Sep 2008

We followed the falls roads and visited 3 before we reached the bio-dynamic dairy, but it didn’t open for some time, so we kept going. There is just so much water up here. Its surprising when you hear how everything is dying in VIC and SA with the Murray debacle still continuing.

Tree Kanagaroo Crossing (overhead climbing ropes!)

Today as we headed down the hill we saw millions and millions more acres of sugar cane. I cant believe that this most fertile land in the country is wasted on such a worthless item as sugar. The farmers obliterate every tree in sight and I shudder to know how many chemicals they have to spray on the endless miles of wasteland that the sugar canes fill.

We reached the coast again at Innisfail for lunch. On the map it gets a mention that it’s an Art Deco town. And that it is, but its also dog unfriendly as we’re now discovered that the centre of many towns, like Cairns and now Innisfail are. We wont support these dog unfriendly places, so we headed off out of there real quick.

We followed a sign off to Flying Fish Point. It was a glorious little holiday village with a cute little Post Office/Deli/Restaurant all in one. We decided to have lunch there instead. We waited and waited and she didn’t appear to want to serve us, so we left. Shame it looked so cute. Also visited Ella Bay but they were dog unfriendly too. $150 fine to bring a dog into the town!!! I can’t believe these places!

We then headed back to Mission Beach that we visited about 6 years ago with Mum and Dad. It hasn’t really changed much. We found a nice shady park at the southern end of the beachfront and took a swim with the dog. There were a few stingers around so we hopped out. We met a local on the beach who said it was okay to camp on the beach. There certainly weren’t any signs saying you couldn’t, so we relaxed in.

We met another couple just after returning to the van who had left Wollongong and sold their house. Bought a new 4WD and 4WD camper/trailer that pops up, and sold or gave away everything else they owned. They put their money in the bank and are living off the interest and their parenting allowance from their 4 kids. They were just such gorgeous kids ranging from about 5 – 10 years. They had that sense of adventure and quest for knowledge of all things new that the cotton-ball-kids of today just don’t have. Their eldest, a 10 year old daughter, showed me her shark jaw that she cut from the shark’s body. She showed me the 9 rows of teeth on the bottom jaw and the 8 rows of teeth on the top jaw. The son who was a couple of years younger was out collecting coconuts to eat and he knew how to cut them open. Their proud parents told us that all 4 of them could rig, bait and cast their own fishing line. They caught fish for 3-4 nights’ meals a week to save money. They were home schooling their kids on the road. They’d also spent 8 months travelling up from Wollongong so far. That’s really only about 1500-2000kms! Pretty damn good I rekon! Talk about living the life, and what experiences these kids will have. The estimate they will be another 2 years away! We rekon they’ve got the perfect life. No stuff, lots of real fun, and great well balanced kids!

After an early start to the morning, we pulled out and found some coffee before heading off. We were glad to be finally heading south. We followed the Bruce Highway to Gordonvale and then we turned off and headed up the hugely steep hills into the Atherton tablelands and the ranges that make them so perfect for farming. We stopped at a really cute town called Yungaburra, which was ever so cute.

It was filled with gorgeous heritage buildings set in lush green surrounds. It seems like many have moved here from Sydney to escape the rat race. But the prices were quite high considering it was just a tourist town, but surrounded by waterfalls and the top end of Lake Tinaroo, a very popular tourist location, a huge lake that people fish and boat on. So there really is lots to see and do. There is also lots of platapus located around this area, so great viewing if you have the time to sit around and wait for their reclusive creatures to show themselves. We enjoyed a great lunch and then headed off in search of the Narada Tea Farm about 20kms outside of Malanda.

I have to say that it was a fabulous tour. I learned a lot about tea growing and also had a tour of the only automated tea processing plant in the world. It was quite interesting, as they had to design and manufacture all the equipment for their plant as there was no available anywhere in the world as the rest is all hand picked. With our labour costs, its prohibitive, but its still really interesting none the less. We also sampled some of their tea leaves. They only sell tea bags in the supermarkets, but at the shops they also sell tea leaves, which are considerably more interesting and yummy to drink. We stocked up the supply cabinet with our faves and headed off into the sunset. We drove around for some time trying to locate a lookout. In doing so we ended up in Topaz. An amazing little place in a very remote corner of the tableland.

Surrounded by many rolling green untouched hills, apart from what has been obliterated for their dairy farms. As the road got thinner and thinner we realised we weren’t going to find the lookout, but still had a great drive around. We ended up finding ourselves to the Milla Milla Falls National Park. We camped there for the night. I have to say it was the best nights’ sleep I’ve had in ages. We had the place to ourselves. It was just the three of us in the jungle!

Happy Birthday to me! 41 Today!

What a shame our time has come to an end in Port Douglas. Its funny how things always work out for the best. We were really pissed off that our relatively new car has broken down so early in the piece and its life, and the fact that Ford have been pathetic in not only diagnosing the problem, and collecting large sums of money from us for the privilege of not doing their job, and the shear inconvenience of having to remove and store and reinstall our kayaks each time they don’t do the same. But it had ended up with us meeting two great people who we hope we’ll meet again real soon. So in the end we were sad to go back to Cairns, but strangely enough, both Wayne and Sharon has wanted to extend their van hire for 4 more days, but were unable to as it was booked, so they had to return to Cairns too. We agreed to meet back that night for dinner as we had to get off to Cairns Ford to get stressed again…

So we said our “till laters” and departed to Cairns. We stopped at Palm Cove on the way home. This was apparently Christopher Skase’s development that never worked. I’m not sure how far he got with the development before his extended holiday began, but his original palm trees along the entrance still remain. We’d heard great things about the place, but were quite disappointed. Maybe its proximity to Cairns (only 30kms) is also its downfall, as its so overcrowded with everyone wanting the lovely beach lifestyle. It was impossible to get a parking spot, along with seeing a square inch of grassed foreshore free – even on a weekday. We didn’t stop, and decided we needed to get on to Ford.

Arrived and walked around for a time while waiting for them to finally do their job. It took them 5 hours to install a water pump! But it was relieving that in KEA’s generosity to go halves with us as a good faith gesture, the fact that it was put on their account, or not, but the bill was more than $200 less than we were quoted, so we were quite relieved.

We then drove round to the Cairns Yacht Club for our final and their 4th last night of trading. I had an interesting discussion with the bar tender, or what appeared to be many years. He said the new Yacht Club was totally separate to their club and they didn’t really want the membership from the old club to transfer over to the new club. Its kind of sad. Not that the old building looks like much at all, but it is 100 years old (I guess some part of it) and they do the real sailing courses for kids and the like. The new one looks like it will cost double the price for a beer and will be so elite that many wont be able to afford to join, which means they’ll loose valuable members who used to train the young kids at the old club. That’s progress I guess.

We met Wayne and Sharon at the bar for a drink. We watched the sun set and the moon rise over the untouched bay. We then moved on to a bar they found that had great food. We enjoyed a great night. After dinner we walked around the city taking in the buildings and chatting more about life and the universe and then said our good bye’s. It was sad, but I know we’re going to see them again. We spent the night in the carpark of the yacht club. Apart from a few visitors during the night, it was great to wake to the lovely view (see pic 17th).

Well we’re really getting into the swing of this place, even if our livers are worried! We’re really enjoying hanging by the beach all day and lazily wandering around town for breakfast, lunch and dinner! What a life. Actually we love the fact that the place is much cooler than Cairns. Its quite a lot more comfortable than Cairns in many ways, yet only 70kms away. I guess its not unlike Mandurah and Perth in terms of distance but restaurants… oh, there’s just so many and all open late and offering great service.

After a leisurely breakfast we caught up with Wayne and Sharon. We joined them round their camp table and Wayne introduced us to the finer points of coconut eating. Since there were many fallen coconuts surrounding us. As we were watching Wayne and Steve take turns trying to remove the thick husk to this beastie a huge branch fell down out of a nearby tree with about 3 coconuts on it. You can see why they say beware of falling coconuts! We were astonished at how hard they hit the soft ground!

Once Wayne got one open, Steve started work on another. Midget was quite taken by the human food we were consuming. Wayne threw her a couple of bits and she swallowed them whole! Then Midget was passed a whole opened coconut which she promptly started demolishing. It worked wonders, not only for her teeth, but also her gut as you can see by her distended stomach in the picture. We were rolling around laughing at the dog who gorged herself as usual!

We then sat around longer and enjoyed lunch with Wayne and Sharon quite late in the afternoon. After more sun, relaxation and the like, we joined the many others down on the waters’ edge to watch the sunset to the west, then the full moon rise to the east on this quaint palm encrusted peninsular.

We then wandered back into town for desert and coffee (as we were still quite full from our late lunch). What a great day!

Woke at the top of the lookout hill to watch the sunrise. Actually I had already woken up parched searching for water… at 6:30am some young revellers who I recognised from the pub last night, arrived to continue their party at the top of the hill. They hadn’t been to bed yet. We listened to some good music really loud and then decided to descend back to our park by the beach and get a good spot for the day. Wayne and Sharon had mentioned there were good markets on today so we grabbed a good parking spot back by the beach and next to where the markets were. We headed on down, hang overs and all and wandered around aimlessly for some time. It was a fantastic market. It was enormous. Not much food, which was a shame, but there were some interesting stalls like a bicycle driven cane stalk crusher, that made lemonade, lots of insect repellents – which we are finding we need here – with all the midges and sandflies… It was so much to take in, but was too unwell to enjoy it.

Steve decided to go kayaking and take Midget, so I stayed in the van for a lie down. I awoke to a didgeridoo player busking right behind the van with a huge amp. Luckily he was really good, but I couldn’t sleep, but I had stopped feeling sick, now I just had the headache to deal with. Wandered back through the markets. It had now gotten a lot more busy and there were cars parked everywhere! Had some lunch and returned. Wayne and Sharon were back for a nana nap and Steve retuned to drop Midget off, after he went up the river and saw the tail end of a large saltie. He said the diameter of the tail was huge and enough to make him turn about and take crocbait back to the van and safely out of harms way! He decided at that point he didn’t want to see a croc again!

Steve suggested a hair of the dog so we went to the sunset bar and had a nice dinner. He also said that you had to keep your fluids up in the Tropics, so it was a must. Not being one to want to disappoint, I had to agree! Sipping Margaritas’ and daiquiris’ we munched on beer and herb batted reef fish and chips and seafood linguini – which was very hard to take. The waitress (a vet nurse by day) came and gave Midget the once over and said she needs a bone, but went back to the restaurant and came back with two king prawns on a plate for her. Talk about spoilt!