We decided to stayed in Daintree for two nights to give us enough time to explore the area. We made some last minute reservations at the Daintree EcoLodge & Spa. If you ever find yourself in the area, I cannot say enough great things about the wonderful folks there. We had a great little bungalow set back in the rainforest and the only thing I regretted was that we weren’t actually in the room all that much because we were out and about! The room even had a lovely soaking tub on the patio, looking out onto nothing but rainforest. However, when you’re traveling with a 7-year-old, nice, long soaks in the tub don’t typically happen, so needless to say that went unused during our time there.
We had dinner at the Lodge the first night (amazing food that’s locally sourced!) and one of the servers, Luke, started talking to Jack about the local wildlife. Luke was a native Queenslander and knew all sorts of critters that we could be on the lookout for. He pulled Jack aside to show him a certain spider that had built a huge web near the edge of the lagoon the restaurant overlooked. I think it was called a golden orb spider. All I know is it looked BIG and I wouldn’t want to see it in my room! Luke even let Jack borrow a wildlife book so he could learn about different spiders and insects we might come across while we were there.
One of the things Luke told us about that we were really hoping to spot was a Cassowary. I had never heard of these until our time in Queensland, but they are a large, flightless bird that look like something from the prehistoric era with a big horn on their head. The name Cassowary actually comes from two Papuan words – kasu (which means horned) and weri (which means head). And when I say “large”, these guys are big. They are Australia’s largest land animal. They are close to extinct and it’s estimated there are only about 1500 remaining in Queensland. You see a lot of signs out on the road, like the one below, warning you they are nearby so you know to be on the lookout.
We never did see any in the wild, which we took as a good sign that they were staying further away from humans and highways, which seem to be the biggest threat to them. The species ran into issues when people started trying to feed them. It led to cassowaries coming out of the woods to get closer to people since they associated them with food and ultimately they would either get hit by cars or attacked by dogs. Good rule of thumb…never, ever feed animals in the wild. It just messes with mother nature! The pictures below are from cassowaries we were able to see during another part of our trip on a visit to a bird sanctuary, but I’m posting them here so you have a visual. Look at those huge claws and the horn on it’s head. It’s pretty amazing and completely looks like it should be running around with some dinosaurs to me!
Luke really got Jack excited about everything there was to discover in the rainforests of Queensland. He had a kind of a Steve Irwin-esque quality about him that made it really fun for Jack. One of the ladies that worked at the front desk, Sue, set us up with a great plan to explore the rainforest the next day. She told us exactly what direction we should head and which places we wouldn’t want to miss. Jack couldn’t wait to go out the next day and report back to Luke on what we saw!
The Detour Diary 