Cairns and the Rain Forest March 10

Our day started with an hour-long lecture on rainforests in general and the local Cairns rainforest in particular.  Lots of wonderful facts about them, and great preparation for the day.  Of great importance is that one of the features of a rainforest is the minimal light on the forest floor, and the concentration of life from mid-height to the top of the canopy.  We heard about the evolution of angiosperms (flowering plants) and how, in the rainforest, there are no flowers on the forest floor—they are all in the canopy or just below.  Gymnosperms (non-flowering plants) dominated life on earth in its early millennia, but since the evolution of angiosperms the flowering plants have taken over and outnumber the non-flowering plants 16:1.  We learned so much more!

We then went to the train station and boarded the Kuranda Scenic Railway, built in the late 19^th c. to open the gold mining and farming area around Kuranda.  The track is narrow-gauge, is 37 km. long, and ascends 327 meters in that length.  The locomotives were built in the 1960’s and have the carpet snake of local legend on them:

The carriages are more than 100 years old, have no air conditioning, but rather have open windows:

The train goes through a number of tunnels and over a large number of bridges which traverse deep gorges.  Here’s a view of an uphill 180 degree hairpin turn:

Kuranda is a small village which today is very touristy.  We visited a butterfly sanctuary and saw a number of unfamiliar specimens. Here’s a chart of those they keep:

They claim the record for the butterfly with the largest caterpillar(actually a moth)—the Hercules Moth Caterpillar is truly enormous:

After lunch (and shopping) we took a very long cable car over the canopy to see the flowering trees which we had been educated about in the lecture.  Here’s a sample:

There were spectacular views from the cable car.  We stopped at a station and had a short walk on the forest floor with our naturalist guide who pointed out the things to be seen there.

Finally back to the hotel for dinner and packing.  One more excursion tomorrow morning and then we begin the trip home with a flight to Sydney.