Mossman Gorge – North Queensland

In 2018 I was able to pay my first visit to the beautiful Daintree Rainforest in far north Queensland. Thank you to Kuku Yalanji elders, past and present, for having us on your country.

A tiny swimming hole at Wurrmbu Creek which feeds into the Mossman River. Several jungle perch were in this pool.

We took a short tourist walk through the gorge and enjoyed being drowned in among the ancient looking trees and moss.

Manjal Dimbi (Mt. Demi).

Rex Creek.

Rex Creek suspension bridge.

Got wood?

My first attempt at a model ship…

While I dabble in scale modelling, I’ve never built a wooden ship kit. They seem to be the traditional, romantic scale model that some crusty old man is whittling away at, or the dust covered, cobwebbed model adoring a shelf or desk in a period drama about the British admiralty.

Anyway, I thought I’d finally give one a go and picked up a $17 mail order Chinese special after searching “wooden ship kit”.

On arrival I was greeted with a compact, flat packed satchel with three small balsa wood laser cut sprues, some linen sail material, some thread and a double sided page of instructions written in Chinese. I also noticed that the kit sent to me was actually different to to the schooner pictured in the advert, with no cannons, a lower transom and rounder stern.

As I can’t read Chinese it was a real mystery to me what the 1:120 scale ship was that the model was portraying, with no accompanying information. I usually like to start a model build with research and finding reference material. After spying the distinctive round helmsman’s position (cockpit?) and google searching I found that the model is a representation of the Schooner “America” built in 1851.

The America was the winner of the innagural ‘100 Pound Cup’ race around the Isle of Man. This race eventually went on to be known as The America’s Cup in honour of this very yacht.

Having located some great high quality images as reference material I set about the build.

The hull framework went together well, with Emily putting it together as per those balsa wood dinosaur skeleton models we’ve all seen. It’s a simple affair to plug the decks in over the top of this framework and then begin building up the planking on the side hulls. I had no idea what the correct process for this was so I started from the top railing and pinned the next plank below it with plenty of white glue (PVA) rubber bands and clips to hold it to the hull framework.

I then wedged the lower planks in by trimming them to fit into the corners at the stern and level with the prow prior to sanding them flush.

The build is going well with the main masts and bowspit now mocked up. Next up is staining the hull and rigging the masts and sails.