A walk down under

After a great morning breakfast on the waterfront of Cairns, we hopped on a bus and headed towards an afternoon in the forest. The bus dropped us off first at a reserve which highlighted some of Australia's natural habitats. We were greeted at the gates by an ibis poking through the underbrush.

As we progressed through the trail, we passed by numerous unknown vegetation, stopping to admire the tropical foliage. It was a nice calm way to spend the morning, leisurely strolling through the sun and greenery.

The saltwater channel and lake were fortunately absent of crocodiles, at least visibly, and the mangrove embankments gave way to the muddy waters. Lurking in the water were long needlefish cruising the surface and groups of pufferfish patrolling the shoreline. But the highlight of this and my day was the sighting of one of my favourite animals, the mudskipper. These fish spend most of their life out of water on the muddy embankments of mangrove swamps. To finally see one and in its natural habitat was yet another privilege. Although my experience with them was brief, I found myself lingering on the bridge over the channel.

The green grass and occasional trees transitioned into full rainforest and swamp with a sturdy boardwalk cutting through to the botanical gardens on the other side.

This park was definitely worth a walk through, going through several different habitats, such as swamps and paperbark forest. We kept our eyes open for wildlife but found very little, which was too our advantage in terms of avoiding predators but our disadvantage in that we saw none of the many non-dangerous creatures. What was highly apparent was the sound of the native bird life high in the trees, so we wandered around with our eyes wandering from forest floor to canopy.

Although the forest felt similar to those in New Zealand in terms of much of the foliage and abundance of epiphytes, it was clearly different in the types of plants. Ferns, although not absent, were mostly replaced by palms, one of the predominant plants groups.

A magnificent walk almost over, and another ahead of us, we arrived on the other side of the paperbark forest at the gates of the botanical gardens. With continued excitement, we crossed the roads and entered the gates for our afternoon walk.