From Tree-Kangaroos to Birdwatching Deck Chats: A Cairns Prelude to Aussie Birding Tales

Remember when we went up to the Iron Range (and took a luxury car to boot) to do a little birding in a part of Australia that is unlike anywhere else on the continent? Well, I left something out. I omitted the fact that before embarking on that journey, we actually had a full day to spend in Cairns. While technically it occurred before our journeys to the Iron Range and Atherton Tablelands, it didn’t feel fitting to discuss our first day in Cairns in either of the posts about those places. Therefore, I’m sharing it here because it was a quite productive day and I’d hate to leave it out altogether.

We started out the morning visiting Curtain Fig Tree, one of the most iconic attractions on a visit to the Atherton Tableland. Curtain Fig Tree is a type of strangler fig (Ficus virens) and because they are fascinating, let me go on a small tangent about how strangler figs work. So strangler figs typically start growing on top of another tree and then send roots into the ground. Once rooted, they grow vigorously, eventually strangling the host tree to death to become their own, independent tree. In the case of the Curtain Fig Tree, the host tree fell toward a neighboring tree when it died, and the fig tree then wrapped around the second tree. As a result, it has a unique curtain of aerial roots that extends 15 meters (49 feet) to the ground. As the name might suggest, it truly looks like a curtain.

Because it was early morning when we visited Curtain fig, Ross also managed to find a Lesser Sooty Owl in the area. We had great views! We left curtain fig and were on our way to town when Ross recognized a platypus viewing area and remembered he had stopped there once before…fifteen years ago.

Let me back up. When Ross was 19 he moved to Australia to do a full year of schooling at Bond University. In between semesters he did a bit of travelling. Part of me wants to go back in time and just write about crazy, 19-year old birding Ross, because I heard so many crazy stories about that trip as we were driving. Just know that Ross was just as much of a die-hard birder then as he is now in case I never get around to writing that story down. (Would anyone be interested to hear more about that trip? I know Ross did a presentation on that experience for the Three-rivers Bird Club when he got back home so there’s a presentation and a whole lot of photos in the vault somewhere…)

Nineteen-year-old Ross covered insane amounts of ground during his initial tour of Australia and survived off a few handfuls of peanuts a day. He slept in his car every single night, rarely bathed (sometimes his ‘bath’ was simply lying down in a creek), and just looked at birds. Even if he stayed in a campground, he never bothered to set up his tent and still just slept in his car. He told me “it was just easier that way.” I laughed because that checks out for Ross. The effort to set up a tent wasn’t much, but it was more effort than reclining a chair. His trip back then looked VERY different than our current trip. Ross jokes that he might be the only person in Australia to have seen Black-breasted Button-quail and Eungella Honeyeater in the same day. (Anyone care to dispute that claim?!) For those unaware, those two birds are separated by 900km and a 10.5 hour drive!

Anyway, Ross had visited Curtain Fig once before because everyone who comes to the Atherton Tableland includes a visit to Curtain Fig. And then as we were driving Ross spotted the Platypus viewing platform and we turned in. I don’t think we had it on our itinerary to see Platypus again but sure enough one was swimming in the creek! We stopped, watched and were happy to have another view of this amazing species. (Yes, we certainly had better views in Tasmania but not going to complain about another sighting!) After that surprise, we continued on our way to Phil Gregory’s house where we met up with long-time Australian/New Guinea birder who works as a bird guide for FieldGuides. We first met Phil while we were in Madagascar where he and our friend, Doug Gochfield, were leading a tour. Ross kept in touch with Phil ever since. Meeting him, his wife, his new granddaughter, and his two dogs was a great addition to all of the birds we saw coming in to his feeders like Macleay’s Honeyeater, Spotted Catbird, and Victoria’s Riflebird.

When we left Phil’s house Ross wanted to look for Lumholtz’s Tree-kangaroo. Phil informed us they were quite tricky as of late. But still, who would want to come to Australia and not see a kangaroo in a tree? We hadn’t been driving long when Ross pulled the car over on the side of the road and said “this spot looks good.” Oddly, he wasn’t out of the car more than five minutes before he had found one up in the tree! And then because he had found one, we ventured a bit closer to try to see it better and spotted a second one off in the distance! The second one gave even better views than the first! Kind of funny how that works out sometimes! Luck surely must have been on our side.

And on our very last day in Cairns, after a trip up the mountain range, and multiple days looking for birds, Ross also got to meet up with Josh Bergmark, another fantastic birder who had been helping us all throughout our trip with updated gen. Josh is a guide for Ornis Birding Expeditions, a relatively new tour company. It just so happened that Josh and Ross were messaging back and forth, a near-daily occurrence, when Ross mentioned how we dipped the Cassowary. Josh immediately asked, ‘Wait, are you in Cairns?’ because as it turns out, he was also in Cairns at the airport awaiting a flight to start a tour to Papua New Guinea. I’ll never forget Ross looking over at me in our Airbnb and asking if he could leave me to watch Roger while he went out. Of course I didn’t care, I’m the best wife ever. Ross met Josh and grabbed a few beers.

While I’m on the topic of meeting up with people in Australia, we also got a chance to meet up with Rob Morris in Brisbane (But I’ll share more on that in the next post!) We also got to meet up with Anna Crysell and Alex Braczkowski and their son, Alex while we were in Brisbane. We had met this couple in Uganda of all places while looking for Gorillas and somehow stayed in touch. It was the era of COVID and very few people were travelling so we both hoped to have this gorilla experience all to ourselves. We both were disappointed to find out another group was there. Fortunately I couldn’t have picked better people to view such awesome creatures with! Their vehicle wouldn’t start when we got back to the parking lot so we gave them a jump and a BudgetBirders sticker. I think they followed us on Instagram and that’s how we stayed in contact all these years. Anna is from Australia and Alex is from South Africa, but they’ve relocated to Brisbane since having a small son together. We got to meet up at JC Slaughter Falls for a hike and ice cream. It was a perfect afternoon to catch up because they travelled with their son more than anyone else we’ve ever met and we wanted all of the tips and tricks!

Now if only our friend Rich Lindie, a birding buddy who used to live in South Africa that now lives in Emerald, AUS, was able to meet up we would have had the opportunity to meet up with all of our Australian friends! (Rich actually was supposed to join us for Western Australia but was deprived of th

This birding took place late August 2023