Karumba to Cairns and beyond

The Mount Garnet Pub

Cairns is 700 km to the east of Normanton. We’re going from Gulf country, which is essentially wetland to the tropics, so we pass through a gradually changing landscape and flora. Croydon, Georgetown Mt Surprise and Mt Garnet are just some of the main towns which you would still call outback Queensland, before you start to enter towns such as Ravenshoe and then a climb up to the spectacular town of Atherton on the Atherton Tableland and Mareeba, where you now know you’re entering the tropics. You start to see the broad-leafed plantings and then eventually the sugar cane, which is so water dependent. We didn’t stop at any of these towns as we were on a timeline to get to Cairns before dark, but I will be up this way again and from what I’ve seen, Atherton will definitely be on my to-do list for towns to spend time exploring. The trip down through the mountains to Cairns was very picturesque - very reminiscent of the Dandenongs in terms of flora density, just change the flora to more broad-leafed plants and trees and there you have it. Quite windy with the van on, and we needed a high brake setting on the van to help us down some of the steeper slopes. At the base of the mountains, you enter essentially a flat plain which then stretches to the coastline for a couple of km.

The town of Cairns is bigger than I expected. On the northern approach, the north-south road, appropriately called Captain Cook Highway, is interrupted every so often by huge roundabouts that signal yet another road running down to either a beach or a park, or both. Cairns itself - well, it appears very well laid out and is very modern. There are signs everywhere hawking services or hotel/motel accommodation and there’s a considerable amount of roadwork and building construction underway. It appears to be very much a tourist holiday resort, with offshore fishing charters and scenic flights advertised everywhere.

Palm Cove - about 25 km north of Cairns

So we found a caravan park very late in the day - the cost of which made both of us miss several heart beats - and then set about looking around the CBD and the outer reaches to the north the following day. About 25 km north of the CBD, we came across Palm Cove, which is a very attractive looking development comprising hotels, restaurants and Cafes, all directly across from the beach front, which is no more than 30 metres away. A paved winding road, with a low speed limit is the only thing separating the beach from the buildings, and the beach itself is quite good, with palms and what look to be very old and substantial Mangrove and other indeterminate species of trees (to me at least) lining the road on the beach side. I can see myself spending some time here with CJP at some time in the future. Start packing the bags !!

The beach at Cape Tribulation

Having given away the idea of heading to Cooktown, I couldn’t give away the idea of a visit to both the Daintree Forest and Cape Tribulation, the latter named by one Lieutenant James Cook in 1770. And this brings in another personal hero of mine. Navigator extraordinaire, scientist, humanitarian and some-one who pushed the boundaries - he went further south than anyone before him on his way to Australia on the second voyage, and were it not for the large number of icebergs he encountered and the incredible cold, he would have bumped into the Antarctic continent and been the first to do so. Humility was also another hallmark - understatement is something I personally admire in people. While Joseph Banks was accepting well deserved accolades for his Botanical and Zoological discoveries during the voyage of the Endeavour, Cook set about planning his next great voyage, for which he was promoted to the rank of Captain - I mean, how could the Admiralty refuse ??. 

Beach at Cape Tribulation

Although Joseph Banks was a strong supporter of Cook, there was, in fact, a falling out between the two prior to the second voyage .... and there is yet another story better left perhaps for another blog or blogger. Suffice to say James Cook is the Naval version of my Terrestrial hero John McDouall Stuart. I hold both these men in the highest possible regard, virtually to the rank of Saint ...... And an observation I make in both cases. Neither of these men were from wealthy or privileged backgrounds. Both had come from lower class backgrounds and had learned their respective “trades” or Bushmanship (Stuart) and Seamanship/Navigation (Cook) through hard knocks. In fact Cook ... no I won’t.... I get too excited about these people so I apologise for getting off the track a bit. 

Beach at Cape Tribulation - view from inside the mangroves

Ahem ...

Daintree river - with moody sky

The Daintree Forest is, as I’ve now learned, 135 million years old and is the one of the oldest such rain forest in the world. It is listed by the World Heritage but during the 1980’s, commercial interests battled with environmentalists over logging proposals, and it took a court battle between the Australian Federal Govt (against logging) and The Queensland Govt (for it), in which the Feds won and had the forest listed as a World Heritage site. For that we can all be very grateful. The road trip up from Cairns is around 170 km and includes a Ferry crossing of the Daintree River, followed by a very windy but magnificent drive through this iconic forest. There are commercial developments within the forest bounds, but they are very limited and well controlled. Cassowary birds wander freely - there are signs everywhere warning of potential road crossings by these attractive birds - and of course, swimming in the rivers could be a deadly activity because Krys the Croc from Normanton also has family in these parts.

Daintree river

Daintree Village is a quaint little stopping point for a coffee, which decided to have and immediately got talking with one of the locals. She said they’d had a relatively dry wet season this year - that being said, the average annual rainfall is 2100 mm with a temperature range throughout the year of around 26C to 28C through the day. When you consider Melbourne has an annual average rainfall of around 650mm, we’re talking orders of magnitude difference  - although from what I’m hearing on the home front, it appears that average for Melbourne could be adjusted upward mightily given the recent rainfall. But our local informant told us that it rains almost all year round - a gloomy thought.

The Master Navigator - James Cook

And then of course, there’s Cape Tribulation, which is contained within part of the Daintree Forest. A small and nondescript out-jutting of land, it was assigned its name by James Cook, who as Lieutenant James Cook in charge of the Barque HMS Endeavour, ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef in 1770 just off the coast from this very point. Obviously in a grumpy mood, he took it out on the local landscape.  The mountain behind Cape Tribulation didn’t escape his mournful state either as it was named Mt Sorrow. And why not feel down in the dumps ? Imagine, you’ve sailed half way round the world, have circumnavigated New Zealand twice, thus proving there were indeed two islands not one, and are generally welcomed by the locals. Then you head west and bump into this huge lump of land, which is where all your troubles start. Instead of a welcoming, as was the case in Tahiti where half the crew of visiting ships got syphilis (they were very welcoming in those days), the local natives of this new land tell you to bugger off, throw spears and rocks at you, don’t want to trade because they don’t have anything of value and then you run aground and almost drown yourself and crew further up the coast. I think I’d be a little ticked off as well.

Having said that though, imagine what would have happened had Cook sunk at this point and not been able to beach Endeavour on the banks of a river, now named Endeavour River, at a location which now contains the township of Cooktown. We could all have been speaking either Dutch or French, most likely French I suspect, as the French, by this time, were more active in this area than the Dutch. The Dutch were more concerned with trade than with colonisation. And then of course, French culture would have prevented the establishment of such iconic Australian games as Australian Rules Football and prevented us from beating the crap out of the Brit’s at such games as Cricket and Rugby Union ....  yeah, right .... Now this just doesn’t bear thinking about.

A Queenslander in Cairns - still in great condition

We spent just a couple of days in Cairns and then headed south for Townsville, our next major stop. But along the way, we stopped off at Innesfail, Tully and Tully Heads. The last two were of interest because we wanted to see how these towns had recovered since the devastation caused by Cyclone Yasi a couple years back. TJ knew of a lady who lived at a particular address in Tully Heads, so we visited that address, but there was no house. Obviously, it had been destroyed and his contact had moved on. Of those houses still standing, all traces of damage had mostly disappeared. Talking to a lady at the local Info bureau, she said after Yasi, a lot of people left town and never came back. Understandable.

Typical sugar plantation house and environ

Something you can’t miss when you’re up this way are the numerous sugar cane plantations. They’re everywhere, even all the way up to the Daintree forest and as far south, apparently as the northern parts of NSW. Most of the cane is now harvested green - about 80% in fact - with the remainder being burned before harvest, which is the more tradition approach. There are around 4000 family run plantations in Australia, producing about 37 million tons of sugar cane, which results in about 5 million tons of sugar. The town of Tully was developed in the 1920‘s for the express purpose of building a sugar processing plant, which still exists today. The sugar industry employs literally thousands around these parts so it's a very important part of the north Queensland economy. The export value is worth somewhere around $1.5 Billion per year so it’s a significant export earner not only for Queensland but also Australia.

Sugar cane harvesting - the early days

On the way through, we managed to catch sight of a sugar industry museum, so yep, we leapt into yet another museum. Quite good as it refrained the beginnings of the sugar industry in Australia. Unfortunately, it’s another case of whites employing people from primarily the Pacific Island countries and then failing to live up to the contracts they’d signed. Add to this the beginnings of the White Australia policy and you have yet another truly shameful history in the treatment of workers brought in from neighbouring countries to carry out the work that most Whites felt was beneath them. This is the Pearling Industry experience in Broome repeated, albeit on the East Coast instead of the West Coast. In both cases, foreign workers were brought in to do the labouring and the dangerous work. They were treated as virtual slaves, suffering major health issues because of the conditions under which they were expected to work and when they did get sick, there was no medical treatment available for them and they were, in essence, left to fend for themselves, which means left to die. 

Kanaks in the cane field

Blackbirding, as practiced in the pearling industry in the west, was also adopted in the sugar industry in the east. Blackbirding is the old term used to describe the process of kidnapping people who are then forced to work as slave labour. In the pearling industry, Blackbirding applied to the local Aborigines who were kidnapped and forced to work as divers. Many died from “the bends” and many died from simply being left  to die from disease or illness contracted because of the unsanitary conditions under which they were forced to live. In the east, it applied to people from places such as Vanuatu, The Solomons, New Caledonia, Fiji, New Hebrides and New Guinea - collectively, these people were often referred to as Kanakas, a derogatory term at the time. These folks were effectively tricked into signing indentured employment contracts, the conditions of which were then conveniently ignored by the sugar plantation owners. They were forced to work in stifling conditions of high temperature and high humidity for long hours each day, seven days a week. When the White Australia Policy was enacted by Parliament, any protections they may have had under the law simply disappeared, and they were left to fend for themselves. Most lived out their lives in poverty - or died. You don’t hear much about this in the southern states - it’s only when you visit the upper regions of the country that it all comes out. It’s not only the Aborigines we’ve mistreated over the years, but many of the South and Northern Pacific Islanders as well. 

I don’t recall hearing anything about this during my secondary school education .....

Our next stop is Townsville.