8th May - wildlife park stories - Kuranda train and Skyrail - butterflies

Wednesday 8^th May

Happy birthday Kathy Westlake!  One of my very oldest friends over many years, many children, a husband or two…Kathy is a totally admirable person, always positive, always fun, through thick and thin.

So is this blog about sailing or what??? Well yes it WILL be.  We are getting ready to venture out again, onto the sea.  But…not just yet…

First thing this morning I had my hair cut, by a charming and enterprising girl called Julie, who has her phone number on the notice board in the laundry room – very sensible placement; one gets so bored while waiting for the clothes to spin…nothing to do but read the ads.  It is only a month, to the day, since I last got it cut but…in the tropics, my hair grows like a weed.

Julie also works in a local wildlife park, and is halfway through a degree which will qualify her as a professional zookeeper.  But, she says, no zookeepers ever get to pay their HECS debts because the pay is so dreadful…which is why she is being a mobile hairdresser in her spare time.

She told us some very funny stories.

A man who asked, after watching the ever-somnolent koalas for some time, whether ALL of the koalas in the park were stuffed.  Julie said, a bit snappily, “No.  If they were stuffed we would be called a MUSEUM instead of a wildlife park!”

A woman who wanted to know if there was such a thing as a native Australian koala, or do they ALL come from China.

A woman who got off the Skyrail very crossly and asked for her money back.  She had been unable to see any rainforest.  Too many trees in the way…

Our train trip to Kuranda was great.  For one thing, it didn’t go on too long… (I remember Bob Curé, who did the breakfast show in the ABC for many years, used to talk about one of his daughters, and how, every time she went to any event – party, concert, excursion – she would come home and say, “It was great fun but…it went on too long…This has become a useful benchmark for me, to measure enjoyment.)   Lots of scenery – here is just one shot – and lots of interesting info over the intercom, which one could listen to, or not, as one chose.

Our first stop in Kuranda was at a large restaurant overlooking the trees.  I asked for coffee – long black, double shot – and Pete for a XXXX Gold (beer.)  Our poor waitress obviously did not understand any words other than “coffee” and “beer”… She was very obliging but almost completely non-English speaking.  She came back, and we clarified everything.  And then she arrived with…a XXXX Gold, a long black, and…another one…the “double shot” had thrown her into total confusion.

World Of Butterfly Fun… We had a lovely hour or so in the butterfly house at the end of the main drag in Kuranda.  Both Pete and I stalked the butterflies, trying desperately to get just one good shot of a glorious Ulysses butterfly.  I did succeed…but very sadly I think it was a soon-to-be ex Ulysses butterfly – they only live a maximum of 12 days and it looked as if its 12 days were well and truly up.  Normally they flit around most frenetically and don’t settle for one single second to have their photo taken.  (Monarch butterflies, on the other hand, live about 12 MONTHS!!)

A very shabby little nondescript butterfly settled charmingly on Pete’s hat, and I got a very good shot of him, and of it, but when I showed him, he said, gloomily, “I look half-witted!”  So I deleted it and am just including a rather more beautiful butterfly, in profile, next to Pete’s leg.

We came back down from Kuranda on the Skyrail, which is fabulous, swinging out over the rainforest canopy.  Rosemary, at dinner on Sunday, had said it is best to go up by train and return by Skyrail because of the fabulous views coming back down.  Oh well never mind…it RAINS in rainforest…  We couldn’t really see anything at all, other than directly beneath us.  There are two stops along the way, so we got to walk around and admire this and that, including this beautiful big kauri tree.

As each gondola swings into the final station at Kuranda, a cheery girl leaps out in front of the windscreen and says SMILE!  So Pete and I smiled…and were rewarded (once we had shelled out $14.95) with this very naff photo.  I love it…it is in such soft focus… The last time I got a naff photo of this ilk was in Buenos Ayres.  Barbara and I had been for a very nice little bus tour for the morning, and they had told us that at the end of the tour we would get…a SURPRISE!  The “surprise” was a photo, framed in midnight blue velvet, of Barbara’s and my heads superimposed on very svelte tango dancers in tight frocks…(I love this photo too…)