Mossman Gorge and Crocodiles

A snake in the caravan park, as yet unindentified

A salty on the Daintree River

Mossman Gorge

Daintree River

Conor in front of a 'sandwich tree' (the host tree in the middle that was strangled by the strangler fig)

An action packed day today around the Daintree: We started with a walk through the rainforest at Mossman Gorge which was beautiful. It had loads of strangler fig trees which apparently find a host tree and use it to grow on and climb up, so in the end the strangler surrounds the host tree, completely blocking it off from light, and it dies. A lot of the trees also had big buttress roots in order to stabilise themselves in the soggy boggy ground of the rainforest, and also in order to get enough oxygen. I found it interesting that the trees there with buttress roots don’t always have buttress roots irrespective of where they are, they might grow in other places that aren’t so wet and just have ‘normal’ roots, so they’re just adapting to their environment. Some of the roots extend so far and wide that the paths are just a tangle of roots, you wouldn’t know which trees they belong to, and how wide the base of the tree technically is.

After that we drove to Daintree village for a quick lunch before going on a crocodile spotting cruise which our lovely neighbours Ross and Rachael bought as a present for us. It was quite different to the visit we had to Crocodylus Park in Darwin, in that these crocodiles are in the wild, and the guide giving the commentary was also brought up in a house right across the river from the boat jetty, so he has a long standing knowledge of the area. We also saw a couple of tree snakes (quite hard to spot because they were quite small), two female crocodiles and the local dominant male, although he submerged as soon as we came nearby and held his breath.

We all felt the humidity and heat this morning around Mossman Gorge, although it was at least cloudy and misty, but this afternoon on the river was much cooler and nicer.