We woke up to a beautiful tropical morning, surrounded by lush coastal rainforest vegetation and the calls of many unknown birds. I took an early stroll to the nearby beach, and discovered that the noisiest of the lot were Orange Footed Scrubfowl. These patrolled the track, looking for food amidst the fallen leaves and squabbling with each other. I took some pictures of them, and some of smaller and better mannered birds, when there was a tremendous noise from the bush beside the track and something raced into the path. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that this was not a feral pig, as I initially thought, but rather two scrubfowl chasing one another…
After returning to the camp, I spent some time playing with Daniel while Tamar was reading inside the caravan and Lilach was examining the local fauna and flora. We left the campsite in the late morning for a stroll on a nearby boardwalk, among the mangroves and trees. We admired a huge mound of rotten leaves, a couple of meters in diameter and over a meter high, created by an Australian Brush Turkey (or possibly a scrubfowl – apparently they share the habit) as an incubator for their eggs. These clever birds use the heat generated by the composting action to keep their eggs at a constant temperature, while the parents are free to roam around. Even modern parenthood wasn’t really invented by Homo sapiens, it seems.
We had lunch at a nice roadside restaurant, where an older couple in a nearby table, probably attracted by our children’s impeccable table manners, started talking to us and asked where we came from. Turned out they were from Adelaide, and had recently returned from a trip to Europe. The man made the unforgettable remark “The trouble with going abroad is that it’s really disappointing to see how small the rest of the world is”…
Daniel insisted that we return to the Discovery Center to buy him a Cassowary doll which we had promised him. I didn’t really object, since I wanted to see the reptile exhibit that was already closed at the end of our tour the other day. The two events were actually linked by the fact that a member of the staff actually came out to meet us and lead us to the exit at 5:05pm, informing us that the place closes at 5. Anyway, destiny intervened in our attempts to get there earlier this time, in the form of the resident Cassowary (the live bird, not the doll) greeting us again at the forest on the edge of the parking lot! When we finally entered the place we were welcomed with big smiles and requests to come out before 5 this time. The reptile exhibit proved to be a small shed with two Carpet Pythons (docile and very beautiful rainforest pythons) and one Boyd’s Forest Dragon (a peculiar looking large lizard with a spiked helmet). It was surprisingly difficult to locate the dragon in its medium sized terrarium – it was hidden in plain sight, camouflaged amidst the branches and leaves with no apparent effort to actually hide. Makes one understand why it’s so hard to see these lizards in the wild.
Before dusk we found a spot in another campsite, right by the beach, and enjoyed the last hour of daylight strolling the beach, picking tiny stones and seashells and playing in the sand. We supplemented our dinner with a good pizza made on site in a wood-fired oven. It was delicious, and went well with our cold beer.
Family Trips 