and a guest appearance by none other than big bird
back home in the u.s., we’re imperial. we do milestones. here in oz, they’re metric, hence kilometerstones.
so it is that we’ve come to the rainforests of northern queensland in early september to celebrate a passel of kilometerstones. they’re sorta like kidney stones, but they hurt less when they pass. and we passed a large round one this time. the big three-oh anniversary. so guess what we did for the occasion? we passed another one! pernille’s 500th aussie bird!
it was a pied monarch, not a rare bird like the fabled cassowary, the big (5’6″ tall) emu-like fowl that inhabits this part of the world, but a winged creature of the aussie variety nevertheless, the 500th different species pernille has spotted in three years — minus four days — in australia.
when we arrived in canberra in early september, 2020 (during the covid lockdown, remember that?) pernille set herself three goals for our presumed four year stay here. two were professional. she’s achieved one and is on track for the other. but the third was to spot 500 different bird species. it seemed like a pipe dream at the time. but she’s achieved the goal four days before we’ve been in oz three years. and on our 30th wedding anniversary to boot; that’s quite a coincidence.
from daintree, where she spotted the pied monarch, it’s on to cape tribulation, the northernmost point on our itinerary, and the hunt for the storied southern cassowary. there are said to be fewer than a thousand southern cassowaries in existence, all within a few hundred square kilometers in the tropical rainforests along the north queensland coast. this is a quest.
so, how to find one? cassowaries are known to be reclusive and aggressive. they have a reputation for attacking anyone who gets too close, and they can kick with both feet at once, delivering a painful, sometimes fatal blow with their powerful horned claws. binoculars are recommended for spotting them, even though these birds are as tall as humans.
we heard from locals that there had been some recent cassowary sightings out by emmagen creek crossing, seven kilometers north of cape tribulation, and the best time to see them would be early morning. so we dragged ourselves out of dreamland at dawn and headed north.
a perky sun was peeking over the treetops when we arrived at emmagen crossing. as we parked our SUV, the silence of the rainforest was broken by the splash of another four-wheel drive vehicle fording the two-foot deep stream toward cooktown, 100km up the unpaved road. from then on, we were enveloped in silence, broken only by the faint burble of the stream lazily wending its way to the coral sea half a kilometer away. it was just the two of us, alone in the dappled sunlight of a jungly early spring morning, waiting for a rendezvous with…big bird.
an hour passed. we camped on a tree root on the creek bank, trading glances. nothing. losing patience, we decided to ford the stream ourselves and see what might be on the northern side. there we found a few ‘cassowary trails’, little paths through the jungly underbrush that looked as if they had been formed by foraging cassowaries, but there was no sign of bird life. just an ominous silence. so we turned around and crossed back to the south side of the creek, destination home. defeated.
about a kilometer past the creek, i had a hunch. we parked the SUV alongside the road at the entrance to a small trail and set off on foot into the jungly underbrush. the going was slow in the dimly-lit forest, but we pushed on toward the coastline we knew had to be close by. as we approached a small clearing, i looked to my right and behold!! i found myself staring face to face with an adult southern cassowary. his bushy blue bulbous body was standing in the brush not 25 or 30 feet (8-10 meters) away. he seemed to be as startled as we were at the encounter, and stood motionless, as did we. when i regained my composure, i slowly raised my new canon power shot camera and clicked off a few frames. they were mediocre because a) the dense undergrowth confuses the camera’s autofocus feature so the focus was soft, and b) not much sun makes it down through the jungle to the rainforest floor so the light was less than optimal.
nevertheless, mr. cassowary was kind enough to pose for one full-frontal face shot before we decided not to test our luck any further and tiptoed away toward the beach, which proved to be no more than 150 meters further down the path.
when we returned ten minutes later, mr. cassowary was gone. we could see him moving in the distance, but there was no need to trouble him further. thank you, kind sir, for that chance encounter.
after that, everything else was anticlimactic, including a birthday celebration, not a round one like our anniversary but a crooked one like the pair of crutches that seems inevitable as we age.
by the time our queensland holiday came to an end, pernille’s bird total was well above 500, though most of them evaded the gaze of the new canon camera. but after 500, who’s counting? australia has some 950 individual bird species. who’s to say we won’t see ’em all. but none will be as memorable as mr. cassowary.
-30-
not that heinlein 