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QLD 2017 Mt Sorrow, Thornton Beach, Mission Beach

Queensland 2017 Mt Sorrow, Thornton Beach, Mission Beach.

First night after arrival: Thornton Beach, an old favourite.
Yes, here we go again, a repeat of every other year, in which I am reluctant to go to the tropics as my friends are having fun in the snow in Tasmania, and spring is looking beautiful, and I am equally unwilling to leave it at the end, as I have become spoiled by balmy weather suitable for swimming, by al fresco dining, by running up fabulous mountains in the rainforest each day and by beach walking and photography – to mention just a few of the delights of the Tropical Far North.

We land in Cairns, and I usually run the Blue Arrow track before we leave. This year, I ran it until it forked into a blue-green junction, the blue going off to Mt Lumney, my usual, and the green to Mt Whitfield. I had never tried this option, so took it this year for a change. Residents of Cairns are so lucky to have these beautiful trails through lush rainforest right on their doorstep. The track is very steep indeed: a great introduction to my diet of mt-in-your-face style inclines of this region.

Cape Tribulation, sunset.
Perhaps you find it odd that one of my highlights of being up north is always running up mountains rather than lying on beaches under palm trees, or taking fancy tours like a good tourist, but that’s just how I am. Odd. (Actually, in the case of Mt Sorrow, I have  found I do a faster overall time if I power walk the lot rather than if I run for an hour and then die towards the end. It is rather steep, and the final half kilometre is a killer if you’ve gone lactic. I took 66 minutes to the top, so thought that was OK for a tropical workout. I don’t carry a camera, as in workout mode, this is  cumbersome. If you want photos, you will find them in the 2013 version. This year was fun for me, as my friend Monika from Tassie, who is doing a locum in Cairns, joined me on the Mt Sorrow day. As it was a workout rather than a bushwalk, we each took it at our own pace, but both enjoyed the sense that the other was on the mountain, happily exercising.

Me, playing on Mission Beach.
And perhaps it is even odder that I love Mission Beach, not primarily because of its beautiful beach, but because there I can do a double run up Bicton Hill in Clump Mountain National Park each day. This, too, is a solid workout for me. Once I’ve had my running binge, I’m ready to swim and walk along beaches , photograph and play with children for the rest of the day. Everyone’s happy at Mission. If there were only flat beach runs, I wouldn’t be quarter as satisfied, as I actually hate flat running. It bores me.

Well, we did visit one tourist haunt: the Babinda Boulders. The clarity of the water and the colour of the green are wonderful here.
And then we moved on to the fabulous Fitzroy Island, but I will give it its own post, as there we had a family bushwalk, so that can ‘stand alone’.


And here are two photos of @thebraidedlena of husskie fame, posing for a few shots at Mission Beach. We love doing photo shoots up here at sunset.


(www.husskie.com)

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QLD 2016 Mission Beach, Mt Sorrow, Daintree

Queensland: Tropical Far North, Mission Beach, Cape Tribulation, Daintree

 Every September, our family coalesces in the tropical far north of Queensland for our annual warm-up and beach fest. We count ourselves as excessively lucky parents to be granted this time from our daughters’ busy lives. Family is, and always has been, of paramount importance to us, yet even so, we don’t take this event for granted, and treasure each year of its reoccurrence.

And how do we spend our days in this balmy environment? Do we go on fancy tours, or seek out commercially made activities? No. Mainly, we eat lots, swim heaps and do quite a bit of mountain running and beach walking. To let the children dry out for maybe an hour a day, we toss in some reading and puzzles or games. At dusk, it’s time to build another sand fortress.

Just can’t resist a bit of baby porn. Count yourselves lucky that landscape gets a look in here at all.
Every dawn, some of us (changing cast, but I always have a part in this little drama) rise in the dark to photograph the emerging dawn. The evening meal is subordinate to shooting sunset. Mostly, we play with the two centres of attention: young Gussy and Miss Abigail Grace, who, at the tender age of eleven months, seems to know exactly what she wants.
I am happy in this location (Mission Beach), as there is a nice, steep and challenging rising in Clump Mountain National Park, just near to where we stay, so I run this rising twice each day after breakfast, ignoring the injunctions to take water, and wear a hat and suncream. Sadly, I accidentally obey the one that says not to do it in the midday heat. I can assure you that taking this 2 x 4km circuit with its pant-inducing climb at the fastest speed I can manage every day generates quite a good deal of sweat, so maybe it is equivalent to doing it at midday when done at my pace. I come back feeling very hot and bothered, and most definitely ready to dive in the pool and play endless, wet ballgames until lunchtime. This year, Lena did some of the circuits with me; others were solo. A mixture of solo and chatties is nice, and that’s what I had.

Lena (@thebraidedlena and editor of Husskie) posing for me, Mission Beach.

On the sixth day, we had Act I, scene II, which meant a change of dramatis personae and of location. One new character arrived, and, sadly, three left. We did have a span of everyone together before the grand exit. Melted and rapidly melting ice-cream seems to dominate my recollection of this part.

Lena again

Scene II was to take place further north, in the Daintree, firstly at Thornton Beach, and then at Cape Tribulation itself. We arrived at Thornton on dusk, and Lena and Johnny raced to get their swimmers on and have a dip before the sun completely set. “No, no”, cried the people from the cafe seeing their cosies. “Don’t swim there.” What? We’ve always swum here. We were told perhaps in the middle of day, knee-deep or so, and maybe a bit further north than usual this year. I dismissed this as more wolf crying. Everyone howls wolf these days: it’s lost its impact. I got a bit of a shock to learn that someone had actually been eaten on this very beach where we come each year not so long ago. However, once I learned that she had been taken at 10.30 on a very dark night, I reassumed my habitual pleasure, and went in, as ever, thigh deep and watchful; I did not abstain.

Is this a new kind of tree frog? Colourful. Oh no. It’s me, about to dive off this log: such fun.
The following late afternoon, I was off exploring by myself while the others dozed. I climbed around rocky headlands to the north of Nora Creek, searching for (and finding) cute little unnamed beaches. Suddenly, a young angler (from Melbourne, as it turned out) hurried towards me to point out the crocodile swimming a mere 50 metres from the rocks he had just left. It was about 4.5 metres long. Wow. I was very excited to see a real live crocodile swimming in the sea, and close enough to kind of observe it. We hurried over to tell a family with young children playing on a beach to the south. The parents, with more my kind of attitude, sat with the kids to watch rather than shepherding their offspring away. They were in no danger there as long as they didn’t go down to the sand to give the croc a smell of young, tender flesh. The children obediently sat beside their parents, viewing this spectacle, aware of its importance.

Lena posing for me before she, too, dives in.

The last full day was spent climbing Mt Sorrow, another annual event for me. This is a mountain I do regularly, and like to take at threshold speed. For me, there are few pleasures greater than just being allowed to climb a mountain perched on my aerobic threshold, monitoring my body and my surrounds, working my way at the summit. I love a good workout, and what better place to have one than in the jungle? I saw an amazing number of people this day – it seemed to be de rigueur to climb Mt Sorrow that Saturday – and made friends with many of them whilst waiting for my family up the top, and more on the way down. One guy knew some people from the Tassie bushwalking community. Hardly surprisingly, I knew these people too. I counted 32 people on the mountain, just in the time it took me to do the up and down (less than two hours for the return journey). But don’t be turned off by the crowds. It never felt crowded – but perhaps it is an indication that the local tourist authorities should provide another track up one of the many other mountains on tap. It would keep people like me in the area an extra day. Twelve of the people I met were en route to Mt Pieter Botte, which has just lurched up my bucket list to near the top for next time.

On the final day, we were up again in the dark ready for our last shoot – this time at the northern end of Myall Beach, just south of the Cape (Tribulation) itself. We entered a beach with its features hardly visible, making our way along in the quarter light to the spot we’d chosen the evening before. Contentedly, we shot away while Johnny explored a bit. He came back with the news that there were fresh crocodile prints in the sand about twenty metres from where we were standing. The croc must have left this location only a very short time before we arrived. I learned from Instagram that Cape Tribulation Beach was closed that day due to a crocodile that had decided to swim there. I guess that was “our guy”, who had moved up one beach to avoid the approaching paparazzi.

Up on the headland of Cape Tribulation 
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QLD 2014 The Daintree

Daintree sunset 
Queensland’s Daintree Forest is an area that simultaneously fills me with delight and frustrates me beyond belief. It is unique and wonderfully beautiful and yet, whilst it offers the possibility of great enjoyment on the one hand, it steals it away peremptorily with the other.

There it is: there are beautiful tracts of cool, soothing, primaeval forest, but may you walk through it? No. You may drive in your polluting motorised vehicle, but you may not walk on a narrow forest trail, having prolonged contact with the forest, soaking in its atmosphere. You may walk on an assortment of boardwalks that seem to range from about 400 to 1200ms long. These walks are very wide (I guess two wheelchairs might want to pass each other) and very, very smooth so you don’t trip, and very, very safe so your brain goes to sleep due to lack of stimulation and variety in the terrain.

Daintree rainforest

In the first half of last century, the Austrian painter and architect who chose to be called Hundertwasser (1923-1994) knew that natural curves and lumps and bumps are far more stimulating than smoothed out regularity, and designed his houses accordingly. Running on the longest of the boardwalks on offer, doing mindless reps of the circle, and then walking it more times later as there was nowhere else I was allowed to walk, I got bored, not by the magic rainforest (of course), but by the fact that the flatness and smoothness stole the variety I need, as I am an edacious gobbler of complexity. There is a very good reason why in my former life I chose to be a mountain runner and to do orienteering.

Daintree forest – near the boardwalk
The denizens of the area take great pride in being “eco conscious”, so a brochure beside our bed told us. However, the sound of the cafe man over the road motor-blowing his leaves away, killing birdcalls with his ramming drone and forest delights with the smell of the petrol fumes did not strike me as overwhelmingly “eco”. Luckily we’d already photographed the dawn and had a walk along the beach and were eating breakfast at 6.50 when he got underway. I’m glad I’m not a ‘sleep-in on my holiday’ type. The same cafe bombarded us with stadium-strength lights all night, so that we either had to endure the intrusion or close all curtains, occluding rainforest sights and sounds and locking ourselves in a dark cave. I opted for two sleepless, light-filled nights rather than placing myself in an enclosed dungeon. I had plenty of time in the night to ponder the issue of how burning megawatts of electricity to light a closed cafe was in any way eco friendly.

The other disappointing feature of Thornton Beach was that cars could zoom up and down the beach, and did so, doing whirlies in the sand. I felt very glad indeed that I was not playing on the beach with my little toddler grandson when the giant white 4WD utes dashed by. I don’t like tyre marks in my photos of a beach that claims to offer pristine beauty – but you can see from my photos that it is a stunning beach, which is why I have this love-hate relationship with the marred and sullied could-be-perfect-if-managed-more-thoughtfully Daintree.

Daintree forest – the part that draws me to it
The approach-avoidance conflict was to continue at Cape Tribulation (quite apart from the blaring lights issue). Everywhere I wanted to go was prohibited, and “Private. Keep Out” signs were far more numerous than native animals; every path I saw was forbidden. I felt like the narrator of William Blake’s poem, “The Garden of Love“.
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And “Thou shalt not” writ over the door;
So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,

That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

Blake is objecting to the way that the rules of organised religion effectively kill the joy that should be present in a movement whose two summarising commandments contain the word “love”. But the principle of what he writes applies equally to the situation where you allow bureaucratic rules, set up to allow ease of management, to override the experience of the wonders of nature. It is a very attenuated, sterilised nature you are mostly offered in Queensland. I am left frustrated and wanting more. When you feel obliged to begin each day in a national park smoothing and cleaning each of the small number of paths on offer so that someone doesn’t trip and sue you, then I think you’ve lost the plot.

sunset number two

We’ve walked the Thorsborne Trail four times, climbed Mt Sorrow three, Walshs Pyramid two, Bartle Frere as well – so you can see that we adore what there is on offer. What one is allowed to do is wonderful, but the run-out factor kicks in far too quickly. I don’t mind repeating paths of beauty, but one hungers for something different as well. We tried to do Thornton Peak, but did not bring our full bushwalking gear with us on our Queensland holiday, and neither did we have secateurs, and both would be needed. I will come prepared one year – I was told by locals the only way to the top was by helicopter, but I managed to find one person who told me of an old track, so at least we now know how to get to the start (for details, go into my posting on the “bushwalk australia” website). We drove there, walking past the “Keep out” signs and did the first part, but lawyer vines are ferocious things.

Emmagen Ck waterhole.

Here is what you find at the end of the Emmagen Waterhole track, which is a daring 400 ms long, but  you do get to tread over root mounds and stones; no one rakes or blows the path and it is narrow and windy and you can be tickled by the bushes which only just allow you passageway. It was really lovely, but needed to be a good 10 kms longer (or more). It was also very popular, suggesting the need for more such tracks.

Close of the day on Myall Beach, Cape Tribulation.
Mt Sorrow is a fabulous mountain, with an enticing narrow, uneven path that is extremely steep – so steep that you are climbing on all fours to hoist yourself up on occasions, and one quite long section even has a rope so you don’t tumble backwards as you negotiate the almost vertical slope. The forest is thick and green and juicy and beguiling. Strangler figs, buttress roots, thick vines, rubbery leaves and a variety of ferns adorn your journey. You climb a quite narrow ridge, but the forest obscures that fact if you don’t pay attention to what the land underneath is doing: it’s not immediately obvious. To left and right you sense the cerulean ocean beneath you, even though it only gives you tantalising hints until you get to the lookout. This mountain offers me a fantastic workout. I take a bit over an hour in each direction, but that is achieved by going right up to my anaerobic threshold and pushing pretty hard. You don’t do that kind of workout every day, or even every second day. My legs are pretty trashed when I’m finished. I thus only do that mountain once each trip north.

Because there is nowhere else to walk if you want to go for more than 15 minutes, this mountain is surprisingly popular considering how challenging its slope is. In the (bit over) two hours we were on it, we counted fourteen couples and eight solo walkers – all in very cheerful spirits despite the puffing and panting. The official bumph says it’s a five hour journey, and some of them looked as if they’d be there that long. That’s a day’s commitment to that mountain from people who are essentially travelling around sightseeing, and yet they’re all prepared to give it that time as they want to do exactly what they’re doing: experiencing the rainforest right up close in as near to its natural state as you can get without travelling with proper body cover. There are so many mountains in the area. What a pity all but one are inaccessible if you don’t want to fight the jungle to get to the top.

The start of the trail is another area that has you weep for the Daintree if you’re that way inclined. There used to be a walking track from Cape Tribulation to Bloomfield – can you imagine how wonderful that would be??? – but they came in with bulldozers and knocked down a mass of trees so that the 4WDs could hoon up and down the road, stirring up truckloads of off-white dust that cakes all the leaves at the side of the road as a result. The trees look as if they’re statue-trees made out of concrete in a museum of scanty imagination. I have no idea how they manage to get oxygen through their presumably blocked stomata. I had coughing fits when near the roadside.
Time to move on – to pick up the family from Cairns and to move south to Mission Beach where we didn’t have lights invading us all night. Our ecolodge has bungalows with verandahs in the rainforest and a pool with tropical trees and ferns drooping into it, and a path down to the beach for walking or kayaking or swimming, of course. There I can run up my favourite little mountain in Clump Mt NP each day (twice) and can walk along the long beach if I’m not swimming or reading (or playing with Gus or talking or having coffee and cake with my family).
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QLD 2013 Mt Sorrow, Walshs Pyramid Mission Beach

Queensland – Mt Sorrow, Walshs Pyramid and Clump Mt NP.

We were in mountain mode, the very best way to be. I had already climbed Mt Sorrow, so originally had no intention of doing it again this trip. It was another mountain with very little to see from the top. However, with one day of flattish running along beaches and boardwalks for my exercise, I was feeling restless and height-deprived, so decided to do Mt Sorrow again. Last time I’d done it at sunset, and almost unintentionally, as the terrified official Queensland bumph had said one needed all day to do it, and I only had an hour of light left when I set out, so was surprised to find myself at the top after a bit over an hour. I descended in the near dark.
 
Above and below, view 2009.
 

This time I knew the ropes, so knew it wasn’t a mega-undertaking, but rather a normal morning’s exercise. I was at the top in 1 hr 4 mins, and this time got a tiny view. Unlike last time, I could see the rainforest this edition, and really enjoyed the whole route. It’s nice not to be racing the impending dark, and to just look around and enjoy what’s there. And what’s NOT there is the mass of smoking, yelling tourists. Hoorah.

They seem to have infested all the lower areas. Every swimming hole we went to, we drove straight away from, due to noise and smoke pollution. But up here on the mountain it was green and the air smelled wonderful, and the only sounds were those of the birds. I also had a glorious sense of freedom, as I did this one alone, so didn’t have to modify my pace to appease anyone else. I delighted in the liberty of it all: wild and free on the mountain, just how I like to be. I swung like an orangutang from tree to tree as I dodged roots on the way back down. I was very satisfied as I reunited with my husband who’d had a lovely time swimming in my absence.

The next day it was Walshs Pyramid’s turn. This one is 922 ms high, and the start seems from the map to be about 50 ms asl. When we first saw this many years ago driving from the south, we marvelled at its perfect pyramidal shape. It was no surprise to see that its official name gave testimony to that form. Unlike the other two mountains of this trip, this one is in very dry bush. It also has no water. Because of the general heat, I opted for a late summitting experience, …. but was further delayed, so needed to head up pretty quickly, in a not too unusual race with time. Even setting out way too late as I did, it was quite hot for the first half hour. I also took a wrong turn, and followed it for too long, annoyed that the map at the bottom was not reflected in what this track was doing, and that what it was doing was counter intuitive (it was contouring, not climbing). I eventually decided to go back to the last seen marker and examine things more carefully. This happened again later, but not for so long. There are many false trails up there, and it doesn’t pay to be in the kind of hurry that I was in. With darkness closing in, I was delighted to meet three very nice, NON-smoking Germans who said I was about 20 mins from the top. I was delighted on this occasion not to be the only one on the mountain. I dashed on, enjoyed the view – definitely the best of all the views, especially on this occasion with the sun setting and the whole sky red, the mountains all around marvellous silhouettes in the roseate gloom. The Germans had 40 mins on me when I departed the summit. I descended far too quickly for safety, but wanted to get down before total dark – or at least reach the others and descend with them. I arrived back two minutes after they did, once more very, very satisfied with a wonderful mountain. I was very sad not to have taken my camera on this one, but speed had been very important on this occasion, and the weight of my camera is not insignificant.
We picked up the rest of the family at the airport and moved to Mission Beach.

 

 

 


There at Mission, my daily drag was to run in Clump Mountain National Park, up a nice rising with an excellent view from the top over the ocean studded with islands, the beautiful coastal beaches and the hinterland. The bumph says this takes one and a half hours. I take fourteen and a half minutes to run to the top, less to descend. The run is so short I have to do it twice in a session to get enough exercise. The usual dangers and warnings attend – the possibilities of being attacked by cassowaries, stinging trees, dehydration and more. The Swedish girl with me was quite frightened, and I had to do a great deal of reassuring before she nervously set out with me. They are very, very scared of being sued in Queensland, to an extent that cripples activity
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Unfortunately I was racing down the hill quickly on my final descent on the last day, and not paying attention to the ground at all, and I rolled my ankle on a pebble (an activity for which I have a profound talent, thanks to my former orienteering days that have weakened all my ligaments in that area). Luckily that was the last run on the schedule anyway. Luckily for the Queensland park I was in, I consider that to be my stupidity, not theirs, so did not think about suing. I was reduced to crawling or hobbling using a broom handle as an improvised crutch, but that didn’t interfere with kayaking, so all was well. I crawled down the beach, climbed into the kayak and set out for the distant reef across the cerulean waters.

Having not wanted this holiday as I was about to land, I now didn’t want to end it. I had accustomed myself beautifully to rainforest running, warm days with balmy evenings and a life of mountains and swimming. Pity there aren’t more trails up those plentiful mountains. I tried pushing through the rainforest for an ascent of Cape Tribulation (just a bump) but was driven back by the tangled mass of undergrowth and the possibility of unwittingly grabbing a python as I pulled myself up by tree trunks. Besides, I love going quickly, and for that one needs at least a vague pad. I went over the saddle on Cape Tribulation many times, staring mournfully at the forest that had defeated me, but also knowing that there was quite possibly no view from the top anyway. Rainforest trees are tall, and I am very small – a bad combination for viewing.