April 2022 - The Wet has Finally Arrived

Not much in the way of rain until The Wet arrived with a vengeance in the last week of April. Last night the rain was so heavy that the frogs stopped calling. All I could hear was rain and my creek thundering down the hill.

My Ephemeral Creek

My Creek Thundering down the Hill

Fan Palms and Tree Ferns

Riparian Vegetation

Most of the time, water trickles over the road on the Alexandra Range but now there are full-on waterfalls over the road.

Waterfalls over the Road

Floodwater has poured out of the Daintree River. The brown flood water extends past Snapper Island which is 2.5km off the coast.

Looking at Flood Waters from Alexandra Range Lookout

I went for a guided walk along Jindalba Boardwalk with a botanist/ecologist so I learnt more about this boardwalk “at the foot of the mountain”.

Jindalba Boardwalk

After a smoking ceremony by Jabalbina to keep us safe on Eastern Kuku Yalanji land, we were guided through Madja Board walk by elders to learn the uses of some of the plants.

Jabalbina Smoking Ceremony

There were a lot of cannonball mangroves with their large round seed pods. They are called cannonball mangroves not just because of their size and shape but because gases build up inside the pod and they explode on the tree to release the seeds. The seeds then float away. These mangroves have a very distinctive mottled trunk.

The supplejack was flowering, there were still some peppermint insects around and the red-flowered mangrove was starting to flower.

Madja (Rainforest) Boardwalk

I also walked along Noah Creek which was flowing very strongly. Noah is a corruption of the Eastern Kuku Yalangi word “Wawu” which means “spirit”.

Noah (Wawu) Creek in Full Flow

And then it was tree planting time at Nightwings Rainforest Nursery with Rainforest Rescue. It is a privately owned property which had been totally cleared but is now being revegetating with rainforest trees. Every year a block of the property gets planted so over the years you can see the progress of the plants from different years. There was a brief shower but the rain largely held off. About 130 people planted about 2500 trees comprising 85 species in just over an hour. Despite the socialising and chatter, many hands do make light work.

Tree Planting

Tree planting is relatively easy work because everything has been prepared before the volunteers do the planting. The holes are dug so you just have to get the plant out of the pot and fill in the hole. This year a special water hole digger was used instead of the usual auger which apparently was a great success. It was good to see so many local faces.

Plants from Last Year Growing Well

This month has been windy but here is Daintree Dazzle happily playing with a coconut on Wonga Beach. He can also splash around in the big puddles at low tide because no 🐊🐊.

Beach Coconut

And then the clouds came. They sank down over the hills before the heavy rain started; up to 240mm in 48 hours and then another 160mm the next night but rainfall is variable over the Daintree. On the 24th April, the Daintree River Ferry stopped overnight due to minor flooding and debris coming down the river.

Menacing Clouds before the Rain

Yalada (welcome) to Janbal Art Gallery where Binna, the resident artist, dispenses cultural knowledge and art lessons. These are the colours of the sun, the earth and the rain. The white dots represent the raindrops of the Wet Tropics. The big footprints represent the southern cassowary, our iconic bird of the rainforest. The gallery is on Kuku Yalangi country in Mossman.

Binna and our Artworks

My blue-tongue trees (Melastoma malabathricum), a pioneer species, are flowering. They give you a blue tongue when you eat the tasty berries. Birds also love the berries and apparently moths too. One night my head torch picked up the eyeshine of dozens of different moths feeding on the berries. There are many different species of moth with their mainly orange eyeshine and they are here every night.

Blue-tongue Flowers and Fruit

Some of the Moths coming to Feed at Night

Vines seem to be having a good year. The cassowary sign down the road is being overtaken by a vine. Matchbox beans (Entada rheedei) grow on huge vines that drape over trees. The seeds grow in large segmented pods that hang from the vines. The pods start off green but eventually turn brown and the seeds are released. They float on water so they’re quite often found on the beach. Apparently called matchbox beans because pioneers used to cut them open and store matches in them to keep them dry.

Matchbox beans

A trip up the Rex Range to visit Abattoir Swamp. Great name for an environmental park but that is part of its history. Lunch at the historic National Hotel in Mount Malloy and then a visit to a rainforest creek on the way home.