Cassowary encounter

During the last days we made our way up from Townsville to Cairns, seeing lots of waterfalls (including the highest single drop waterfall in all of Australia: The Wallaman falls with an impressive height of almost 300m), beaches, towns, sugarcane, animals, tropical rainforest, more sugarcane and - a cassowary. I would not emphasize this so much with an italic font style, if it was not a truly great encounter out of this world. The cassowary is a very rare animal - about 1500 of these non-flying birds are left in northern Queensland - which is also worldwide, as they live only in this region. The cassowary can reach a height of about 1,5m and is one of the strangest birds you may ever see, concerning its appearance. And it can kill you. Yes, you got me right, it can disembowel you with its toenails, which can reach a length of 12cm and are as sharp as that newly bought knife on your kitchen counter, which is why most tourist guides tell you to keep a certain distance from the bird if you encounter it. They also mention that you should bring an object between yourself and the bird, if it starts to become aggressive - which might happen during the main breeding season (June-October).
We met the cassowary on our way up to the Wallaman falls on an unsealed road, while joking about the falls perhaps being literally a 'single drop' waterfall, due to the drought ;). We could observe the bird safely from the comfort of our car, but we made some good pictures of it, which I will upload during the coming days. To give you an image of what the cassowary looks like, here is a picture from Spiegel ONLINE. If you are interested in the cassowary and the region we currently travel in (Northern Queensland/Cairns), you can also have a look at this good new article at Spiegel ONLINE.

More about our cassowary encounter and our other australian adventures during my next updates.

Pictures from Townsville

Actually, its not pictures from Townsville, but sent from Townsville. I found an unsecured WLAN accesspoint in our local backpacker, which I am using now shamelessly. Connection is really bad, though, I am waving the PDA all over the room to get a connection quality of 4-6% (60-80% is normal). Well, at least its for free, so here are the first pics from our tour:

This picture is from Narita airport in Tokyo. There was not much to do except sleeping or watching Sumo wrestling on airport TV, which the locals happily did. I watched them watching it, which was quite interesting ;)

Thats our plane being loaded in Tokyo. Interesting fact: the workers that load your plane at the airport line up next to the plane later, as it rolls to the runway, wave to the passengers and finally bow into the direction of the aircraft and to each other. Nice working spirit, don't you think?

This is one of the pictures from Brisbane. You see lots of these older buildings made from sandstone in front of the newer skyscrapers. Very interesting architectural contrasts in this city.

Part of the skyline of Brisbane with the Brisbane river in front

Huge bridge in Brisbane spanning the Brisbane river. This is one of the first pictures we made, just after our arrival in the morning. There were lots of joggers on the boardwalk next to the river - looking much healthier than we did after being awake for almost 30 hours.

A small island/peninsula located in the Cape Hillsborough National Park in the vicinity of the town of Mackay. The picture was made during the beginning of low tide. During high tide, the peninsula is actually an island, but during low tide, you can walk over to it. You gotta be fast, though, as there are two high and low-tides each day and unless you dont want to have the true 'Gilligan'-experience, you should keep an eye on the water-level.

This picture is also from Cape Hillsborough National Park. There was a 'controlled' wildfire on the other side of the park (rangers frequently burn parts of the bush, as the dry biomass on the ground becomes too dense, so that possibly more devastating wildfires are prevented). It looked a bit scary though, as the flames finally covered a huge part of the mountainside, down to the road, we later drove on. In fact, it is sometimes these controlled wildfires, that lead to real wildfires, so we had to keep not only an eye on the tide, but also the flames as well. While the flames rose higher, there was a helicopter landing on the beach that took some newsstation people onboard, who obviously covered the fire in their broadcast.

Same scene, different time.

This picture was made on Whitehaven Beach, which is located on the Whitsunday islands - a small group of islands that belong to the inner Great Barrier Reef (next coastal town is Airlie Beach). We did a daytrip here with the boat you see in the center of the picture. First, we had about an hour of snorkeling action near one of the uninhabited smaller islands, during which we saw zillions of colorful corals and fishes. The fishes are all but shy and come really close to you, so we got a good look at them. Sadly we forgot our waterproof camera case, so there are no underwater pictures from that day, but we will definitely take it out to the reef during our next reeftour from Cairns. The beach on the picture is one of the most perfect beaches I have ever seen. The water is absolutely translucent and the sand is of the finest white grain - we were even told that it is used for the cleaning of jewellery. Much different to the coastal beaches, who are also very clean and have good sand, but this one was simply perfect.

Kangaroo party near Yeppoon.

What's the date again?

We are currently in the Mackay region of Queensland and are planning to go to Airlie Beach tomorrow, which is the hub for the Whitsunday Islands - a group of beautiful small islands situated in the Great Barrier Reef. Weather is fabulous so far - we can count the clouds we saw during the last seven days at one hand. Yesterday, we were in Eungella, a small village in the mountains about 80km inland from Mackay, where we watched wild Platypus (very rare) and Turtles up and close in a mountain river.  We also did a rainforest walk, as the region is well known for its untouched tropical rainforests. The day before we met a german, who is doing the Brisbane-Cairns part of our tour in 5 weeks (we are doing it in two weeks, but so far we feel very comfortable with our speed ;). We also met a white bearded old man from New Zealand during our rainforest walk (he looked very active, considering he was about 70 yrs old), who explained lots of plants and animals to us. One of these was the "birdsnest" - a plant that grows high in the branches of trees and looks a bit like a huge pumpkin with leaves on the outside. It can become very large and occasionally it falls down to the ground below, as it becomes too heavy to hold onto the branch of the tree. Luckily there were no fatalities due to falling birdsnests yet, as far as we heard...
In the morning, we made some great pictures of deep green grass covered hills in the mountains, that were crowded not only with very german looking cows, but also thousands of cockatoos and other birds. The scene was completed by a huge cactus in the front ;)
Yesterday, we also had our first Dominos pizza, which was yummy.
Sadly,  I was unable to upload pictures so far, as there were no WLAN hotspots around. I hope to find one in Cairns and upload a few pics there, as we have already hundreds on disk.
Next, we will visit the Cape Hillsborough National Park at the coast and then travel up to Airlie Beach.  Next update will probably be from Cairs. Till then - take care!
 
 

Shaken, not stirred

That's pretty much what I felt like during our second flight from Tokio to Brisbane. It was a bit of a rough ride above the pacific ocean and in the end I had not slept for almost 40 hours in a row (except for a 1-hour nap in Tokio) but that was forgotten when we saw the first sunrays above a wall of clouds covering Australias coastline. w-o-w-! (pictures will follow later)
We have now been in Brisbane for almost two days and I must say that it is one of the nicest cities I have been in, yet. The city is located a few miles away from the coast, but there is a huge river (called 'Brisbane river' - they were not very inventive on that ;) running through it, which increases the quality of life somewhat. There are many gardens and parks near the river, some of which were built during the 1988 Expo, which took place in Brisbane. The inner city has a small skyline with many taller buildings in the business district and near the river, but you also see lots of very interesting old buildings made out of sandstone. We did a river-cruise this evening, taking a look at the city from the water, watching fishing-trawlers passing by, people in rowing boats and making pictures of the sun setting behind the skyline of Brisbane (will post them later).
Considering that it is winter over here, the weather has been truly great so far. We had the bluest of skys on both days and the temperatures are at around 23 degrees, though it gets much colder in the evenings and mornings, of course.
We also had a few animal encounters already. This evening, we saw a few possums in the trees of the botanic gardens (though they looked a bit smaller than the possums I had seen earlier, we even discussed the possibility of them being rats, but they had a few other characteristic features). Also some Lorikeets (kleine Papageien), very few Kookaburras and more birds I have no name for as of now.
Speaking of Kookaburras: we are staying at the 'Kookaburra Inn' - a very nice backpacker close to the inner city, but also quiet enough to sleep and a bit 'in the green'. So if you ever come to Brisbane - get yourself a room here.
I even received my first 'SUBWAYS' voucher already - if I buy a footlong sandwich, I get another free! Hooray!
Ok, more about Brisbane and some pictures will follow later. We will get our rental car tomorrow morning and start travelling the coastline up towards Cairns.

Seeya :)

"I allus has wan at eleven"

(Ich genehmige mir immer eins um elf)

Traditional advertising-slogan of Carlton and United Breweries referring to the 11 o'clock morning pint

The inoffical slogan continues:

"Cos if I don't have wan at eleven, I allus has eleven at one"

Call of the Kookaburra

Did you ever feel laughed at by an animal really hard? Just sit next to a Kookaburra of your choice like the one depicted in the image below and wait for a short while. These funny feathered friends dont settle with the usual "chirp, chirp" of most european birds, but provide you with a truly unique acoustic experience ;)

The bad part is, that it tends to get annoying when it is 5.30 in the morning and a crowd of Kookaburras has decided to discuss something really important in front of your window.

Bandicoots revisited

According to my pal Tom - who is a respectable biologist - the bandicoot is not a rodent but a marsupial. I have corrected the previous update and apologized to the bandicoot community.

The strangest ads

wow... I just realized that the ads displayed above my blog are content related. Currently, there is one ad on "Australian Adventures" - obviously due to the topic of my whole blog and - which is far more interesting - one ad that offers "various non-invasive blood pressure monitors for rats and mice", which seems to relate to my last update. Well, I wonder if they are adressing the right target-group here? ;) I checked out their website and one click later I was in rodent hell - these guys sell devices like the "Gas Anesthesia Platform for Mice". It "allows for precise and secure positioning of an animal during anesthesia and surgery when used with Stoelting’s Mouse and Neonatal Rat Adaptor (No. 51625)". eek...
Mind also, that their "new improved mouse gas mask, with gas inlet and outlet projecting back at a 45-degree angle, allows for easy connection to gas anesthesia and scavenger systems".
Well, unless your secret hobby is amateur-surgery on mice and rats, you should skip the ads and keep the eyes on the blog ;)

Mind the bandicoots

These bandicoots must look like really fat rats. In fact, the sign reminded me of a rat I had, when I was younger. My rat used to be fat, too, as it was addicted to a special treat called "Joghurt Drops" - small yoghurt candy, especially made for mice, hamsters and rats. (my god, I hope no one from a developing country reads this) My rat had to hear only the slightest rattle of the drops in the box and it would trick earth´s gravity somehow throwing its massive weight against the highest part of the cage in a bit less than a tenth of a second, staring at me in a hypnotic kind of way. Yep, I guess my rat was a yoghurt drop junkie. I wonder whether these corpulent australian rodents marsupials have a similar culinary attraction in their lives.... Sadly, not a single bandicoot was available for further interrogation, as we slowly passed their territory.