Anyway, Marielle remembered hearing one of the Gagaju residents recommend another bush camp northwest of Mackay called Platypus, so we made it our next stop on the trip.
This was our first experience with real rainforest – dense, moist air, lush Kermit-green vegetation, and freaky looking insects. Did you know there’s such a thing as a crab spider? Spider that looks like a crab. Awesome. Our first night at Platypus we encountered the biggest spider Mar and I had ever seen – the Australian Whistling Tarantula. Don’t worry; I took about 300 pictures of it. This one was about as big as a grown man’s hand. Corey discovered it when it nearly ran over his foot. Needless to say, after a semester of entymology, he was pretty stoked by the find. I was less enthused when I saw how quickly the hairy monster scuttled across the ground when poked. Heebie. Jeebies.