Australia - Kuranda Rainforest
Kuranda: A Night in the Rainforest
in northeastern Australia
"I see two red spots!" I shouted in an excited voice. The driver stopped the car and slowly backed up. I carefully aimed my flashlight back into the night toward the tree where I saw those 2 red spots. "There they are!" said one of the other passengers in the 4-wheel drive 7-passenger vehicle. As I held the flashlight on the spot, everyone got out of the car and shined their flashlights up into the trees. Staring back at us was an opossum - a lemur opossum, sitting on a branch high up in a tree in the rain forest near the village of Kuranda, Queensland, Australia.
Our adventure had began in Cairns on the northeast coast of Australia where we boarded the famous Kuranda Train which climbed up to the charming village of Kuranda, The Village in the Rainforest.
"A Night in the Rainforest" was the title of our evening out. The advertisement promised "a unique sensory experience...You'll be overwhelmed by the complexity of sights and sounds,the tastes and smells of this nocturnal wilderness...You won't want to leave this mysterious endangered wonderland. Return to reality and your accommodation around midnight."
The evening began with a fabulous home cooked steak/shrimp barbeque dinner in a gazebo by the home of Rob and Carmel. At their Fauna Sanctuary they take in the wounded animals of the rainforest until they heal. Wallabies and a kangaroo wandered around the pool. After dinner we got into the vehicle with Rob, our professional Aussie bush guide, and went into parts of the rainforest where one has to have a permit to go - "World Heritage" highland rainforest tracks. We held large flashlights (‘torches’ as the Aussies say) as we drove along looking for 2 red spots to look back at us -- the eyes of possums, owls, and tree kangaroos. What an experience! We would stop and look at these animals, which only can be seen at night.
Rob also pointed out the "stinging tree," a large bush that has huge heart-shaped leaves and grows along the roads and edges of the rainforest. If you touch it, tiny particles penetrate your skin and body. Rob learned from his encounter with it that the pain is excruciating, it lasts for months, and there is no known cure -- even the aboriginals don't have a cure for it. Perhaps this ‘tree’ is the rainforest’s natural protector. The rainforest is full of fascinating trees and birds and plant and animal life. For North Americans, it is like visiting another planet -- nothing is familiar.
We stopped several times and at one point Rob served juice and coffee and a delicious cake that Carmel had made. We reluctantly returned to reality, but left with a memory of a truly magical nocturnal world in the rainforest.
Sidebar:
See this website for current things to do in Kuranda. http://www.cairnsunlimited.com/kuranda.htm
Note: April 2015, I couldn't find the website for Carrowong Fauna Sanctuary on Blackmountain Road, that offered "A Night in the Rainforest."