here because we have been on loads of ‘skywalks’ – raised platform walks through the rainforest.  They are billed as good way to see bird life but the birdlife is so well camouflaged you can’t see a thing.  Generally, so many people that any self-respecting bird would be miles away.  Here’s the cable car passing across the road as we drove up to Karunda.

Lookout overlooking Barron Falls.

There were originally two dams at Barron Falls, you can just about make out the one on the LHS, the other is just slightly to the right.  There are two large natural ‘pools’ here.  The V on the RHS holds one and directly beneath that is the other.  Water was fed from above the first pool via a pipeline to a power station.

The diesel train which was stopped at Barron Falls station.

Railway coaches sitting at Barron Falls

View from Wrights Lookout just down the road from Barron Falls.  Cairns way over in the distance.