A Cape York Blog

Cape York paradise at Portland Roads

Seamus Campbell

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We have moved from paradise at Portland Roads to Mareeba

We left paradise at Portland Roads and moved to Mareeba in July 2014.

Portland Roads
Portland Roads

Mareeba is a lovely country town 50 minutes drive from Cairns, and we have settled there (probably for a few years).

Cate has a job here and Zoe is enjoying her school (there are more students at her school than people in the town of Lockhart!)

Seamus is building websites, selling Mosiguard online, and at the markets around Mareeba.

We will continue to update this blog (irregularly) as we have many more photos and stories to share.

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Crocs, birds and tourists fishing

One of our local crocs was seen fishing today. It knows one of the boats and usually comes for a visit when that boat is launched.

A group of tourists were also there attracted by the croc which was attracted by the boat and a school of fish further out.

I saw it catch a fish but wasn’t quick enough to get it on camera.

After the school of fish moved on, the croc cruised over to the point to check us out.

One fisherman decided to keep fishing – we warned him but he reckoned he was pretty safe (I’m still not convinced)

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Breakdown on the high seas

We’ve have witnessed 2 breakdowns in the past 2 week – one yacht got towed in about 10 days ago, and earlier the same day, a fishing boat was also towed into our bay.

The fishing boat had a blown up motor, and the yacht a broken rudder.

I took some photos of the yacht getting ready to be towed. The people who owned the yacht had to wait here (not such a bad place to be stuck) for the tow boat to arrive.

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Sandy’s Treats: Ice-cream at Portland Roads

Friendly ice-cream service, in Portland Roads, Far North Queensland.

Friendly ice-cream service, in Portland Roads, Far North Queensland.

Sandy’s Treats offers friendly ice-cream service, in Portland Roads, Far North Queensland.

“Our range  of delicious gourmet ice-creams, sold in the bush, will bring a smile to everyone’s dial.
If ice-cream is not your fancy we also have a large of real fruit smoothies and nectars as well as wonderful milkshakes made with your favourite ice-cream flavour or fruit purees.
If a quick bite is what you need our “Shake ‘n’ Dog” will do the trick, and all with a friendly smile.
Ask our  local servers to give you a brief history of the block and the area.”
Food Business License No. FBL129

sandys treats icecream sign

sandys treats icecream sign

sandys treats icecream van

sandys treats icecream van

You can view or print the menu by clicking the image below.

Sandy’s Treats Menu

sandys treats menu

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The Lockhart River Art Gang Are Back!

Three of Australia’s leading female Indigenous artists have reunited for an exclusive exhibition called REUNION at Vivien Anderson Gallery, 16 May – 9 June.

Colloquially known as the founding members of the Lockhart River Art Gang, Samantha Hobson (SH), Rosella Namok (RN) and Fiona Omeenyo (FO) are exhibiting their new works in a joint exhibition for the first time in over 10 years.

The art stars talk about their new exhibition and their new works.

From Cairns Indigenous Art Fair Newsletter.

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Orange Beetle Dilocrosis balteata

Our neighbour on the hill behind us brought down this strange coloured beetle that he’d found. He’s been here for 20 odd years and has never seen one this colour before.

If anyone knows what this beetle is let us know. We think it’s a Christmas Beetle (Scarabaeidae Rutelinae) but can’t find these colours anywhere in our fieldguides or on the net.

We have now found out the beetle is Dilocrosis balteata. We’re trying to get more info on it.

Jack Hasenpusch from the Australian Insect Farm has very kindly, sent us this:

“Your beetle is Dilocrosis balteata and belongs in the Family Cetoniidae – these are flower beetles and your beetle also likes to eat fruit. I collected some in my garden the other day. I breed them up and supply them to schools for children to rear and breed and learn about insects in the classroom.
D.balteata occurs in Papua New Guinea all the way down the coast to approx Paluma (near Townsville). They like to breed in humus usually in hollow trees .
They are quite common actually but rarely seen , you can find them on blossom of Euodia trees, Eucalypts, Syzigiums etc usually quite high up.
We are doing a revision of this Genus of beetles at the moment but it all takes time.
The Cetoniidae is a large family within Australia and there are some beautiful species you can see on blossom generally in Spring and Summer , some are plain black or brown and others are of the most fluorescent and metallic greens and reds you have ever seen.”

Jack has written, with co-author Paul D Brock,  “The Complete Field Guide to Stick And Leaf Insects Of Australia“. It’s available on the Australian Insect Farm website.

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Baby Sunbirds left the nest

Our baby sunbirds left the nest today. I’m assuming both of them left as I only actually saw one go. Both parents were hovering close by the nest, twittering away. The baby cautiously crawled out of the nest, holding on with it’s claws until it’s beak was pointing vertically towards the floor. Then with much twittering from parents, he let go, almost tumbled but then started flying. Incredible to watch. I didn’t have time to video it and only got two photos. I watched him outside for a little while – both parent birds keeping an eye on him. Couldn’t see the other baby, so I suppose it was flying around somewhere.

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Dainty Green Tree Frogs

I was woken at 4am by the noise of hundreds of Dainty Green Tree Frogs (Litoria gracilenta). The noise was enough to wake and the bedroom was over 100 metres from where the frogs were. They are beautiful little frogs (also known as Graceful Tree Frog) only about 40mm – 45mm long. I could only see a couple while I was taking the video.

We’ve had them in the shack  before but only one at a time.

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Sunbirds nesting in our verandah (cleaning the nest)

We’ve had a couple of sunbirds nesting in our verandah at Portland Roads Beach Shack. They build a nest hanging off a piece of string in about 2 weeks, then have the babies.

We have been watching them and noticed that they seem to take the babies shit (neatly wrapped in a little white bundle) out of the nest, fly away with it drop it off somewhere.

Sunbird Toilet Training

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Beautiful big python at our backdoor

The other night I was met at our back door by a 3.5m python. It was very quiet and relaxed but it too big to have around the house.

Earlier in the day some of our little birds had been getting quite agitated and making warning noises, but I couldn’t see anything at the time. So I think the python had eaten something from our garden.

I asked our neighbour to help bag it and then I re-located it on the banks of a nearby creek.

He grabbed the python and I helped put it in a bag – this was my first time handling a snake like this; it was very strong – two of us struggled to get it in the bag.

I then drove to a nearby creek and let the python out on the bank – it seemed like a nice place for a big python to live.

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Orange-naped snake

This little Orange-naped snake (Furina ornata) was hiding next to our outside stairs. In spite of it’s very, very  bright orange colouring, it was well camouflaged in the dull brown leaf litter.

I presume it was a young one as it was only about 30 cms long –  they apparently grow to around 70 cms.

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Passing yachts and ships at Portland Roads

There is some quite interesting history in the naming of Portland Roads (Cate will write an a post on this soon). The ‘Roads’ is short for Roadstead which is an old nautical term for shelter.

We often have boats, yachts and ships moored in our sheltered bay. Everything from sports-fishing (Nomad Sportfishing), motherships from Seaswift, to passing yachts. We also have huge container ships further out to sea.

Some of our groceries are delivered by the Emu Bay – the ship moors every two weeks during the prawn season. We also can get gas and fuel.

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Spring is sprung and the wet is nearly here

I’m not sure that we actually have spring here, but the plants and trees are bursting with new life. And we are seeing more and more different animals and insects each day. Of course the humidity keeps rising too. But the winds are lessening and the sea is calming and becoming glass-like in the mornings. There is burning off happening and this gives us some incredible sunrises where the air is smoky and the morning sun is a red as a sunset.

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Nurdles at Chili Beach Cleanup 2011

I’d never heard of nurdles before – it’s a beautiful sounding word but unfortunately has sinister connotations.

Nurdles at Chili Beach Cleanup 2011

Nurdles at Chili Beach Cleanup 2011

Nurdles are small plastic resin pellets (usually under 5 mm diameter)  used as the main raw product in the manufacture of plastic products.
They are one of the main sources of marine debris.
Nurdles resemble fish eggs, absorb toxins and there are billions of them out there (some estimate there are more the 120 billion kilograms with about 50,000 nurdles per kilogram).
Heidi from Tangoroa told me that they once collected 6,600 nurdles in 1 sq m of sand in WA

Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society has more information in their pdf Fact Sheet on Nurdles

I learnt about nurdles while attending the annual Chili Beach Cleanup in July 2011. It was a great time with many interesting people attending.

They included students from Lockhart State School, residents of Lockhart, Portland Roads and Restoration Island, Kawadji-Kanindji Rangers, Jen Goldberg from Ghostnets, Heidi Taylor from Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society, Sheils Barra from Cook Shire Council, Barry Murray from Rio Tinto, National Parks Rangers and various travellers.

Anna and Matt and Ronya, Lotta and Torben

Anna and Matt and Ronya, Lotta and Torben

Anna, Matt and their 3 children Ronya, Lotta and Torben were wwoofing on Restoration Island whilst on a holiday around Australia.

They are from Denmark in WA were they own Windrose B&B which is being managed by a friend from Germany whiile they are travelling around Australia.

They had just spent a week or so with Dave on Restoration Island, and as he was coming in for the cleanup they decided to join him.

The Kawadji-Kanindji (Land & Sea) Rangers  – Claudia, Caroline, Denis and Neil,  had previously cleaned another section of Chili Beach on the weekend. They had worked with Andy Baker, the QPWS Ranger,  Jen Goldberg from Ghostnets and Heidi Taylor from Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society. It was great for these people from different organisations to be able to work together with the common goals of removing and cataloging the marine debris. The Kawadji Kanindji rangers are keen to continue doing marine debris clean-ups and monitoring of the area.

Neil, Andy, Claudia, Denis, Caroline, Heidi

Neil, Andy, Claudia, Denis, Caroline, Heidi

The  Ghostnets website says “Formerly known as the Carpentaria Ghost Nets Programme, GhostNets Australia is an alliance of 22 indigenous communities from coastal northern Australia across the three states of Western Australia, Northern Territory and Queensland.  The programme was established in 2004 with funding from the Australian Government. Since its inception the programme has supported Indigenous Rangers to remove over 7,500 ghost nets of varying sizes.  This has resulted in recovery of a proportion of the trapped wildlife, particularly marine turtles (52%), and the prevention of the ghost nets from returning to the sea, continuing their destructing life-cycle. Less than 10% of these nets have been attributed to Australian fisheries.”
And from Heidi’s website:
“In 2004 Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society was founded by Richard and Heidi Taylor. Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society is run as a non-profit organisation with the goals of:
– creating awareness in the community of marine environmental and conservation issues through marine environmental science projects; and
– proactively participating in and organising marine conservation projects which address marine conservation issues.”

The litter over the three days included 81 bags plus a lot of larger items. It weighed 1171 kg in total.
The roughly 50 volunteers on Monday covered a distance of 1.24km over about 2.5hrs.

piece of fibreglass at the Chili Beach cleanup 2011

piece of fibreglass at the Chili Beach cleanup 2011

We found an incredible variety of debris: cans, paddle pop sticks, foil, bottles of all sorts, plastic bag remnants, hard bits of plastic, polystyrene foam, shoes, bleach/cleaner  bottles, fishing paraphernalia, cigarette lighters, skincare bottles, toothbrushes, weather balloon foam and a huge piece of fibreglass from a yacht.

The  bleach bottles are used in some coral reefs to kill fish – they are thrown (full) into the water with slits cut into them  – and the bleach kills or stuns the fish for easy collection but unfortunately the coral gets killed in the process.

Some of the bits of foam collected were from weather balloons. In order to accurately forecast the weather, the Bureau of Meteorology sends up 2-4 weather balloons every day from  every office around Australia. The balloons have an almost 1 square metre piece of polystyrene foam with a silver lining for the radar, a large ballloon and at night 2 AA batteries. All of these drop back to earth and cause a huge problem as debris. I believe the Bureau of Meteorology is working to lessen the impact of weather balloons on the environment.

 

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Papuan Frogmouth

Papuan Frogmouth at Portland Roads

Papuan Frogmouth at Portland Roads Beach Shack

We were just talking about how much wildlife we have – we see  some amazing creature most days.

It was dark, Boomer started barking and wagging his tail wildly. I was about to tell him off; he usually barks at squeaky branches other weird noises. Then we spotted this guy in the dark, sitting on our clothesline.

Papuan Frogmouth

He is a [wiki]Papuan Frogmout[/wiki] (click to read more in a popup from wikipedia) He is huge, he just sat there watching us curiously while we took heaps of photos, posing this way and that .

He does indeed have red eyes; they glowed red with the flash.

I just wish we could have taken a better photo though, we were trying to use our new Nikon but it just would not focus as he was in the dark, we tried shining a torch on him but then he had an orange glow, we haven’t had the camera for long so have heaps to learn. This was taken with my old Kodak which did better. Later I realised we should have put it on manual. Hopefully he will visit us again. He has flown by quickly so hopefully he will visit us again.

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Portland Roads in the Wet

We are now experiencing “the wet”. It’s generally very humid but quite a few days are reasonably cool and quite pleasant. Mostly when it does rain it really pisses down, but we also get soft gentle rain.

Rain at Portland Roads

Rain at Portland Roads

Our daughter Zoe loves it when it does rain – it’s warm and fun and just fantastic just to play in. She found her own locally grown umbrella.

Zoe Water Nymph at Portland Roads

Zoe Water Nymph at Portland Roads

We have stairs up the side of our shack and then all the way up to the top shack (where our guests stay) – during a big downpour the stairs act as a wonderful waterfall.

The water just pours down the hill and then re-shapes our little front beach.

We also hear the frogs at night.

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Q. Can I visit Cape York in the wet season?

A. Yes, you can visit Cape York in the wet season.

Most people think that it is impossible to visit Cape York in the wet season. It is true that the major rivers flood, cutting off road access.

However you can still explore the Kutini-Payamu (Iron Range) National Park, Portland Roads and Chili Beach. Forget your vehicle and take a flight from Cairns.

1. Hire a 4×4 from Lockhart River Car Hire and stay at the Portland Roads Beach Shack, or

2. Hire a 4X4 campervan from Lockhart River Car Hire and camp at Chili Beach,  or one of the designated camping spots in Iron Range National Park.

Roads

The road from Lockhart River to Portland Roads does not cross any major rivers. It is graded and well drained, so the rains do not make it impassible. Occasionally Chili Creek may rise and make the crossing difficult, but it is tidal so will recede within an hour or two.

Flights

Skytrans flies in to the Iron Range Airport at Lockhart River 4-5 days a week.

Transport

Lockhart River Car Hire has a fleet of vehicles that are utilised by workers in the area in the dry season.
Paul and Laney Piva from Lockhart River run the local family owned business.

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Jun Matsui photos – Dec 2010

We had 2 guests stay for a week in December this year – a birdwatcher and a guide (Jun Matsui) from Sicklebill Safaris. They had flown in to Lockhart, hired a 4wd and stayed with us.

Jun (the guide) found a cuscus in one of our mango trees just up the road; came running back to tell us – of course we were all terribly excited and very thankful that he’d made the effort to let us know.

We watched it eat a couple of mangos for about 30 minutes. Thanks Jun!

He also sent us the following photos.