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

Mothball Manor and the Curlew Convention

Hello again!

I'm not sure how exciting these blog posts are for everyone else when we're only travelling in Queensland so I won't waffle on too much. ;)

We left Canarvon Gorge and drove back to the amazing looking national park (Minerva Hills) we saw on our way down. It was actually more spectacular looking at it from afar than walking in it but it was interesting.

We returned to Emerald, this time staying in a cabin in a lovely caravan park. When we arrived, these parrots were feeding on something on the ground nearby. What a colourful welcome!

We found a pub that would play the footy for us but the Tiges didn't rise to the occasion, sadly.

The next day we drove about 1.5 hours out to the Blackdown Tablelands, a cool place where a huge table-topped range rises up out of the flat land around it. To our surprise, we drove through coal-mining country on the way. Trains laden with 100 carriages each of coal sat idle on the tracks. We saw lots of these trains but none were moving, maybe a continuing result of the Chinese decision to buy less Aussie coal.

The tablelands were great and we had some gorgeous walks.

We made our way past wattle in full bloom to a beautiful swimming hole under a small waterfall. It really was stunning. I just wish it was warm enough to swim in!

We saw there was a 4 wheel drive track marked on our map and we thought we'd give it a go. It started off ok but got rougher and rougher. It was a slightly scary exciting introduction to serious 4-wheel-driving!

Even before the 4WD track the car was seriously starting to look like we had brought half of the channel country mud with us.....

We were in a remote area with no phone reception but John's phone pinged as we passed by a bit of a gap in the stone walls. It was Courtney. Chubby (our 17-year-old family dog) wasn't well. Courtney had been nursing him for  a week or two but it was time to see the vet. He needed blood tests done and we all awaited the results.

On our way back to Emerald, the vet called us. The news wasn't catastrophic but it wasn't good either. Chubby had a raging infection and his arthritis painkillers were making his kidney problem worse so he would have to go onto opioids. He was also mostly deaf, nearly blind and had some sort of dementia that made him do strange things like get stuck in corners or get lost near home.  He was getting anxious, refusing to walk anywhere and just sleeping all day. John and I spent the drive back to Emerald discussing what to do. Yes, we could prolong his life but to what purpose? Life was no longer enjoyable for him. We had long talks with Courtney and Cara that evening, with most of us in tears. The hardest thing of all was that Courtney was dealing with this on their own.

Finally the decision was made to put him down. Cara drove up to our place the next day and she, Courtney and my mum took him to the vet. It was a very traumatic time, particularly as all this was happening a bit over a day before Courtney was flying up to join us for a week. (Cara stayed in Melbourne to job-hunt). The kids got through it though and buried him at home. It was a terribly sad time for everyone.

We moved on to Charters Towers. I had wanted to go there as it seemed in my mind to be a quintessential outback Australian town but it turned out to be a gold rush town much like a smaller Ballarat. I dropped John off for a bike ride then wandered around the town but my heart wasn't in it as I knew the kids were taking Chubby to the vet at that time.

There were some lovely old buildings from the gold rush era.

There were some well-preserved signs that weren't as old but were still cool.

Near our accommodation was this huge tree. I don't know what it was called but it was absolutely covered in dried seed pods and when the wind blew, the whole tree rattled! It was incredible!

It was then just a 1.5 hour hop, skip and jump to Townsville where we were to pick up Courtney from the airport. We made use of some spare time in a city to grab a few essentials then waited for Courtney. We didn't know how Courtney would be holding up when they arrived but they had got through the Chubby drama quite well by then.

We made space for Courtney in the car then caught the car ferry across to Magnetic island. 

At last - a week of holidays! We had booked our lovely accommodation a long time ago but when Courtney decided to join us we had to switch to whatever we could get that would fit us in. We got the last property available - it was a three bedroom house, nowhere near the beach but it was absolutely fine. Except for one thing - it stunk of mothballs! The worst room was our bedroom and en-suite. We realised the mothballs were locked in a cupboard that we couldn't access. We had to sleep with the windows and curtains open so we could breathe.

As we were unpacking the first night in the dusk, John pointed out an interesting bird. We agreed it was probably a curlew. We later learned that there are heaps of these kooky, weird birds here. They look strange with their really long legs and funny way of running.

We learned it was mating season though. When one bird meets another, they call, twitter and scream! And they did this all night, every night - outside our open bedroom window........ Anyway, I still like them!

This video is taken from our verandah at night, so there's nothing to see but turn your volume up!

I won't go through a blow-by-blow description but we had a wonderful week on Magnetic Island. We all really liked it. The landscape is so interesting - gorgeous bays were lined with rocky outcrops and hoop pines were scattered throughout. The feel was very laid back and there were great places to eat. It was quite mountainous and we had some great walks.

On one walk we were surrounded by butterflies! It was amazing! 

We snorkelled at this beach but the visibility was terrible. We later tried another beach but couldn't find the good coral. Oh well - at least they're stunning to look at!

Karate training on the beach.

I was a bit smitten by the fig trees here. They put down aerial roots which then turn into wood and help hold the heavy branches up. The large ones form a weird mass of roots, trunks and branches. They're so cool!

There were lots of fun trees here.

One day we saw these really strange cloud formations. More weirdness!

The beaches were generally beautiful and untouristed. These kayaks were an exception rather than the rule.

We had one wild night at the local pub when we went to watch the footy. We somehow got talking to a few other people, including an extremely drunk lady who loved us all more and more as the night wore on. There were some classic comments from her that night, most best not repeated here...... Apparently the Tiges beat the Lions! It was hard to watch the game though with this woman telling me her life story at the same time.

We had some great meals - the local Italian restaurant was a favourite as was Scallywags, the great lunch place with plenty of vegan options for Courtney.

We went to the other side of the island one night to watch the sunset. We found yet another drop-dead gorgeous beach with not many people on it. What a place!

And that was our week in paradise. We'll be back here again one day, for sure!

Hooroo!

Heather and John

Walking in Dinosaur Tracks

Welcome back! 

Channel Country is dinosaur country and Winton has more than its fair share of dinosaur relics.  Our first stop was the museum on the way into Winton where we saw the bones of a huge plant-eater and a small(ish) meat-eater that were found together. The site was on a "jump up", a cool name for a rocky, flat-topped outcrop. These are only small but they give amazing views over the flat lands around them.

We had a lot to see in two days so we headed out at dusk to check out the "musical fence". This is a fence with wires that can be hit to make different notes but the real feature was all the other percussion instruments made out of old drums, pans, hub caps, anything! There was an entire drum kit too!

The sun set on the edge of the dusty town behind a strategically placed sign. It was pretty spectacular! It's funny how several towns seem to have the same claim to fame. Didn't Longreach just convince us that it was the birthplace of Qantas? No matter which town it really was, Winton wins the special sign award!

We stayed in a house - luxury! It was amazing having so much space but the artesian water was pretty high on the stink-o-meter. It was back to a quick underarm splash whenever possible.

We had a huge day the next day with a mere 110 km drive to another dinosaur site. This one though was all about footprints, not fossils. 95 million years ago, groups of two different dinosaurs came to a waterhole to drink. A large meat-eater then chased them. They all left frantic footprints in the mud which eventually fossilised. There were over 3,000 footprints! It was a really interesting place. 

After the tour, we went for a walk in the desert scrub nearby. It was really cool. We climbed up one of the jump ups for fabulous views. It was really interesting.

We then drove nearly all the way back to Winton to go to Bladensberg National Park. The roads here were unmade and really dusty in places and passing road trains created clouds of dust that would temporarily blind us.

Like many large historical farms in this part of Queensland, Bladensberg was sold to the Qld government in the 1980's or 90's as part of a push to preserve special locations as National Parks. The original homestead was still there and you can only begin to imagine what it must have been like in the old days when this is the outlook from the homestead:

The highlight at Bladensberg for us was driving the rough 4WD track to Scrammy, another jump-up. There were waterholes (muddy of course), rugged cliffs and ravines. It was amazing!

Growing on the top of the jump-up were the most amazing warped trees I've ever seen. They twisted and contorted. They bent back on themselves and bent down to the ground and back up again. They were so cool! 

The landscape here was like something out of a Dr Seuss book.

Winton was as far north-west as we would be going. It was time to leave Channel Country and head south-east for a bit to pick up our original bookings that we had before we had to change our plans due to covid restrictions. We didn't want to double back on our tracks though so we did a longer loop through some smaller towns. Even these had caravans going through them! One of these towns was Muttaburra, home of yet another dinosaur., wonderfully named the Muttaburrasaurus After Muttaburra, I dropped John off about 30kms out of Barcaldine and he rode in.

Barcaldine was very appealing, largely due to the large green trees that lined the streets, something we haven't seen anywhere else. We've been craving Asian food as we've been getting basic pub meals at most places and I was rapt to get a curry in the open-air eatery across the road from our cabin.

We were up early thanks to the people in the adjoining cabin who got up and banged things over & over from 5am so we walked to the Tree of Knowledge monument at dawn. This is the site where shearers went on strike in 1891 to demand better working conditions. They went on to form the Australian Workers' Union which led to the Australian Labour Party. (Funnily enough, they made the same claims about a tree at Bladensberg.)

The tree was mysteriously poisoned a decade or two ago so they built a huge sculpture around it. It wasn't attractive from the outside but inside was great! They hung huge wooden wind chimes from an enormous box-like structure and the space they left was the shape of the original tree. It was pretty incredible.

We wandered around the pleasant town. Once again we missed a movie being shown in a gorgeous vintage theatre by one night....

I don't know what the neighbours thought of the huge windmill in the main street that squeaked and squealed non-stop but it looked nice!

The drive from Barcaldine to Emerald was a sedate one as it was highway all the way, however it was fun! About half an hour out of Barcaldine a large road sign appeared. It said "Fatigue Zone. Trivia games help drivers stay alert". We were scratching our heads trying to work out what they were getting at when, a few kilometres later, another sign appeared. It said, "Fatigue Zone. Trivia question. How many shearers were jailed in the 1891 strike?"

Sign 3 said, "Hint: more than 10"

Sign 4 said, "Answer: 13"

What a classic!

Just after these signs we started noticing that the termite mounds near the road were decorated with clothes and hats! This went on for many kms. In between there was a dead pig as well (after roos, pigs would have to be the next most common roadkill).

A while later we were heading for the town of Alpha. The next sign said:

"Fatigue Trivia. What is the first letter of the Greek alphabet?"
Sign 2 said:

Sign 3 said: "Answer: Alpha"

There were more later too. What a great way to keep people alert on such long stretches of road!

We came to a sign showing that we were crossing the great Dividing Range. We saw our first real hills since we left home. The trees suddenly got bigger and we drove past green paddocks and orchards as we approached Emerald. We drove into Emerald and it was like we had arrived on another planet. There were green trees, green grass, neon lights, chain stores, people of different nationalities, good coffee and Thai takeaways! Plus everyone's cars are clean! I suddenly felt like we had been out in the sticks. It's all so incredibly different.

We used our night here to stock up (and get Thai takeaways!) then set off the next day for Carnarvan Gorge. This is a long way south but this is where we pick up our original route that we were supposed to take before covid changed everything. On the way we passed spectacular mountains. We learned this was Minerva Hills National park. We're thinking about changing our plan to come back here as it looks amazing!

Our 'cabins' at Carnarvan Gorge were really a blend of a tent and a cabin. I suppose it's glamping but I can't really see any advantage of doing it this way. We soon learnt the disadvantages though. As the temperatures dropped outside at night, they did the same inside. We froze during our second night. Of course, in summer, it must get so hot. They provided both a heater and an air-conditioner. What a ridiculous waste of energy.

One surprising thing about where we stayed though was that it had a French café run by French people. The pastries were sensational! They even made a special French hot chocolate for me!

We arrived in the early afternoon, unpacked then headed to the ranger's office of the national park to get info. On the way we saw numerous wallabies that were reasonably tame.

We decided to hit one of the harder walks - the climb up to Boolomba Bluff. I wasn't really quite fit enough for strenuous walks but there's nothing like getting fit on the job! It took us about 1.5 hours to climb the steep path and steps. 

There were some cool rock formations en-route.

It was all really beautiful.

The view from the top was spectacular. As one enthusiastic girl we passed said, (she looked about 12 years old), "You can see over all of Queensland!" That was a slight exaggeration but it was still pretty amazing.

Afterwards we wandered along a short walk near the ranger station. The ranger had told us that sometimes you can see a platypus at dawn or dusk. As it was dusk, we thought we'd take a look. Much to our amazement we saw one! We've never seen a platypus in the wild before. We stood very quiet and still and watched for a while as it dived and surfaced. Awesome!

On our main day there, we tackled the big gorge walk. It was sensational! It started off with a creek crossing - one of many we would end up doing.

The track meandered through rainforest that included rare, ancient plants. There are interesting side gorges to explore as well. The first side gorge we went to was The Ampitheatre. This was amazing! We entered through a crack in the gorge. That's the crack above John in this photo.

We found ourselves in a big cavern carved out by water. The cavern was open to the sky and continues to get carved out each time it rains. From the inside of the cavern, the entrance looked like something from a sci-fi movie.

The next gorge was Ward's Canyon. We climbed up past a waterfall to a stunning gorge at the top. A type of growth on the rocks make the water look bright red in places.

We saw an ancient plant that is only found in several places in Australia. The gorge was beautiful.

Our last destination was the Art Gallery. Over 2,000 old aboriginal paintings and carvings line a long canyon wall. They seemed in very good condition considering they were exposed to the elements. 

We could have gone on further into the gorge but the next point of interest was another 8kms return and reluctantly we decided not to do it. It was just as well as the 12 or 14 kms that we did left us recovering in our room for the rest of the day!

On our last morning we got up before dawn and made our way to Mickey's Gorge. Walking in was a bit tricky as there was no sunlight yet but we were rewarded with a special atmosphere and we had the place to ourselves. The sun started to shine on the cliff above us making it glow.

The glow reflected in puddles in the creek.

We went up a side gorge which got narrower the deeper we went. It was so cool!

This gorge had more unusual tree ferns that were a different shape to any we've seen before.

We returned to our accommodation and finished our visit with a breakfast of croissants and pastries. You can't beat that!

Til next time.

Heather and John.