Psycho Killer

Psycho killer

Qu'est que c'est?

The trap was set. Killer watched as his prey hovered uncertainly, and then settled down on a blank surface. He approached, silently, stealthily. His black, reptilian eyes took in everything as he stalked his victim, watching his every move. Finally, he was in position to make his strike.

But wait…something had spooked his target. He took off rapidly, and Killer rushed in to try and grab him. He managed to snatch at a leg, but was unable to stop his victim from fleeing the scene. Slowly, he chewed on the leg that he’d captured, but there was a growing sense of disappointment that such a juicy prize had evaded him. Still, the night was young, and there were plenty more prospects buzzing around in the restaurant that Killer called home.

“Killer” was the name that I’d assigned to the second of the geckoes that had climbed down the pillar next to our table in the Greek restaurant where we’d decided to dine. The first, “Gecky”, had been deemed too obvious by Nicola. (She had earlier poured scorn on my names of Lizzie the lizard, and Cassie the cassowary.) The geckoes were involved in life and death struggles with the flies and mozzies that congregated around the light on the pillar, and we were encouraging them to eat all the mozzies they could find…life for the geckoes, death for the insects.

Earlier in the day, we’d hopped on the scenic railway up to Kuranda. This is a tourist railway that used to be one of the main routes over the mountains in Northern Queensland. They tried to interest us in the history and engineering but frankly, we were more interested in the scenery. We stopped at Barrons Gorge to snap the waterfall – now in very slow mode, as most of the water is dammed up for use by an invisible hydro-electric power station.

Kuranda is now just a tourist town, whose sole purpose is to be at the end of the railway and Skyrail. We got a quick lunch there and explored the tourist shops, coming away with the inevitable “been there” t-shirts.

The next stage of the journey is the more interesting one: Skyrail – a 7.5km cable car that runs over the canopy of the rainforest on the way back down to the terminal by the Captain Cook Highway. There are two stops on the way – the first at Barrons Gorge (from the other side) where we got out and walked around. There’s a boardwalk to walk around, and near a path we saw a cassowary – feared denizen of the rainforest! We took photos, very carefully.

Cassie the cassowary 

At the next stop down, Red Peak, there was another boardwalk tour, this time accompanied by a park ranger who told us about some of the plants of the rainforest, including, inevitably, how poisonous they are. (This is Australia, after all. Everything is poisonous.)

The final leg took us down a steep incline to sea level. From there we were bussed back to our hotel. In the evening we took it into our heads to go out for a Greek dinner.