Let the journey begin! Our first stop today was the Kuranda Nursery where we met Kathy who was the president of the EnviroCare. This was the group that we were working with to plant trees and help restore the forest. By doing so we were helping to secure a buffer zone to a World Heritage site and protect the Cassowary, which is a giant flightless bird that wanders about in the forests.
The tropical rainforest also has a newly found species of tree frog called Myola frog that was discovered in 2007. Not much is known about the Myola but Kathy and her group are monitoring them along with the Cassowaries. We planted over 40 different species of trees throughout the area, and we all got to take turns making holes and planting the trees. It was a lot of fun, and it was nice to know that we were actually making a difference. Once we had finished planting the trees we went to go see a river that was about 5 minutes away from our site...the only problem with that was the road that led to the river was actually flooded due to the massive amount of rain that has been going on. On our trek over there we ran across a railroad bridge that was absolutely gorgeous. It was wooden and acted as a bridge over the creek and road that we were on. Once we got back to the nursery, our hosts were kind enough to have afternoon tea ready for us. There was fresh watermelon, dragon fruit, and this strange looking fruit that reminded me of a cherry. It was an interesting fruit, with an outside shell that was rough and you needed to peel it off in order to get to the meat which was a clear almost jelly like substance with a pit in the middle. While we were there another family was helping to plant trees, and there was this little boy who was interacting with our group quite a bit. He was riding on Kevin's shoulder a lot and squirting us with his water bottle.
The tropical rainforest also has a newly found species of tree frog called Myola frog that was discovered in 2007. Not much is known about the Myola but Kathy and her group are monitoring them along with the Cassowaries. We planted over 40 different species of trees throughout the area, and we all got to take turns making holes and planting the trees. It was a lot of fun, and it was nice to know that we were actually making a difference. Once we had finished planting the trees we went to go see a river that was about 5 minutes away from our site...the only problem with that was the road that led to the river was actually flooded due to the massive amount of rain that has been going on. On our trek over there we ran across a railroad bridge that was absolutely gorgeous. It was wooden and acted as a bridge over the creek and road that we were on. Once we got back to the nursery, our hosts were kind enough to have afternoon tea ready for us. There was fresh watermelon, dragon fruit, and this strange looking fruit that reminded me of a cherry. It was an interesting fruit, with an outside shell that was rough and you needed to peel it off in order to get to the meat which was a clear almost jelly like substance with a pit in the middle. While we were there another family was helping to plant trees, and there was this little boy who was interacting with our group quite a bit. He was riding on Kevin's shoulder a lot and squirting us with his water bottle.
We did not stay much longer after our afternoon tea, but when we got to the bus we discovered that it would not start so we had to have the owners of the nursery drive us to Kuranda Village where we were going to walk around in the pouring rain looking at shops. Once we all arrived at Kuranda Village we had a bit of time to look around and go into different shops trying to find souvenir. It was a lot of fun minus the monsoon of rain that plagued our entire day.
We got to explore the village for over an hour, catching up on all the souvenir shopping we wanted to do. Everyone scattered and searched for cool Australian gifts to bring home for ourselves and love ones.
Once the van got fixed, we started our trek towards the cattle station, where we would be spending the night. Our guide Martin told us that we would most likely escape the rain at our accommodations for the night, setting up a nice evening for a BBQ and fire. We were very excited to get away from the rain, but also see the southern hemisphere stars.
Cherie is adding to the evening portion of the day, so I will leave it to her to discuss the rest of the day.
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