From Cairns we picked up yet another rental car and made our way north to our next accommodation, Silky Oaks Lodge, a sister property to luxury lodges The Louise and Southern Ocean Lodge. The lodge is right on the edge of the Daintree Rainforest, and sits directly adjacent to the beautiful Mossman River. The lodge itself is stunning. This is where they held happy hour each night.
A view from the dining room tables. While the dining area is outside, they have ceiling fans blowing, so it really wasn’t too bad, despite the humidity.
We took a short hike into the rainforest adjacent to the property, and saw this really cool tree that looks like it’s wearing armor. This is the Shiny-Leaf Prickly- Ash. It’s one of the many “climbers” in the rainforest, using these protrusions to help them to crawl up other trees.
Here is another example of multiple climbers on a tree. Every plant is trying to make it to the top of the canopy to get that cherished sunlight.
Our hike ended at Wave Rock, a spot with a lot of rocks and not a whole lot of water. It was still beautiful.
We were overwhelmed with mosquitoes at this point, and had to turn back. I had at least 5 of them on each leg, and Kim had it even worse! She still has issues with the bites 4 days later! Let’s be honest, the bug spray they offer at the lodge is crap. Deet is the only thing that works with these little bastards! One last photo before we ran back to the comfort of the lodge.
I took this shot while heading into the lodge for dinner. As evidenced by the boardwalk, every tree is taken seriously.
We had quite a bit of this Penfold’s Port after dinner. I’ve gotta say it’s quite good, even though it’s not really “Port”.
The next morning, after breakfast, we took a walk around the property with Roger, the lodge’s gardener, who pointed out a whole bunch of stuff, starting with this incredible spider, the Golden Orb!
This spiders web is the strongest of any web in the world, and scientists are currently trying to see if they can duplicate this tensile strength by studying the molecular structure of the web material. Here is the backside of this spider, which is equally impressive.
Roger pointed out these “Beehive Ginger” plants, and even had us run our hands over it to collect it’s scent. The plants have the aroma of massage oils, really nice smelling! This could easily have been Aboriginal after-shave!
While touring Roger’s kitchen garden we saw this Sahul Sunbird, which is a regular here in the Daintree Rainforest.
At one point we passed a dividing line where “everything is 40 years old or younger” to “everything is much older” just at the edge of the property. Before the lodge was first built, this area was an open patch of grass for raising livestock, so everything around the lodge has regrown since the land was purchased. While the fern in this photo doesn’t seem all that large, it’s quite old, at about 500 years, as it grows VERY slowly.
The next day we had a tour of the Daintree River to see if we could spot some Saltwater Crocodiles.
Our guide pointed one out immediately, but it took most people awhile to even see it as it was very small (maybe 8 inches long).
We then saw a couple that were a bit older, estimated at 3 years. They don’t grow very fast.
We then saw a pretty damn large one! The larger ones even have nicknames. This one was called Benny and is in his 30’s, estimated at 12 feet long.
He put on a show for us as he didn’t seem happy we were intruding on his space.
Here is a short video of Benny.
We saw one more croc downriver, this one named Scarface, as his snout is pretty messed up from all the fights he’s been in. He’s lost most of his teeth due to old age, as he’s about 70 years old. Scarface is the king of the river, being the largest at over 15 feet long and weighing over 1,100 pounds. Even without his teeth his jaws can crush anything they encounter (queue “Welcome to my Little Friend”).
We then drove about 20 minutes south and did a short walk along Mossman Gorge, just upriver from our lodge. This portion of the Mossman River is a National Park, and is very popular with the tourists.
Incredibly beautiful views along the short hike up the river.
I saw this flowering plant off the side of the trail. This is the Hairy Red Pittosporum. Very colorful!
The mountain you can barely see through the trees is Mount Demi, also called Manaj Dimbi by the Aboriginal Australians.
The trail has a suspension bridge over the river. It took a few minutes to get a shot without people on it.
There were plenty of the Golden Orb spiders along the sides of the trail. The web is clearly yellow in this photo. Very cool spider!
Later that afternoon the lodge hosted a walk with two perspectives. Paul is a naturalist and microbiology expert, while Mott is an Aboriginal native and Shaman. They pointed out numerous plants and discussed their differing perspectives of what they hold for human benefit, particularly for medicine. It was a very worthwhile walk/talk, so if you come here I suggest you do it.
That night at dinner we saw a lot of geckos walking around the dining area walls, eating bugs. We love geckos!!
One last look from our room, with an excellent view of the rainforest! You can see from the side windows that keeping the air conditioning on low causes the windows to fog up. We didn’t care, we like our AC!
Up next, we drive back to Cairns airport and take a small plane out to Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef!
I loved the alligator pics. I saw several at Nags Head but could not get that good a photo.