Photos from 2002 October 03
Okay, this is a big day for photos. Lets start with the hostel where I'm staying. Its quite nice. Through that door is a long corridor and there's an inner courtyard with hammocks, a pool, and places to relax to the left. Quite a nice place to come back to at the end of the day.	The first place I went today was the Tjapukai cultural heritage center. It's a kind of theme park about the culture and stories of the aboriginal tribe that lived in this area before the europeans came. The first room you went in had murals that depicted some traditional stories. This was a large man who was mistakenly burned to death when some women set the field on fire where he was sleeping. The women were trying to catch a cassowary.	This painting must have been 20 feet across, and the illumination kept shifting through all the colors of the rainbow. Appropriately, this mural shows the rainbow snake, a common figure in aboriginal myths across australia. Also pictured are many of the animals of the area.	Here's a cassowary. A very important bird in the ancient culture; in the creation story, the world came out of a cassowary egg (which is bright, lime green). To either side of the room with the murals and stories were theaters in which you could see presentations. One was a movie about the history of the Tjapukai people (which was almost as depressing as you could imagine, although they tried to inject a note of hope at the end). The other was a live performance of the creation myth in the Tjapukai language, but with projected animation augmenting the movement and dance of the actors. They wouldn't let people photograph that part.
Out the back of the theater building, there was a bridge over a pond. From here I could see the skyline, which I will be ascending later in the day.	On the other end of the bridge was a stage upon which traditional Tjapukai dances were demonstrated. This guy played the didgeredoo to get the show rolling.	The dances mostly consisted of small, rhythmic jumps. Although there was a set of dances that represented specific animals: the kangaroo, the cassowary, etc.	Here they are demonstrating the fire-making technique. It's the exact same technique I learned when studying the Anasazi of the American Southwest. You spin a stick very quickly against another stick, and the second stck smoulders to glowing ash, which you catch in some loose tinder and blow until it flares up. Here, the palms of the hands are used to spin the stick, but the Anasazi used a bow.
Success!	After the Tjapukai park, I took the skyrail up across the rainforest.	From here you could see the >village< part of the Tjapukai center. Behind the dance theater stage were a series of huts for demonstrating the didgeredoo and other aspects of Tjapukai life, and then there were these fields where they taught you spear throwing (bottom of photo) and boomerang throwing (top of photo).	Here's someone getting ready to throw a boomerang.
Once the Tjapukai center drifted out of sight behind me, it was all gorgeous rain forest for the next 90 minutes, so I thought I would try out my wide angle lens on my camera.	A rainforest vista.	This is a wide-angle panorama shot looking back toward the coast as I continued up into the interior. I like the distortion of the horizon by the lens on this one.	Here's a view off to the right (north). I never did figure out what island that was.
Looking down as I drift over the forest.	I liked the difference between palm, tree, and fern, and how they affected the look of the forest.	Some very tall trees here.	The skyrail has two stops as you ascend. Both of them have boardwalks you can take to scenic outlooks in the forest. The first one also has rangers who will take you around and tell you about what you're looking at. This guy was very entertaining as well as informative.
One of those vistas you can see from the boardwalk.	A panorama view of the view out across the forest.	A >basket fern< this fern doesn't need any contact with the ground. It grows around the trunk of the tree, and holds its own mulch, formed by falling leaves.	The view forward once I got back on the Skyway again.
The barron gorge ahead; this is looking to the left side of the gondola and back where I came from. In the eight o-clock direction.	Again, looking forward.	At the next stop, there were some spectacular rock formations to see, with little waterfalls plunging down them.	The water flow, combined with the rocky terrain, led to the creation of a series of pools, which looked like they'd be totally fun to swim in.
Another waterfall.	More pools.	Pools again. They must have been pretty deep; see how the rocks disappear into the depths of the water.	Waterfall again.
Of course, the tragedy of the whole thing is that the reason you get trickling waterfalls and pools is that the river that should be thundering through this gorge was dammed at the top.	Still, the rock was beautiful. I took this picture to try to capture the colors of the stone. It was reddish in the middle and steel grey on either side.	Once I got to the top, there was a bizarre tourist trap of a town, with more souvineer shops and art galleries than you could shake a stick at. And the junk you could buy! Trinkets made from pistacio nuts, beanbags that you could mold into a distorted face, jewelry of all descriptions... well, let's just say that this boat-shaped store fit right in.	The cool thing I saw up there was a butterfly sanctuary. There was also a birdworld and koala farm, but I decided, based on time and money concerns, to just stick with the butterflies.
This is the biggest species of butterfly in Australia. It's about as big (with its wings open) as my hand. They said it has a relative in New Guinea that is three times as big, and is the biggest butterfly in the world.	This is a Ulysses butterfly. With its wings open, it's a brilliant shade of electric blue. However, it rarely *sits* with its wings open, and it's a very fast butterfly (the guide said it could reach speeds of 50 mph!), so it's very difficult to photograph.	The butterflies were in a very frisky mood today. I guess when you only live a couple of weeks, you can't afford to be terribly picky. Here's an amorous male going after a female.	I wish I could remember the name of this one. Something-wing, I think. This is the female. The males were smaller and differently colored.
I took this picture mostly so I could show the kid (on the little display screen on the back of the camera) what she looked like with the butterfly on her. Then I decided I liked the picture. Once a butterfly landed on my head, but I forgot that I could turn the camera lens around for a self portrait, so I didn't get a picture of it.	This is the best shot of a Ulysses with its wings (mostly) open that I could get. They were extremely hard to photograph.	Some more butterflies.	Another butterfly.
Surprise! Another butterfly! (Bet you weren't expecting that, eh?)	This is not a butterfly. This was an ad for birdworld. They just left this poor cockatoo sitting in the middle of the market, trying to entice people to enter birdworld to the left. Actually, I saw several cockatoos in a mall parking lot during the bus ride up to Cairns, scavanging for food like crows or pigeons. It's kind of odd to see >exotic< birds filling the same niches as >normal< birds.	Another signpost, and I also liked the matis statue on this one. Did you know there's a >mantis shrimp	I just liked these flowers.
This is where the train will depart from shortly to take me back to Cairns.	This is the Skyrail station where I arived in Kuranda.	This is Daniel and Eva, students from Sweden. I actually met Daniel on a beach on Magnetic Island, and we talked about the snorkeling conditions there (see Sept 30). And then, surprise, surprise, they got on the same shuttle bus as I did this morning! They were acquainted with someone from Holland, who was pals with someone from Germany, and the five of us had spent the day bumping into each other and chatting (none of them went to the Tjapukai center, so I didn't ride up with them).	This is the Dutch woman that Daniel and Eva knew (also just from bumping into each other while travelling around).
And this is the German woman I mentioned whom the Dutch woman knew. We were all in the last car of the train, although I was the only one not by the window, which actually was a big disappointment. Almost all the gorgeous vistas were out the left side of the train, and from the right you could only see a small bit of it.	I thought it was interesting how these ferns were alive above a certain point and dead below that. Most of the trip down looked like this out the right side of the train.	One of the few views we got on our side of the train.	This is what I could see out to the left. This was already most of the way down from the mountain; you can see houses and roads.
Another view to the right of a waterfall.	The Cairns airport and the sea behind it.	Here's the train going around a curve. All in all, it was a really wonderful day, although the actual town of Kuranda itself was a bit disappointing. There were nature walks I could have gone on if I'd had more time, but the train left at 3:30, and what with the time spent at Tjapukai, I didn't get up to Kuranda until 1 pm. So about all I had time to see was the boring stuff (and the butterflies!). The views were wodnerful, and I really enjoyed getting to see the rainforest.
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