Billy Tea's Adventure into the Daintree Rain Forest!

Today we did the Billy Tea’s Tour. First we got on a bus, our first stop was at Mossman. There were markets. I bought a Milo, it is chocolate ice cream with chocolate in it. Then we got on the bus again and we went to the river cruise where we looked for crocs but there were none. Then we went back in the bus and went somewhere to take a walk through the rainforest. We saw a wild Cassowary that are very rare. Next we rode somewhere to eat but before we got to eat we got to feed wallabies and kangaroos. Then we ate and then went back in the bus and we went to go swimming. We also ate exotic fruit, some were called star apple and papaya. Then we went back in the bus and went to a beach and walked along it. Then we went back in the bus to go home.


A tree frog


Aunt Amanda, Mom, and me at the rainforest lookout

The wild cassowary

Me feeding one of the wallabies

Aunt Amanda and me standing inside some giant tree roots

A wild dingo eating something along the creek where we went swimming

Weather: Sunny, hot & humid. Around 32 degree Celsius. It did rain a bit going up the coast. Our tour guide told us that the clouds are beginning to build for the rainy season. Cairns gets an average of 3 meters of rainfall a year. The rainforest gets 3 to 10 meters of rain a yr! They’re also about to enter their cyclone season. Cyclones are exactly like a hurricane except the winds swirl in the opposite direction.

Pam/Mom says:

We had 1st wild kangaroo sighting on our way to Mossman. There was a whole group that came off the mountains were grazing with horses. We saw lots of sugarcane, too. It takes 7 tons of harvest to produce a ton of sugar. We tasted paw paw fruit at the Mossman markets – quite good. In Mossman, there were these huge rain trees covered with ribbon fern. They were quite impressive. The rain tree had a flower similar to our mimosa trees. The cruise was a bit of a disappointment, but we did see the green tree frog which is sort of symbol for the rainforest and surprisingly not poisonous. Seeing the cassowary was definitely cool. They’re actually a pretty ugly flightless bird with a blue head that looks prehistoric. After seeing the cassowary, Chad spotted a “blue egg.” It turns out it was cassowary plum seed. The cassowary eats fruit whole such as mango and poops out the seeds keeping the rainforest growing. In fact, some plants won’t germinate unless they go through the cassowary’s digestive tract. At the kangaroo feeding, I was pretty nervous that the kangaroos were going to start kicking or punching Chad maybe because I watch too much America’ Funniest Videos. At the creek where we swam, we saw a dingo eating a bone of something. Seeing a dingo is also quite rare. On the way home from the beach, Chad locked himself in the bathroom under a large spider & its web. After the guide got him out, he noted it was a Golden Orb Spider which wouldn’t kill him, just make life unpleasant. They spin the world’s largest webs and they’re almost as strong as Kevlar.

Rainforest facts: The Daintree Rainforest is named after an English scientist, not a tree. It’s the oldest rainforest in the world around 110 million yrs. old and is part of the Wet Tropics. It has survived unchanged by ice ages, etc. The Daintree has 12 primitive species of trees. The Daintree houses ½ of Australia’s animal and plant species. It was quite lush and has some of the biggest ferns and palms, I’ve ever seen. It is also home to epiphytes which are plants growing on trees, but they don’t kill the host tree. The basket ferns get huge and sometimes when they get soaked, they fall, hence, the name widowmakers.

Platypus: I always thought these animals were the size of a large dog. I’ve come to learn they’re the size of a small duck and the males are venomous. Who knew?