Cooya Beach

After being on high alert due to the spider, I woke up pretty much every 20 minutes in a panic and scanning the room. I think it's going to take some time to get used to the noises of the rainforest.

This afternoon we have booked onto the Kuku Yalanji Cultural Habitat Tour so in the morning we went for a look around Port Douglas. We parked next to the Sugar Wharf where we saw lots of people fishing, although nobody appeared to have caught anything. We then walked across Port Douglas beach, through Anzac Park and up Island Point Road (which was ridiculously steep) to Flagstaff Hill Lookout. Arriving at the top very hot and sweaty, we were rewarded with amazing views out over Four Mile Beach.

We then jumped back in the car and headed to Cooya Beach which was the meeting point for our afternoon tour. We were a bit early so we sat on the beach and ate our packed lunch, before meeting our guide Brandon.

So the Kuku Yalanji Cultural Tour involves spending the afternoon with Brandon learning about some of the traditional ways of the Aboroginal culture. Within the first 2 minutes of meeting Brandon we were given a spear and told to practice throwing it at a coconut whilst we waited for the rest of the group to arrive. Simon appeared to have been gifted with beginners luck and hit the coconut on his first 2 throws. Me on the other hand. Well you can imagine, with my excellent hand eye coordination, how well I did! Once the rest of the group arrived and they had had a go at spearing the coconut we headed off down the beach into the mangroves. On the way Brandon pointed out some of the flowers and their medicinal purposes including the Hibiscus plant which had yellow flowers that you could eat as a good source of water.

Now for some reason (probably due to the plethora of Bear Grylls shows I watch) I always associate mangroves with crocodiles. Brandon however informed us that neither crocs or sharks (not that I was particularly concerned about them as the tide was out) will come into the mangroves as neither of them can move backwards. As a result, they would get stuck so the mangroves are a safe croc free zone. In the mangroves, Brandon pointed out perrywinkles, mussels and oysters, which we picked up and put into a bucket, as everything we found he would be cooking up for us later.

Out of the mangroves, we walked along the beach to lots of shallow lagoons in search of mud crabs. The aim was to stab it with your spear through its shell and if it ran away, keep stabbing at it until you caught it. It felt like we had been searching for ever and I hadn't even seen a crab, let alone attempted to kill it! Eventually I caught up with Brandon and saw him carrying a big mud crab. At least he had caught one I thought, but he informed me that Simon had caught it! I didn't believe him at all but turns out it was Simon that caught it and was our star hunter as no one else, not even Brandon, had managed to catch one. The crab did only have legs on one side of his body though so he was severely disabled!

With only one crab, we headed back into the mangroves to see if we could find some more mud crabs in there. Here the mud was super deep and squelched beneath our feet making all kinds of noises! The mangroves were also really close together here so we had to clamber over the roots which was a bit challenging in itself. There was therefore no way that we were going to be able to clamber over and catch anything so we gave up and retreated back to the beach.

We had now been hunting for just over 2 hours so we gave up and started to make our way back down the beach. On the way back, Simon continued to poke around with his spear hoping to luck out with another crab. It wasn't long before I heard a squeal of joy behind me and there was Simon with another crab on the end of his spear! He had been poking around some leaves and when he pulled out the spear there was a crab attached. This time it was a soft shelled crab. It's called a soft shelled crab as when they get to big for their shells, they grow a new one and then shed the old one. There are then a few transitional days when their shells are soft whilst they wait for them to harden up. Simon sure was lucking out on the blue badge holder crabs.

Back at Brandon's family home, just opposite the beach, he set about cooking up our bush tucker in coconut oil, 10 year old chilli in oil and some butter. We then tucked in to the bush tucker with a side of damper (a type of bread) with butter and golden syrup. I had a good go on all the snails and fishy delights and they were actually pretty good. Simon couldn't bring himself to eat them however he did have a go on the crab and really enjoyed it.Read more