Cow Bay

Real sign warning drivers to slow down to avoid hitting cassowaries

The visit to this site was a lot shorter then the one to Mossman. Hear we asked questions about the affects living in a tropical environment has towards a modern western lifestyle and what measures humans take to adjust themselves and their environment.
One of the biggest concerns are roads. Roads are necessary for people to move from their homes to jobs, stores selling food, and to be in touch with other people. Roads, however, create linear barriers for native species and corridors for invasive ones like feral pigs or weedy plants. They increase mortality rates due to animal/car interactions. To reduce road impacts the roads have speed bumps, signs, and are made of different materials to encourage drivers to slow down.
Other issues humans living in Cow Bay include drainage, waste collection/removal, water use and storage, and electricity. Since the community is located with in the imaginary line delineating the Wet Tropics World Heritage Park it is entirely responsible for all it's own waste, electricity, and water in a pack-it-in-pack-it-out type of mentality. Many of the houses have solar panels and large tanks for water collection, and all that have electricity have generators. Waste garbage and recycling is collected at "the local dump" and then trucked out on a regular basis. The forest is close in on some of the houses and grows at an alarming rate-meaning the home owners put up a constant battle to keep their yards in a state of order. Of course the yards themselves are an ecological controversy within themselves. Garden species and pets while safe, fenced in, inside the yards can quickly turn feral or invasive when neglected or carry diseases lethal to native species.

Cow Bay beach

Then there are the simple problems of building and living in a swampy tropic zone. The liquala plams and high water table mean any building area must first be impeccably drained- try doing that in a rainforest! Then there is the wear and tear all that rain, humidity, heat, and intense sunlight (when you get sun at all) all of which shorten the life of most building materials. Living in the heart of the tropical forest is hard on humans and their environment. Maybe it is better for visiting or if you do have a strong desire to live there- find a way to do so more in harmony with the environmental conditions rather then battling them tooth, nail, and checkbook.