Water Falls, Wind Farms and Crater Lakes

We established our camp at Malanda in the Atherton Tablelands and watched the rain douse our our camp fire and unfortunately the rain was relentless over the coming days. We had eagerly anticipated seeing a Tree Kangaroo (wildlife bingo game) but apparently they have all drowned in this miserable RAINforest weather. Lots of water, lots of waterfalls ;-). Two such examples, Dinner Falls and Millstream Falls (Australia’s widest).

What would improve the weather – wind! Off to Windy Hill we drove and found 20 odd wind turbines to park under. The name Windy Hill should be amended to Rainy Cloudy Windy Hill and as long as they’re at it, paint the turbines something other than cloud colour ;-)

Finally Mt Hypipamee (hooray!) National Park - after carrying Zavier some 1km through the mountain we got to the crater lake. 60 metres sheer rock cliff down to a Shrek green lake. On the walk (carry) back to the car park we passed some back packers with basketball sized rocks to drop into the lake, if only we'd thought of that I wouldn't have had to carry Zavier back to the car!

Paronella Park

This is a beautiful garden built by a Spanish man (Jose Paronella) who came to Australia with big dreams. He worked cutting cane by hand before being able to buy his own farm.  He accumulated his wealth by buying small run down cane farms and improving them before selling them. He then used this wealth to fulfil his dreams and the gardens reflect this.

The gardens have been established on the Mena Creek with the waterfall a key feature. Amongst the gardens are a variety of historic buildings/castles including a residence, ballroom and amphitheatre and countless paths and staircases all clad by a variety of moss.

Inspiration for our garden – now how do I build a waterfall this big?

Tully Gorge – white water rafting without the raft!

Wow – this was a really beautiful valley of banana plantations and cane fields that eventually were squeezed out by the surrounding mountains leaving only a narrow band for the river to race through.

Didn’t see the rafters but did see some large local butterflies such as the Ulysses. K and Z did their best to plug the torrent by throwing rocks into the water.

Mission Beach – still picturesque even after a dressing down from Yasi

We set up camp just metres from the beach under the coconut palms (the council de-coconutted them). The kids played in the sand with the Dunk and Hinchinbrook Islands in the background.

It is all very peaceful and quite. There are a lot places for sale and some of the resort of shut up shop (temporarily?). Someone forgot to tell this guy to keep the noise down ;-)

Tully – Big wet, big gumboot and big frog

Finally clear skies – so we decided to tempt fate and go to the wettest place in Australia – Tully. With a record annual rainfall of 7.9 metres what else would you do but build a flopping big gumboot in town.

Ingham – is this where chickens come from?

When leaving work friends and colleagues wanted to know where I was travelling. I didn’t have any specific plans, just North I did however stumble across an old tourist brochure and on the back had “Your guide to KFC in Far North Queensland” – my itinerary was complete.

Castle Hill and Stuart Mountain

We thought we would look at Townsville from a higher perspective and climbed a few mountains (by car).
First Castle Hill - 286 metres altitude. Beautiful 360 degree views. Blue sky.



View North over the airport.

View South looking over the soon to be V8 track

View East looking out to Magnetic Island



View West to Mt Stuart - the next destination

Next Mount Stuart - 576 metres altitude. 360 degree views - apparently. Cloud. Visibility about 10 metres!
Mt Stuart - the day started out OK but the weather soon closed in after we had made it to the top & shared (unwillingly) some of our afternoon tea with the local greedy peacocks! 

We literally watched & felt the clouds creep upon us as we dashed back to the car only just making it in time before the rain started!

That was pretty much the turning point as we have had a jumper on since & bunkered down for a couple of extra days than anticipated.  The wind was whipping us around & there were reports of over 300mm of rain further north where we were heading so decided to avoid any chance of flooded roads & stay put.

Cassowary – Kernel Sanders missed an opportunity here.

Whilst day tripping we ran into a Cassowary – only moments before there was a false alarm which resulted in a number of illegal u-turns. I think we were all pretty excited by the sighting and could only imagine if it would have tasted like a big chickens.

Magnetic Island

Our guess is that Townsville skips Winter - the weather is warm mostly clear skies, excellent for floating over to Magnetic Island for the day.  

You can hire stretch mokes and topless cars painted pink and white (Barbie cars as Kay called them) or get a bus but we decided to take the Prado for convenience.

 

The island was more populated than expected but you can still find out of the way places, probably because the hire vehicles and buses were banned from playing in the car sized pot holes!

  

We ate lunch at Horseshoe Bay whilst watching the yachts moored in the sheltered waters on the northern end of the islands. Even in winter the life guards still put out the flags although you need to swim within the stinger (and shark) nets.

On the return barge journey in the afternoon we stayed in car rather than go up to the passenger deck. It was an interesting ride, we were travelling backwards, the swell had picked up and we were parked adjacent to 2 large tow trucks each laden with massive generators that consistently occupied the space above our vehicle on each rock and roll! And the scariest thing, a 2 year old boy in toilet training mode, insisting he need to go whilst on the barge. Do you think we got wet feet?

Hit The Road Jack - Katy's roadtrip theme song!

Well, it wasn't without hiccup's but we finally hit the road. 
Lucky we were only aiming for Goomeri as our first destination as we had to stop at 2 mechanic's just in that short distance as the trailer brakes smelt like they were on fireand were red hot.

Apparently "nothing" was wrong so we continued very cautiously only to find the brakes lovely & cool by the time we made it to Goomeri!

Went for a thrid opinion on the brakes before our next stint. The mechanic at Goomeri (nick named "Crash") told it how it was and we were on our way north once again for the very long drive (thanks to a million toilet stops for Zavier!). We stopped at Eidsvold for lunch & nearly copped a parking fine for almost parking in a zone designated for horses or horse-drawn vehicles only.

 Arrived at Rockhampton late afternoon. It was great catching up with Kerry & Pete who kindly put us up for the night & shared their mechanical/vehicle wisdom.


We decided in all our wisdom (& toilet stops) we were really going to be pushing the pin to make it to Townsville for our next nights' stay so decided to turn into Airlie Beach & make like a backpacker for the night.

We found ourselves a campspot & finally got to use the camper trailer! Yay!!! We actually looked like we knew what we were doing putting it up for once too.

So, fish'n'chips for dinner at the beach light showers through the night and then the next day - beautiful weather.
















Heading north we experienced a heap of roadworks. Lunch was had at Bowen where it was blowing a gale but we found an awesome park on Queens Beach which we pretty much had to ourselves except the black cockatoos in the trees above.




Lunch @ Bowen

The scenery was really beginning to look as anticipated for North Qld - sugar cane growing on both sides of the road with beautiful green mountains in the distance but closing in on us.

And nothing says welcome to Nth Qld like ourfirst croc warning sign (Zavier needed yet another toilet stop on the side of the road - near a creek).

We arrived in Townsville with plenty of time to unpack & ready ourselves for a couple of days of being tourists.