Today was a really cool day. I took the sky rail to Kuranda. It's a gondola that goes over the rainforest stopping at a few places along the way. From above I saw lots of cool birds like sulfur crested cockatoos and lots of other native birds and listened to them call back and forth to each other. At the stops along the way rangers spoke about the native flora and fauna. I learned about the huge native staghorn ferns that you can see from a long ways a away, and the bird nest ferns that form these huge 'nests' a few feet across that sit on the trees as epiphytes. These ferns are ecosystem engineers and know known for housing hundreds of species of insects that only occur in the ferns, which attracts amphibians, which attracts pythons and tree kangaroos and possums. They are known as the buffet of the rainforest. They also taught about the cassoway, the third largest living bird in the world, which is also an ecosystem engineer. They eat multiple kilograms of plant matter every day and walk long distances across the forest. Many of the native plants can only germinate if they have first been ingested by the cassowary, and many of the seeds are poisonous to all species expect the cassowary. Without them many species would go extinct, and the skyrail put a lot of money into conservation and research of the forest. Additionally, as I rode the skyrail I had an app that told me about the forest below be describing the palm-like vines with curved spines that climb the trees for light. Or the kauri trees that shed its bark every year preventing viney species from growing around it and self fertilizing the soil beneath it with its own decomposing bark. Or the lacy tree ferns which have had a place in my heart since I saw them in New Zealand and never fail to enchant me.
The sky rail brought me to the small tourist town of Kurana. I spent a few hours walking trails along the edge of the rain forest and walking through the market. Its quite funny because half the town is very typical touristy with the gifty shops and tourist attracting, and the other half is this funny little hippy-dippy market. Its still touristy, but a completely different style full of white australians with dreadlocks and wandering barefoot. Speaking of, how do you tell a local from a tourist? Locals don't wear shoes. Australians will walk just about anywhere without shoes on I reckon. The grocery store, the bar, down the street, work, all shoeless. Its something else.
After a few hours in Kuranda I grabbed the Scenic Railway back to Cairns. It's a quite pretty ride, but unfortunately, my assigned seat was on the mountain side, so I didn't have the best view. I did have a nice chat with the other people on the bus though. There were 3 retired people riding it, they said they rode it with their kids 20 years ago so now they are doing it on their own and seemed to be having a good time. One was a hobbyist orchid grower so we chatted about orchids for a while which was fun. The other person in my seating area was a german exchange student at a university in Brisbane. We chatted about about his time here and it was nice. The scenic railway is a feat of hubris? greed? of flagrant worker safety violations? It was built in the midst of the gold rush in the last 1800s. Many died in the building of the railway which carves with way through and around mountains with steep cliffs. It was built by 1500 men of mostly Irish and English decent that were paid a small amount for very dangerous work, they also had to bring their own tools. Some are believed to be buried under the railway. It was a hard life, but someone (not the workers) got really rich, so it was probably fine right. lol.The view is magnificent though.
After getting back from the train I headed over to my hostel for the next few days. I checked in and its a great locations looking over the water, but the hostel is quite crammed. My 4 person room is very tight, so I can't imagine spending much time in the room, which is totally fine, especially since I spent a few days resting prior.
In the lobby I met an Irish girl, Yvonne, and we got on really well. Shes super nice and chatty and she's been on working holiday here for a year now, but just got to Cairns. We ended up deciding to go for a drink, which turned into a very late night dancing in the club. It was a lot of fun dancing and laughing to oldies all night long, and we made plans to spend some more time together.
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