Kurunda and Bat Hospital - Apr 9

Crepes and Coffee at Kuranda Market

With only a short trip planned for the day we started rather slowly. Of course it rained over night and for the first 2 hours after we got up. Looks like we picked the good days to be out on the reef because today lloks sketchy! Around 10:00 we headed out to Kurunda. This is an old mining town up in the mountains about 40 kilometers from Cairns. Since the 60's it has been a kind of hippy hang out with lots iof craft and local stuff. The town was small and very welcoming. We had crepes and coffe un the local market then spent time looking at the crafts and gift shops. Great stuff here and weicked some neat stuff.

We then drove on to Atherton, a larger community down the road, to get informstionon how to get the the Tolga Bat Hospital. This is a spot suggested by Andrew and Jadine. Coming out od the information centre we discovered that the Front of the van was crawling with little green ants. We must have squashed about 50 of the thingsright there and then. I then went into the info centre and got the name of a local pest control company. We gave them a couple calls but could only leave a message. Findign no more ants for themoment we drove up to the local lookout for a view of the table Land area. Very pretty. We then headed over to the Bat Hospital about 30 minutes away. We were a bit early for our appointment but they made us at home on the back patio till 4:30. Jenny, the owner thentook us around the facilities, introducing us to their current residents. There were abot 100 bats in residence. Duing peak season from Nov to Jan they ccan get as many as 100 bats in at a time suffering from bits from psralsis ticks! The tour was great, we got to go into all. Of the various bat enclosures and see the bats up close. What a great experience!

Green Tree Ants, Tiny but Tasty

Incidentally, i mentioned out ant isue to rhe technician working there. She recognized the ants as green tree ants, really quite harmless. I was worried that they could be some type of fire or electric ants and did not want to transport them around the country. She also told me that they have a nice "sweet tart" taste to them! This sounded suspiciously like the wombat petting incident from a month back. Nevertheless, I took her up on the idea and tasted a couple. Sure enough, very appealing!

 

After the tour we crove the 30 minutes back north to. Free campground we had spotted onth way down. Rocky Creek Memorial Campground turned out to be a very nice spot.

 

P.s. I got a call back from the pest conrtol guy while we were eating supper. From our description he agreed that they were harmless green tree ant that probably fell from the trees above us during the rain storm in Cairns. Yes they taste tart, no he has not eaten any lately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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