That's All Folks!

After two days we have just made it home - so this will be the Last Post. The road between Mackay and Gladstone is a shocker (bumpy, poor tarmac, single lane and no passing bays), but from Gladstone to Brisbane it is first class (except for the shock of so much traffic starting north of Gympie!). We were surprised the highway met the coast between Mackay and Rockhampton at Clareview, which was quite nice with a sandy beach and islands off-shore. We thought Rocky has made a good effort upgrading the waterfront with its lovely historic buildings. We stayed at Gladstone in the CBD which was a nice break, with a view across the industrial heartland! All in all it was a fantastic trip - time to plan the next one! Total Distance: 18,183km!

Eungella ('Yungalla')

After Hatton Finch Gorge we headed up to Eungella and are very impressed. The walks and facilities are really good and it is apparently the best place in Australia to see Platypus. This must be true as I've seen four! There are huge views down the Pioneer Valley and cascades and waterholes in the rainforest. Our camp is great being quite separate and right in the forest. Tonight we've so far been visited by a bandicoot and brush tail possum. We've unleashed the doona from the pod as its a little cool up here. The next two days will be long drives back to Brisvegas.

Via Bowen

An uneventful day - driving through many hours of roadworks almost non-stop from Townsville to Mackay. The highlight was Horseshoe Bay in Bowen. Who'd of thunk Bowen had such nice beaches?! We pulled up when it was Kangaroo time, a little north of Mackay. This morning we visited Hatton Finch Gorge on the way to Eungella. It was a great rainforest walk with cascades. Very nice.

Townsville

The rainforest at Paluma was lovely this morning as we walked about 5km to some lookouts and a cascading creek. We then headed to Townsville and had a nice lunch on The Strand with John E and two of his friends he was visiting in Townsville. Afterwards we visited the Town Common, which is a massive wetland area (very impressive) north of the city near Pallarenda - which we also visited, having gun emplacements from WW2 and nice views over Magnetic Island.

Oh la Paluma...

Innisfail (and Ingham) has some great Art Deco buildings, due to cyclones at the time warranting rebuilding. The Masonic Lodge is particularly fine. Cardwell has improved with quite a nice esplanade and soon after the highway offered good views back toward Hinchinbrook Island. At Ingham the Tyto Wetlands are very impressive, where we saw a resident crocodile. We had lunch at the 'Original Pub With No Beer' - the highs of regional tourism! The road up to the Paluma Range National Park - to the village of Paluma - was very twisty. But the waterfalls and rainforest were excellent. As it was wet we stayed in a motel and enjoyed the quaint 1940's vibe of the mountain village.

5 Waterfalls, 4 Crater Lakes and a Fig Tree

It was a wet day on the Atherton Tablelands, but boy is it nice up there. It's farmarama dairy country in vivid green, with lakes and waterfalls everywhere. We visited the 'Cathedral Fig' (not to be confused with the Curtain Fig at Yungaburra), which was awesome in scale - very Avatar! Also huge were the 'Bull Kauri' trees at Lake Barrine -  with a 6m circumference. There was a lot of mist as its quite high. Milla Milla Falls remains very picturesque, as did two more on the 'Waterfall Circuit'. Malanda Falls was a bit pathetic in comparison (no photo). Very rainy day but suited the task. We did the 5km walk around Lake Barrine and dropped in to various other crater lakes. Headed down the Palmerton Highway (via another waterfall) to Innisfail for the night. Given the Italian cane farming heritage we opted for pizza for tea (fantastic!).

FNQ Revisited

We're now back in the familiar territory of FNQ. It was raining when we crossed the Daintree River on the ferry, but it cleared for our 2.5hr wildlife tour on the river from Daintree Village. It was great with excellent reflections. The smallest critter we saw was a baby crocodile (see photo -  look hard!). The drive from Mossman to Palm Cove as speccy as ever with the standard view photographed looking south. We continued straight up to Kuranda (via lookout back to Cairns) and enjoyed the very impressive tree canopy and walk to the Barron Falls lookout (which is new since last time I was there). Currently camped on Lake Tinaroo with nosey Bandicoot hanging around!

Bloomfield Track Pt. 2

...and I started to get a bit concerned because even though its only 32km, the advice is that it is quite dangerous after rain (because of the steepness and mud). And so it was! Suffice to say that on one section we had to skid and fishtail up a 22 degree slope in the rain (successfully!). I hope to never do that again! South of Cape Tribulation we visited all the boardwalks and beaches and really enjoyed the rainforest (even though we'd been there before - a few times). Cow Bay is particularly impressive with the creek,  rainforest and beach all meeting. Our weather was pretty wet, but it is a 'rain' forest.