Australia: Impending Doom

After our fun babymoon in tropical northern Queensland, we're back in Dunedin. We had a great time and I'll be posting some photos here all this week.

The most important question we have after our trip: Why does Australia have so many of the world's most dangerous animals? I have no idea. The signs are posted everywhere though. Doing anything is terrifying. Sharks. Snakes. Jellyfish. Crocodiles. Spiders. Signs. Terror. Danger.

On our first morning in Palm Cove, we swam and floated blissfully in the calm of the sea, enjoying the sun on our faces. Later on, I noticed a lifeguard's hut and flags set up a couple of hundred yards farther up the beach. The first couple of photos below were posted on the lifeguard's hut. In front of the lifeguard's hut, a stinger-resistant net was set up in the sea, and we slowly realized we had risked our lives earlier by swimming in the open sea.

The nets aren't crocodile and shark proof though. I spoke with a guy fishing on the beach and he told me that one of the largest saltwater crocodiles ever caught was captured under the Palm Cove jetty at the end of the beach. I could see the jetty. Maybe he was playing with the pale and friendly tourist. Male salties can exceed 20-feet in length and weigh 2200-pounds, making them a lot like my car but with more teeth. Imagine a Subaru Legacy with teeth.

I like that, according to the poster below, 5-40 minutes after an irukandji sting, a "feeling of impending doom may arise." That's great. I've never read anything before that has made me feel more like sitting on dry land, drinking rum.

This sign below was posted near the beach at Cape Tribulation, a couple of hours north of Palm Cove. We rented a car and drove through the rain forest, and around headlands, and along pristine beaches to the cape, which was named by Captain James Cook in 1770 after his ship ran aground here. Very poetic. He should have named it Cape Jellyfish, or Cape Really Scary, or Cape Impending Doom. Or maybe Cape Vinegar, for the bottle of vinegar provided so that poor swimmers suffering a feeling of impending doom can treat their stings.

Where's that rum?

This sign below was posted by the side of Cooper Creek, near a place called Wonga Beach, on the road to Cape Tribulation. I saw it while we waited to drive onto the deck of a ferry that would take us, locked in our car, across the creek. In a few moments we'd be locked in our car, slowly chugging across a muddy brown slack creek, filled with car-sized toothy dinosaurs. Snapping jaws. Ridiculous. Rum.

Then, we stopped for a self-directed bush walk in the Daintree rain forest and saw the last amazing sign posted below. Somewhere in the thick green screen of trees in front of us, cassowaries were prowling, waiting to attack unsuspecting tourists. I didn't really know too much about cassowaries. From the sign we couldn't really learn too much more, except that cassowaries look like very large turkeys and that they might attack us. They live on plump purple cassowary figs that fall onto the forest floor and lie there like shiny eggs. Cassowaries are very rare, skittish, and we shouldn't disturb them. They're big aggressive fig-eating turkeys.

Killer turkeys.

And so we got our cameras out, sadly said goodbye to each other and walked right in ... with a feeling of impending doom.