More about Wetherby

At Wetherby Station we enjoyed some of the best food and entertainment of the trip. We were seated out on the wrap around veranda, drinking wine, eating grilled steak and chicken, wonderful salads and finished up with Pavlova. Incidentally, food in Australia or New Zealand, while more or less British and light on the vegetables, was clean, grass fed, free range, not injected...and you could taste the difference. Those of you who know me, know that I rarely eat beef. I just find it mostly tasteless and uninteresting. The beef at Wetherby Station was astounding! I have never tasted such flavorful meat in my life.

Wetherby Station

On the way to Wetherby Station, we stopped at The National Hotel in MT Molloy. After many many hairpin turns, going UP, toward Wetherby, we stopped for a beer or a shandy. The National Hotel is an OLD roadhouse with rooms. The owner regaled us with tales of poisonous snakes in the rafters. The second floor is surrounded by open porch. Each bedroom opens onto the porch for maximum air movement. I want to stay there (except for the lack of security!). A Shandy? You didn't tell us what a SHANDY is! Well, I thought it was pretty vile! A shandy is 1/2 lemonade and 1/2 beer. Understand that lemonade in Australia is Sprite! I did not finish it! Wetherby Station is a working cattle station and tourist spot...I think they call it cattle tourism;-)

We were met at the corral by John Colless on horseback. The station was built in as a homestead in 1879, one of the oldest in the district. It was a stop on the way to the gold fields. The cattle introduced to the area were a cross between brahmins and zebu, making them a smallish, hardy, drought tolerant cow. They are all grass/range fed...organic to the max. They try to run the station in a sustainable manner. They use no herbicides or poisons (except when the dingos get too populous.) There is no shooting on the station except at the gum trees and ironwoods to harvest the seeds! They have a fire plan for the whole area...the station is responsible for the safety of their 26 neighbors. They do use controlled burns to maintain the land, dropping incendiary ping pong balls from helicopters to control the grasses that otherwise would form a serious fire threat to the whole area. There is much wildlife in the area: snakes : Taipans (lose one or 2 calfs per year to them), pythons. Birds: cattle egrets, kookabura, plover and many more listed on their website. Wallabies and kagaroos, termites, fish. It is a lush rich area. They weigh the steers from time to time to determine which are going to which market. Did you know that steers with broad haunches are sent to Korea; old steers to Japan; slender steers to Indonesia to be fattened on sugar cane waste? John mustered this bull and his cows for us. they were very beautiful, healthy animals. A sculpture up by the house. orchids! Love those bromeliads! Various unidentified buildings on the property.

The bower at Wetherby Station

We had a dinner at Wetherby Cattle Station, northwest of Cairns, in Far North Queensland in the township of MT Molloy. While it is now listed as Mount Molloy, originally the MT mean mining town. I will tell you more later about our experience at this station in the rainforest. One of the most exciting things was seeing the bower bird nest. This bower bird, who we never saw, collects seashells and red plastic for his palace. The nest was about 18 "tall and covered quite a bit of real estate! This bower was in their yard, along the fence next to the road that led into their property. They said that there is another bower being built out in the field by a younger male. They also said that when they are missing odd things from the kitchen, they go check the bowers.

Cairns Botanical Garden

We had a brief, but lovely, visit to the Cairns Botanical Garden. Of course, it was lovely! It's a tropical garden after all! But what was especially nice was the events transpiring there that morning. There was a cellist playing beautiful music and people clearly setting up for a photo shoot or an event of some kind. The place was oozing with the creative juices of plant-kind and human-kind.

Skyrail in Cairns

After the visit at Tjakupi Cultural Park we rode the Skyrail to Kuranda. Susan Pomerantz looking out, over the rainforest. The Skyrail is 7.5 km long, skimming above the rainforest canopy. Just peeking into the frame is Betsy, who is conquering her fear of heights...and did very well. quoting the website:"Skyrail Rainforest Cableway, Cairns Australia, is a world first in environmental tourism taking you on an amazing experience over Australia’s World Heritage listed Tropical Rainforest canopy and deep into the forest."

It was a 90 minute ride above the canopy. Most of the time, I was not aware of how high we were travelling...until I looked down HERE. I was not as excited about riding OVER the rainforest as I had been about walking in the Puerto Rican rainforest or the rainforest in Washington State. But, I must admit, this makes so much more environmental sense. The fragile ecosystem is far more protected this way.

There was a midway stop where we took a walkway overlooking Barron's gorge. A moorhen crossed our mossy path.

We disembarked at Kuranda where I had my last kangaroo pie. Meat pie is very popular in Australia. Think potpie that you can hold in your hand. The place we went to had many many different kinds of pies. I don't dislike kanagroo meat (except for imagining their beautiful eyes!), but ground meat in gravy wrapped in a fatty piecrust is just not my thing. I did go on to have a couple of sausage rolls elsewhere. Liked those better.

Kuranda looked like a tourist trap to me. I missed out on some legitimate galleries, I guess. But I went to Bird World and saw lots of cool birds. I'll show them to you tomorrow.

Tjakupi

AT Tjapuki we learned to throw boomerangs... sort of. I still throw like a girl! Right into the ground. The returning boomerang is native to the rainforest Aboriginals, used in bird hunting especially, to flush out the game. Tjakupi is a Cultural Park near Cairns that highlights Aboriginal culture. Before you go to their performance, you watch a movie of the history of Aboriginals in the time of colonialism. It was a no holds barred documentary of the generations of abuse of the native peoples, some from ignorance, some from intent. These beautiful young men are all of Aboriginal descent. There is not just one tribal type. The Aboriginals of Australia appear to descend from several groups that emigrated to the continent between 30,000 and 60,000 years ago. Those who traditionally inhabited the rain forest, tended to be paler skinned; those who inhabited the desert looked more African. There are over 300 language groups in Australia, some so vastly different that they must have arisen independently. These young men are professional singers, musicians, actors and dancers. They were very impressive, by Western standards. They imparted much information in a very slick, palatable way. It wasn't pandering. They were clearly very proud of their abilities and their heritage. It was a method that I think worked to make the mysterious more understandable. The power of art.

They gave us a behind the scenes talk about "bush tucker," showing us a plant that could be sucked on for caffeine, broken open for nuts, and shredded to form a paint brush. They talked about there dry & wet language groups: presumably desert vs rain forest. The organization they described for the rainforest people sounded more patriarchal than the desert peoples. They explained the dilly bag, a woven net bag, that was used for collecting and carrying food stuffs and for rinsing the toxins out of some the the foods. Traditional, old clothing, would be little more than pubic coverings, often made of human hair.

Crocodiles, Koalas,Captive Kangaroos and Birds

We drove north to a Hartley's Crocodile Adventure, a crocodile farm/ wildlife center where I petted a koala (Yes, too cute for school), watched crocs being fed, learned the diff between fresh and salt water crocs (one will kill you, one will not.) Salt water crocs have sensors that allow them to feel the buoyancy of salt water. Fresh water crocs do not and do occasionally wander into salty areas and get in trouble. The park is a small part of the operation. The Hartley's do raise crocodiles for the meat and skin market. They feed them chicken heads...partly for our benefit, I'm sure. But the crocs do like them.

The koala fur is actually a little rough! They are careful to cycle the Koalas through the photo sessions to reduce the stress. Touristy? yes. But still cool.

I felt very bad for the captive kangaroos! They are nocturnal animals, so the likelihood of seeing them in the wild was low. But, that day at the Croc farm was the first day that the rest of the tour was with us. The Outback segment was a "pre-tour" of only 15 people. By Crocodile day, we were joined by at least 20 jet lagged people, too many of whom chased the kangaroos around the pen to feed them! The red kangaroos were especially shy. Feeding these kangaroos was a way different experience than feeding the wallabies in Alice Springs. That experience did not feel coercive or abusive. This one did.

Despite my misgivings about the captive kangaroos and the petted koalas, Hartley's appears to be a well run park, involved in maintaining not only the crocodilian species but the dry rain forest it is situated in.

The birds were great! Black necked stork! Kookaburras in and out of the koala cage. Black swans A Tawny Frogmouth! They blend utterly with the trees and have the largest mouths! I think it was here that we saw the Nanking Night Heron. At some point I will do a detailed blog about birding in Australia.