Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in
Australia and New Zealand
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Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in Australia and New Zealand |
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April 9 - Charters Towers to Cairns, Queensland 501 km (310Miles) |
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Before we got the motorcycles ready to go, Jack wanted to take an early morning walk in a pretty park close to our motel. As we entered the park under some large trees, we heard what we thought was lots of birds squawking in the trees. However upon looking more carefully, we saw that the cause of this racket was bats! These were BIG bats, and as we found out later, they were fruit eating bats. We talked to a couple of older men on a park bench, and they said these bats fly out to orchards in the area at night, and as day comes, they regularly rest in the trees of the park. Seeing a few fly, I would guess that the wingspan of these bats was at least 3 ft.!! They were huge! And I would estimate that there were 400-500 of them in several large trees. Look carefully at this photo, and you can see black things hanging upside down.
We also took a little time to take photos of beautiful old buildings in the town where we stayed, Charters Towers. These buildings were turn of the 20th century buildings, and the townspeople had cleaned them and painted them in very attractive colors. The little town was also very clean in other aspects, and it had won the state of Queensland award for the "Tidiest town in Queensland"! We find the word "Tidy" very often here substituted for what would be "Clean" in the US.
As we came closer to the northeast coast of Australia for our town for the night, we began to easily see that we were in the tropics. Palm trees, big fern trees, banana plantations, and sugar cane fields. These made that area extraordinarily green and beautiful. In the photo, you can see plastic bags over some part of banana trees. I think these bags are probably over the banana stalks, to keep out banana eating pests.
The sugar cane fields were huge, and there were many of them. There must be thousands of acres of sugar cane growing here. We found out later that the first cane had been planted and harvested in the late 1800's. After riding for eight days straight, it was time for a break, so we are going to spend a lazy day in Cairns. |
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