Day 435 | Tobacum Telephone exchange: mown grass, why not?

61 km | zzOz total: 12,921 km

8 nights at Ray’s has rested the weary bones, I’m not exactly frisky but I do have renewed enthusiasm for my southern migration.

Ray’s jungle house encourages relaxation to some degree, it’s isolated and quiet but there has been a flow of two other groups while I’ve been stationed there: another field operative in the ornithological department, also from NZ and his partner for a couple of nights, then a NZ botanist and her husband for two more. Add in the Bledisloe Cup Rugby Test between Australia and NZ, the right team won one of the least attractive games in living memory, and a couple of trips by me into Cairns and, it’s been quite engaging.

What has been most instructive being ensconced in a hutch adjacent to a national park in a tropical rainforest with a bunch of ecological scientists all working on the rehabilitation of the natural environment by the eradication of introduced pests or weeds is that they are all acutely aware of their surroundings.

Each morning Ray lays in bed identifying each bird call of the morning chorus, it’s warming up slightly and numbers are up from the less than 40 species to over 45 in a few weeks.

I feel it’s like being in a house of top chefs, or food critics, and my contribution can only be of the obvious, my trips to Maccas or KFC. Ray’s knowledge extended way beyond the birdlife, mammals and reptiles, herpetology, the plant species, geology, the tracks, the weather …

Seems you can’t know too much about your physical surroundings.