mangrove magic in the primordial muck

The Mangrove Boardwalk
Near Cairns International Airport
Cairns, Australia

Take a wander into these wetlands and you enter an other-worldly place; be it the snap-crackle-pop sounds that mysteriously emanate from the primordial muck or the heavily adapted and eerie life forms scuttling and scurrying among the shadows. Toadfish, graspid crabs, telescopium whelks, littornid snails, fiddler crabs and the requisite mosquitoes and spiders all make their home here.

Find a place where the sun cracks through these dense mangrove forests, giving light to this dark underworld, and you will discover an ecosystem of complicated but immense beauty. Upstream, where the mangroves give way to the rainforest, a cacophony of bird song punctuates the soft morning light - parrots, cockatoos, lorikeets, lapwings and wood pigeons all lend their distant reverie to the magic of this place.