We continued our drive south towards Townsville, looking for cassowaries along the way. We saw a glimpse of one at a rainforest near Licuala National Park, but didn’t get a chance to get a picture of it. We did get a picture of their large statue of one.
Very large cassowary statue in the town of Wongaling Beach.
The forest there was filled with fan palms that made fun patterns on the ground.
We also made a stop in Girringun NP to see Wallaman Falls, the highest, permanent, single-drop waterfall in Australia.
It plunges 268m down a sheer cliff face.
Then, we made it to Townsville. The main thing here, besides being the most populous tropical Australian city, is the Reef HQ Aquarium. It gives you a great chance to learn about all the underwater creatures we met on the Great Barrier Reef.
How often do you get to see the underside of a starfish?
This Crown of Thorns starfish is a voracious coral eater. They have increased populations recently, since we have overharvested (to near extinction) its natural predator, the King Triton snail.
This is one of those deadly rockfish! Doesn’t much look like a fish, does it?
How often do you get to see the underside of a shovel-nosed ray?
This guy was beautiful! It is a squid, and one of the most intelligent creatures on earth.
These are archer fish, which are capable of shooting water (out its mouth) at its prey above water!
Gotta love Australian humor! This is a baby saltwater crocodile. They placed its heat lamp right next to the croc warning sign. Just adorable!
As their last show of the day, they had a turtle hospital visit. I definitely wanted to visit, so we stuck around for another 40 minutes to see it. They had 3 green turtles in for various reasons.
This large lady is 60 years old, weighs well over 100 kilograms, and has a scale infection because she got a sunburn when she was beached during Cyclone Debbie this year.
This lady is 15 years old and they don’t know what is wrong with her. She was floating askew while we were there, which means she had gas build up, but they didn’t know what was causing it. She looked really rough.
This young guy was named Nemo. He was about the size of a large dinner plate and only 2.5 years old. They had him from an egg and were studying him to understand young turtles better. Apparently when they are that young, they fold their fins up so that they no longer look like a tender, tasty turtle from below.
Before we left Townsville, we decided to visit Castle Rock. Apparently it is a popular place for locals to walk to get some exercise. So we drove carefully up the rock to avoid hitting pedestrians.
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