There will be a Working Bee at the Rainforest Walking track to be held on Saturday 8th January at 2 pm.
All volunteers, please meet at the Community Hall just before 2 pm on the day and please bring along your wheelbarrow, shovels, lots of energy and enthusiasm.
Refreshments will be provided after the work is done.
Remember that the maintenance and up-keep of the Rainforest Walking Track is up to us as the residents of Paluma Village. If we don’t look after it, we will lose it!
Please direct any questions to Wilfred who is organising this Working Bee.
A timely reminder that a Working Bee is to be held on Saturday 16th October, from 2pm to 4pm at the Rainforest Walking Track opposite the Community Hall.
Please come and join us with a wheel burrow, shovel, rake, and your enthusiasm to undertake some repair works on the track including the spreading of deco.
A refreshing drink will be made available at the Community Hall after the Working Bee. Please contact Wilfred on 0447 822 626 for further information.
The 19th edition of the Paluma Push was a great success. We had 420 mountain bike riders saddle up for the challenge to ride from Paluma Village to Hidden Valley across 3 distances: 42km, 53km and 70km.
This also included 30 E-bike riders for the 53km course. The E-bike category has doubled in size compared to last year. We are still in the early days when it comes to E-bikes, but it is a rapidly growing option for people to get out and about riding the trails.
This was the first year Outer Limits hosted the Paluma Push after taking the event over from the Rockwheelers. Townsville’s Mountain Bike Club and Outer Limits collaborated and came to an agreement which intends to keep the Push alive, continue the tradition of the event and have it professionally run and organised. We have goals to grow the event and make it, not the biggest, but the best (and most efficiently run) mountain bike race in NQ.
The Rockwheelers have received $4000 from the event, which will go toward the mountain biking community in Townsville and aid the trail maintenance on our local trails.
This year Outer Limits introduced the “Pre Push Dinner”, which was held at the Community Hall in Paluma (The event HQ and start of the race). We had 60 people attend and we hope to grow this dinner for 2021, which will be the 20th anniversary of the event.
All photos above by Juanita Poletto
We also added a perpetual trophy “The Hayden Tiley and Peter McLean Trophy”. This is to celebrate the history of the event as the years go by. This year the winners of the 70km competition course were Michael England in the Mens and Anita Narula in the Womens.
This year we learnt a lot about the event, and we have taken many notes for next year. Thank you to the team from Hidden Valley Cabins, Charlie Allen, Len Cook and Jamie Oliver for your assistance in the lead up and during the event and sharing your knowledge with us.
Thank you to Peter Mclean for all the guidance for the event and I hope we can continue the tradition you started 19 years ago.
Thank you to all the RFS and SES volunteers that helped make the event possible. The event has donated over $5000 for their services.
As part of a big thank you to all the volunteers, the Paluma Fire service put on a BBQ with funds from Outer limits for the checkpoint workers and other volunteers along the track and at headquarters. A great eveing was had by all!
Len Cook (RFS) and Jamie Oliver
Les and Lynn Hyland
A motley crew indeed – the community volunteers for the Paluma Push
Wendy, Judy, Graham and Mark
Photos by Michele Bird
Thank you to the Furber family to allow us to clear the trails and continue to ride the trails that lead through Hidden Valley Station.
Thank you to the event naming sponsors, Mike Carney Toyota, who has been sponsoring the event for many years. Outer Limits will continue the partnership to help bring professional events into our community. They also sponsored the new “Home of the Paluma Push”- sign, which is installed in Paluma Village.
Thank you to Ausfield Services who assisted us to clear the entire Push course. I am sure those who rode the course would agree that they did a mighty fine job.
Thank you also to Top Brand Cycles, GNM, Markwell Demolition for your support of the event.
2021 will see the 20th year of the Paluma Push. We have big plans to celebrate this special occasion, one of the ways might see the addition of a 100km course!
On Saturday afternoon (28 December 2019) we decided to take a stroll along Paluma’s H-Track. The main impetus for the walk was a tip-off from Jan Cooke that the giant climbing orchid, the ‘Pseudo Vanilla Orchid’ (Pseudovanilla foliata) was in flower along the track. Having never seen this orchid in bloom I was keen to observe and photograph it.
The Pseudo Vanilla Orchid in full bloom.
More information and photographs of this spectacular and unique orchid will appear in a future post by Jamie Oliver.
We started our walk at the eastern end of the H-Track off Lennox Crescent. After some showers of rain in recent days the rainforest appears refreshed and revitalised after the long dry spell. Fungi of several colours, shapes and sizes has sprung from decaying wood along the track.
Brilliant orange fungi growing from decaying wood on the forest floor. Fascinating fungi growing on a tree trunk.
It wasn’t long before we encountered a sizeable red-bellied black snake, actively foraging for food amongst the leaf litter. Upon detecting our presence it appeared quite agitated and retreated into a hole at the base of the buttress roots of a large tree. It immediately reappeared, head first, raised and in defensive mode. We quickly moved on, leaving it to its foraging.
My very blurry and unfocused photo of the red-bellied black snake. I have to admit to being more ‘focused’ on the movements of this snake, than on focusing the camera!
The walking track and surrounding forest floor is littered with numerous fruits and flowers at the present time. We observed the fruit of quandongs (Elaeocarpus sp.) and the brilliant purple fruits of the Paperbark Satinash (Syzygium papyraceum). Many of these fruits showed the distinctive nibble marks of rainforest marsupials and birds.
The bright purple fruits of the Paperbark Satinash.
There are some spectacular trees to see along the H-Track including many large specimens with distinctive buttress roots. There are also some splendid climbing vines weaving their way high into the rainforest canopy.
A stroll along the H-Track is always a pleasure with so much to see and absorb. Take the time for a wander along this short rainforest track and you are sure to be rewarded with many interesting sights, sounds and the wonders of the tropical rainforest. The bird calls alone are worth taking the walk! During our stroll we had the pleasure of listening in on numerous conversations high in the canopy, courtesy of the shrike thrushes, cat birds and whip birds.
Text by Michele Bird, Photos by Michele Bird & Colwyn Campbell.
Walkers on the short ‘Paluma Rainforest Walk’ opposite the Community Hall last week came across a legless Paluma resident slowly heading home after a large Christmas feast in the village.
When this sizeable amethystine python (Morelia amethistina, aka scrub python) was first noticed the Saturday before Christmas not far from the start of the walking track (off Mount Spec Road) it had already finished Christmas dinner. By the size and shape of the bulge in its belly it seems most likely the festive feed was an unwary scrub turkey (Alectura lathami). It wasn’t until well after Christmas on the Thursday that the 3 metre-plus serpent slithered down the slope and stopped for a breather just beside the track.
The amethystine python is one of the six largest snakes in the world, as measured either by length or weight, and is the largest native snake in Australia and Papua New Guinea. It can be found throughout Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Australia. The largest known recorded specimen was 8.5 metres in length. The scrub python is non-venomous, but comes with with an awesome set of fangs and very quick reflexes.
It’s not unusual to find a scrub python stretched out across the road in and around the village of Paluma, enjoying the warmth of the bitumen and other times just on its way somewhere at its own slow pace. So motorists please take care!. If you can’t drive around, pull up and have a good look at one of the jungle’s most outstanding creatures while it crosses the road.
