To A Place Unknown: 6.July.2016 (Day 31)

Mud, sweat, blood, and cassowaries

Today I drove 150km north to hike a trail a fellow EAPSI participant had mentioned, Mt. Sorrow.

I was looking for one thing in particular, a extremely shy and somewhat endangered animal.

I read that the trail is only 7km up and back (~4.5 miles) and goes from sea level to 680 meters (~2,200 ft).

How bad could it be?

If you look online it warns that this hike is only for ‘extremely fit individuals’ (check) and those ‘experienced hiking in the bush’ (and double-check)…

Errr

Clearly I have a poor sense of my own fitness.

It wasn’t the hardest hike I’ve ever been on, but I was dripping with sweat and covered in mud (and leeches!) in less than five minutes. The trail is ‘clearly marked’ but Australian marked trails mean something different entirely.

Orange reflectors nailed into trees every 500 meters or so was better than nothing.

Oh yeah, clearly marked

I’m happy to report that I discovered something new to science today. A plant with feelings, behavior, and a dark soul. They’re nicknamed the ‘wait-a-while’ vine (the one I kept ‘running into’ are also called hairy marys). I was pre-warned about this plant and couldn’t figure out what the name meant.

Now I know.

They’ve evolved some type of advanced plant communication. As careful as I always tried to be if one got stuck to me, they were able to communication to their brothers-in-arms to sneak up behind me and fastidiously entangle their death-branches on, and into, my legs, arms, and butt.

And the blood doth runneth.

Wait-a-while/Hairy Mary (Calamus australis)

Despite my best efforts, the whole way up I couldn’t find any hints of what I’d driven so far for. But I kept a keen eye out.

As I mentioned yesterday the jungle is thick. And this jungle was really thick. With so many nooks, crannies, rocks, bushes, and leaves to hide on and under it can be quite challenging to find signs of animals. I could hear all kinds of activity, but seeing it (and taking any type of decent photo) was another story.

Sometimes the most amazing things are hidden in plain sight.

Lichen huntsman spider (Pandercetes gracilis)

These spiders are amazingly cryptic. I don’t know how many of these I passed on my way up, but it wasn’t until I nearly put my palm on one that I noticed.

It took just over two hours to get to the top, and I was fairly covered in sweat, mud, and endless wait-a-while wounds, but the view from up on high felt well worth it.

The trail is somewhere down there

It wasn’t the animal I came here to find, but I also managed a bit of company to enjoy the view with.

Northern tree snake (Dendrelaphis calligastra)

I am really on a roll while down unda’. These snakes can grow up to 1.2 meters (~4ft). This bad-boy clocked in at around 8 inches….

Exhausted, legs shaking like a leaf, and covered in thorns I headed down the trail.

This is one of those special, magical places where the jungle walks right up to the beach. By the time I got down to the white sand below I was pretty blown away that I’d gone up only 680 meters.

Mt. Sorrow in the back left

Even though I’ve already mentioned a few ‘big deal’ items for me growing up (Jurassic Park, dinosaurs in general, etc., etc.), another thing that had a big impact on my childhood development was Ren & Stimpy (that explains a lot, doesn’t it?) and one of my all time favorite segments… Muddy Mudskipper

Mudskipper (Periophthalmodon Freycineti)

These fish are so cool. They’re amphibious, meaning they can handle themselves out of water pretty darn well (but can’t go completely without it). They can essentially breathe through their skin, which allows them to survive, and remain pretty active, outside of water.

I didn’t want to give up just yet. I had come so far and didn’t want to admit defeat. I came here with a specific purpose and if you know me, you know I can quite bull-headed and determined when I put my mind to something. So I trekked back onto another trail (that didn’t look to have as much of an elevation change) and continued my search.

Come hell or high water I was going to find what I came for.

I have three main animals I really want to see in the wild here. I can already check off Western brown and I'm confident I'll find the second species on my list one of these nights during field work.

But this was the wild card. Staying in Cairns and driving up near Mt. Sorrow was my only real option of ever seeing the third elusive animal on my list.

So I searched and listened.

Searched and listened.

And…

BOOM!!!

Southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius)

Say whatever you want about birds, birding, and birders. These…are…awesome!

This is the 2^nd largest (by mass) bird on earth, coming in at 85 kg (187lb) (or one of me…6 years ago). They have a lethal claw on their inner foot that is 12 cm (~5 in) long and I was told to wear my back-pack on my belly if I saw one because it might kick me in the gut and spill my intestines (sounds a little urban legendy).

Like Emu’s, the male builds the nest, incubates the eggs, and raises the young. This proud father didn’t want me near its baby and I wasn’t going to push it with the closest thing to a Velociraptor I’ll probably ever see (did I mention I like dinosaurs?). They’re listed as endangered and it’s believed there are only 1,500-2,500 left in Australia. I can’t tell you how pumped I was to be able to see one in the wild.

The photos didn’t turn out as I had hoped. But like I said, I was not going to push my luck in the jungle alone with a protective father wielding a 5 inch death claw!