Syrup, hot damper and sapotes: So remote, so eerie, so beautiful

We didn't spend much time on this route, as we’ve been up Daintree way before, so we headed inland on the Mulligan, winding our way slowly up the very long and winding narrow range road to Mount Molloy, and beyond.

What we saw there surprised us. This far north we had expected Daintree vegetation. Thick, flourishing, tropical. Shiny, lush, green. Bursting with sapotes and dragon fruit. We were on the hunt for our first taste of sapote: the third part of our blog title. But we soon woke up we would not be finding them here.

The route became drier and drier the longer we drove north. Grasses became browner. Leaves on trees drooped towards the ground, as if water might be there. The ground everywhere soon became pocked with termite hills, some in pyramid spires a metre tall, some in cathedral domes stockily taking up much more ground. The termites, we learned are not ants, but cockroaches. And they are vegetarians, loving their grasses and woods. Their homes are complex cellular constructions, honeycombed with laneways from east to west, as their activity tends to be closer to the edges of their buildings where they can maintain moisture and avoid the heat of the day. We found them endessly fascinating.

Everywhere there are mountains. The mountains on all the routes we have taken have surprised us. We had not expected them to be with us every single day, and they have. Though, oftentimes, they are distant. Here, they are close.

The Black Mountains loom large. Formed out of volcanic eruptions these mountains were once massive solid reefs of granite boring up from deep beneath the earth. The granite was very hot, but when cool rain hit the rock it literally exploded, fracturing into boulders, and gradually eroding away to pebbles.

A coal-coloured lichen covers it all, ominously. Dreamtime tales tell us that once a headhunter who had a taste for human flesh ate a young and popular chieftan, and as punishment was banished into these hills. Since that time many folk have mysteriously disappeared into its cavernous depths never to reappear. So, today, there will be no picnic at this black rock for us: it is way too eerie. Even aircraft complain of strange turbulence as they fly over Black Mountain. Danger. Not just danger deep beneath, but also in the air. Add poisonous snakes to the mix and you have a good reason to move along quickly.

The trees now are mainly eucalypts. I am amazed at how many different types there are. And, again this trip, I deplore the lack of natural science in our education system, for, though I have read that extraordinary piece of fiction: Eucalyptus, I hardly know which eucalypt a koala eats from, let alone am I able to identify these trees. And I wish to. They are so beautiful some of them. The ones I love have straight white trunks and might be ghost gums or poplar gums, or something else for all I know. I need a Which Tree is That? reference to leaf through, which I do not have and make a mental note to buy a copy, and bring it along next trip. Nor is there an internet connection enroute which might have helped the identification.

As well, there is a beautiful yellow flower, starting to appear on a leafless branching grey tree trunk. We have only seen it in one small cluster, enroute, but we keep looking for it everywhere now. It, too, is gorgeous and deserves a name.

And there are brolgas. Since day one, Bec and I have been on the lookout for brolgas: my favourite birds, I think. Today we found two. They were drinking at a quiet lagoon full of floating waterlilies, but they would not let us photograph them at their prettiest. They saw us and hightailed it out of there, fleeing into hiding, so we could only catch a photo to them on the run. Such lovely birds.

We stopped and had lunch by that beautiful lagoon and found egrets nesting in dry branched tree limbs, and colourful little birds dive-bombing to stay cool, and a single black cormorant lifting his wings in that idiotic, cooling off fashion they adopt that makes them look shaggy and ridiculous.

Almost directly opposite our lagoon is an entrance to a nameless station: littered with termites, dry as dust earth, wire gate barbed and desiccated vegetation. How amazingly diverse this country is: such contrasts only metres apart?