Rainforests and Beaches

Hello again.

We said a sad farewell to Courtney then began our journey south. As the weather was lovely and warm, but not hot, I began to get concerned about our upcoming destinations as we would be largely staying on the coast for a while. I had thought it would be a lot warmer than this and we are only heading south from now on so it will get cooler as we go.

We suddenly hit sugar cane country and it was non-stop for hundreds of kms. It was interesting seeing the cane at different growing stages. Each town seemed to have its own mill. Cute little sugar cane trains ambled along narrow-gauge tracks. It was lovely.

Our destination was a cabin at Eungella, near Eungella National Park, a high elevation rainforest. As we had left Townsville late after dropping Courtney off then had a long drive, it was dark as we climbed the mountain and the temperature plummeted. It was so cold! We found our way to the cabin in the dark. To our horror, every window in the cabin was wide open and all the ceiling fans were going flat out. If it was cold outside, it was freezing inside! It was obvious the place was being aired for a reason and soon learnt what it was - there was a problem with the septic. The bathroom stunk! This was a reasonably nice cabin, not the kind of place you would expect to put up with septic smells. We had a 2 bedroom cabin but the owner had said that we weren't allowed to use the second bedroom as we were only paying for one bedroom. We started to unpack but it was a poorly designed cabin where there was nowhere to put anything, so we used the extra bedroom to store things in anyway.

We froze that night. The next morning we went for a walk and when we came back we found that someone had come into our room, pulled our gear out of the second bedroom, dumped it on the floor and locked the second bedroom door! I felt terrible. I felt guilty because we had used the room but also felt like our privacy had been invaded. We would happily have just paid for the extra room but we weren't given the chance. We were both a bit pissed off and it skewed our perception of this place.

The only place to eat dinner was an old hotel, much like a European alpine resort. It overlooked the whole valley and had the most amazing views. An old hang-glider take-off pad stood dramatically perched on the edge of the hill.

One day a huge flock of what I thought were birds landed in the trees next to the hotel but they turned out to be huge fruit bats!

The lovely woman who served us was in her 40's or so and had absolutely no teeth. She was the only friendly face we saw in our two days though. We tried to buy lunch at another place and the grumpy owner told us to get out of his way when we were waiting to get served. We were feeling decidedly unwelcome in this town.

Anyway, the walks in the cool rainforest were beautiful.

There were plenty of things to be careful of here. Leeches and ticks were my big worry but we didn't see any. There were signs warning us about stinging trees though. These sound nasty!

This park promotes itself as being the best place in the world to see platypus and we saw about three here. They were great!

Our next stop was near another town on the other side of the national park called Finch Hatton. (Despite learning it's named after the first guy to climb a nearby mountain, John still insists it's named after Denys Finch Hatton from Out of Africa) The town was lower down in the valley but we were going to be staying in a rough treehouse! After our negative and cold experiences at Eungella I seriously thought about abandoning our booking here. I even looked at accommodation options in Mackay. We decided to at least take a look at the treehouse and we're so glad we did.

The place we stayed in was called a bush camp. The treehouse was rough but sensational! It was called the Honeymoon Suite -  the owner sure has a sense of humour. Thanks goodness it was a bit warmer here. We thought we might freeze at night but it was ok.

The buildings at the bush camp were hand-built and all set is stunning rainforest. This is one of the open-air showers.

Some of the most beautiful scenery we saw was right around us in the bush camp.

While John was out riding his bike one day, I jumped in the river outside our treehouse in a tube. The water was like ice so I didn't last long.

By now I was getting a bit of an education on life in a rainforest. In some places we walked through you could see how each large tree was like a town - each one hosted epiphytes of all sorts plus climbers, creepers, vines, ferns, fungi, mosses and lichens. Some trees had almost lost their own identities as other plants slowly hid them from view. Then of course there were spiders, insects, bugs and birds living on them as well. 

I was quite smitten with the amazing tree right outside our treehouse. Its split roots had grown around rocks. It was really cool.

We walked up the Finch Hatton Gorge which was lovely but it was a weekend and there were quite a few people there.

Finch Hatton turned out to be a really lovely town. Each day we ate at the friendly cafe and each night we ate at the decent pub. We met lovely people here, including a young English couple who have been working on a farm near Nhill for the last couple of years.

We moved on to another national park, this time half a day's drive south at Byfield, just out of Yeppoon. We stopped in Yeppoon first though to watch the footy. We won't comment on that game.......

We arrived at Byfield in the dark (again!) and the moonlight shone across the beautiful dam our cabin was built next to. It was stunning! We were greeted by the resident pet geese who were cute but a tad too friendly when it came to food.

One day a beautiful kingfisher landed on our railing.

One of the features of Byfield NP is that it has some plants that are only found here. This Byfield fern is actually an ancient cycad. It was quite different to any other plant I've seen. Its leaves felt more like palm fronds.

Another feature was Big Sandy, a two kilometre long sand dune that can be driven on by experienced 4-wheel-drivers. That wasn't us! We walked along it for a while instead and felt vindicated when we saw most other people get stuck.

There were signs in the town saying to watch out for emus and as we were leaving, we saw one! We pulled over and it came right up to us. I had the window down to take photos and it tried to put its head inside the car! Clearly it was used to being fed.

We desperately needed to do some washing and found out that we couldn't do it at Great Keppel Island, our next destination, so we spent time in Yeppoon at the laundromat. We couldn't put some things in the dryer so our car became a clothes dryer for a while.....

Hooroo!
Heather and John