The light outside begins to fade, the sun casting long shadows and beams of light through the gum trees. Rainbow lorikeets swoop through the branches calling and the occasional squawk of a cockatoo clashes with their screeches. The bugs and frogs begin their nightly songs and dark shapes flit silently through the trees.
After a week travelling through the Whitsunday Islands and the bustle of diving, flights, transfers and people, we leave it all behind - well five minutes behind anyway. Just off the main road between Airlie Beach and Proserpine we find the quaint little Cane Cutters’ Cottage, from a bygone era.
The night gradually sets in and the last kookaburra call is answered by a currawong. The shapes flying silently above us now aren’t birds, they’re fruit bats. In the distance their shrill cries begin as they find their night’s food supply, a mango tree and begin to settle, feed and battle over the spoils.
