From an hour past dawn until near dusk, Vilis and I drove the Bruce Highway, that long coastal road tracing the eastern shore of the state of Queensland. Near Bundaberg, the coastal plain supported a collage of market gardens, sugarcane, and small stock farms. We wondered if Janis was already at work picking zucchinis. As we traveled north, heading for Mackay and the turnoff for Eungella National Park, gardens gave way to cane plantations and cattle stations like those we’d seen on the trip south, with a few plantations of gum trees tossed into the mix.

At a rest stop near Yaamba, north of Rockhampton, our eyes – weary from seemingly endless stretches of cane fields and bitumen – drank in the sight of laughing kookaburras, blue-faced honeyeaters, and rainbow lorikeets that flocked around picnic tables. Like a wild party of children spoiled by too many treats, the birds screeched loudly and attacked pieces of bread coated with jam, which lay on the gravel and lawn. Nearby, a grey-crowned babbler and two crested pigeons foraged sedately on the lawn.  All were obviously habituated to the presence of humans, and the lorikeets, honeyeaters, and kookaburras displayed the classic aggressive boldness common to animals that equate humans with food.

Still, they were beautiful, the honeyeaters perching so close to our table we could discern the fine wrinkles in the blue skin surrounding their eyes. The lorikeets blazed with colour, the feathers on their heads like licks of blue fire. The quiet browns, whites, and grey of the kookaburras and babbler faded to insignificance next to these brilliant opportunists, but the crested pigeons held their own with subtle shades of grey and rose highlighted by white-edged pink and green wingbars.

It was the richness of those colours that sustained me for the remainder of the 9-hour drive; that and the unexpected sight of rainbow lorikeets feeding on harvested sugarcane in rail cars in the village of Finch Hatton in Pioneer Valley west of Mackay.

The valley narrowed as we drove westward toward forest-clad ridges – the rainforest refuge of Eungella National Park (pronounced “Youngella”). Last lingering shafts of sunlight poured down upon the earth as we climbed switchbacks up the face of a forested amphitheatre of rocky heights to highland dairy farms tucked among the ridges, and then the village of Eungella and the park. In the dim light after sunset, we hurried to Broken River, and there, in the oncoming dusk, watched platypuses – one of the most ancient species of mammal on earth – swim and dive in the placid waters of a green river pool.