The Boulders, Bramston Beach and Birds on a roof
Still raining here but we've had a delightful day. First we drove to The Boulders, a camp and picnic site 5.3 kms from the pretty town of Babinda, north of Innisfail. This is a beautiful spot, with a creek flowing fast through huge boulders- it must be awe-inspiring in the wet! There are whirlpools created in the rocks, and little waterfalls.
I may have mentioned dense rainforests previously, but this one's a proper jungle, although with an easy, tarred walking track. Really wonderful to see huge examples of plants we grow in a pot such as umbrella plants many metres tall.
Then to Bramston Beach, a nice enough beach with Joyce Creek entering at the end. But you start to wonder why people bother building houses in these places, with nary a shop for miles, and although the beach is nice enough, you still can't swim there because of crocs and stingers. (We still haven't seen a croc, but we've seen a photo of a monster, 4.5 metres long and very fat, photographed at Tully Head the week prior to our visit- he might very well still be there under the water.)
The big surprise at Bramston Beach was a pair of jabiru sitting on a roof! These are very big birds, actually the correct name is Australasian stork- you don't expect to see them on a roof (having said that, storks in Europe nest on chimneys by preference).
Jabiru on a roof
Then to Innisfail for lunch, and a leisurely stroll around the town admiring the art deco buildings. Innisfail had a bad cyclone in 2006 (Larry) and many buildings were damaged so the paintwork in most cases has been freshly done.
Innisfail Courthouse
Innisfail Water Tower, the first thing you see coming into town
Catholic Church
Innisfail Shire Chambers
On the way back to Mission Beach, we stopped at Lacey Creek for another rainforest walk. This is the prime spot for cassowaries, but we didn't see one, not surprising because the gravel path is very noisy and there's no chance of sneaking up on wildlife. No doubt the birds were well aware of us. We did see some nice fish in a very deep but clear pool.
PLEASE NOTE THAT I AM CHANGING TO ANOTHER BLOG AFTER FRIDAY AS THIS ONE HAS TOO MUCH CONTENT. THE NEW ADDRESS WILL BE chrisandvaltothursdayisland
We've just come from a delicious tasting of rare tropical fruit at the Information Centre next door. We stumbled upon it yesterday when we went in looking for maps, and decided to attend today. They run it only on Mondays and Tuesdays, from 1 to 2, at a cost of $4 each. If you want to go, be early, because there were about 50 people there in the end. We were lucky with front row seats.
The manager, a very interesting speaker, showed us the fruit before cutting, talked about its uses and how to tell when it's ready, etc, before her helpers passed around the various fruit. Some of them were absolutely delicious- sapote, for instance, or abiu, or some of the others we tried, 13 in all. She also showed us the amazing way a banana flower works. I've noticed these dark red things hanging off the banana trees so I was pleased to have it explained. Each petal unfolds to reveal a tiny hand of baby bananas, each of which will grow to maturity, given the chance. Did you know banana is not actually a fruit, but a herb?
This is a banana flower. Each dark red petal when peeled off reveals the tiny pinkish fruit beneath, which will grow into a hand of delicious green, then ripen to yellow, bananas
This weird object is known as a Buddha's hand. We didn't get to taste it because it's going to be a show exhibit- I assume it's a good example.
My favourite, Amazonian Custard Apple
- tastes exactly like lemon meringue!
We've had a few drizzly days so not doing much. We have movies and books (or kindle) to amuse us so we're happy.
Yesterday John and Marg moved on to the Atherton Tablelands - they'll meet up with us in Cairns on Friday. Sunday we leave on our Thursday Island tour. Friday and Saturday we hope to catch up with my sister, who's currently visiting her daughter in Cairns.
Still at Mission Beach, we're booked in for the rest of this week and will go to Cairns on Friday. Sunday we leave on our Thursday Island trip. We're just having a quiet day, have done the washing (though it's starting to drizzle a bit now). We've spent quite a bit of time on computer this morning trying to iron out a bug, successfully, thank goodness. The problem was with a cord we were using and we have a replacement.
Yesterday we did a lovely rainforest walk from the caravan park to the jetty, about 2km away. The growth is amazing, each tree seems to have its own network of vines hanging from it. No cassowaries, which is good- one doesn't want to meet them on a walk as they can do you an injury.
It's good to just sit back and relax sometimes but we might get a bit tired of it by Friday.
First I must apologise to Ruby, she was not the dog who was barking yesterday. A young couple who like loud music in their tent also like to go away and leave their dog tied up from time to time.
This area is called Cassowary Coast so we were pleased to see a couple of the birds yesterday, first a male, then a female. The female is larger and more colourful, which is unusual for birds. They can run 50kph through dense rainforest, and they can swim. They can be quite aggressive so it's safer to stay in the car.
Female cassowary seen near Etta Bay, Nth Qld.
We drove to some of the northern beaches- not impressed with the caravan park at Kurramine, which is right on the beach but with very tight sites. Etta Bay is absolutely lovely- we didn't stop because no dogs are allowed.
At Mourilyan Harbour we saw a truck unloading molasses into holding bins ready for export. As we'd toured the sugar mill the previous day, it was interesting to see the next step in the molasses process, and we were also able to see how the sugar itself gets loaded onto ships, in a similar process to the coal loaders at home. While we were there we saw a pretty little bird, obviously a kingfisher. His wings were actually greener than they appear in the photo.
Buff Breasted Paradise Kingfisher
We briefly visited Innisfail, quite a large town with many interesting Art Deco buildings. On the way back we detoured through South Johnstone and Mena Creek, where we visited the Paronella Park campsite and decided it was strictly for small vehicles. We had been thinking of visiting Paronella Park properly but it's $35 per head (seniors)- this includes a night's campsite but it seems a lot if you don't want to stay there. We could see some of it from the little park on the other side of the creek and were able to see the waterfall- we decided not to bother this trip, perhaps some other time.
Mena Creek Falls and Paronella Park
In Tully the other day, we climbed the big boot, which is 7.9 metres tall- it represents the rainfall they had in one year.
Val and Marg in big rubber boot, Tully, Qld.
It's a bit drizzly here today but we're not complaining, as we've been so lucky with the weather. It's quite warm, last night I had just a sheet for most of the night, no blanket. That's the warmest night we've had yet.
At last we've seen a real cassowary (we were thinking of photographing the statue outside the information centre). This one was just standing by the roadside, watching the traffic pass by. We'd seen them in the zoo at Rockhampton but this was much better.
At the time we were on our way back from a tour of the sugar mill in Tully, which proved to be quite interesting. We had to wear hard hats and goggles , trudge up and down stairs, but it was worth it. This mill is very eco-friendly, almost all of the emissions are steam, everything's recycled and all the sugar is exported to Japan and the US. The byproduct molasses is 70% exported (someone said it's used in licorice, don't know about that) and 30% used locally for stock feed.
Chris and I did the tour in the morning, meeting up with John and Marg at lunchtime for dog handover so they could do the afternoon tour. We took Ruby back with us and she soon learned not to bark. We were sitting around reading when another dog started carrying on and howling, Ruby looked at me as if to say "May I?" but I pointed at her and she didn't make a sound. She's not stupid, just spoilt, she knows when she's with us she's not allowed to bark, so she just doesn't. She sat quietly near us and didn't even bark when the others returned, though she was certainly aware of them, waiting eagerly for them to come and talk to her, but still no barking. It will be a different story tomorrow, though.
We drove around South Mission Beach and another beach with an odd name, Wongalily or some such- they are pleasant areas with some really nice houses but some have sustained storm damage, shown by tarps still on roofs. It's 16 months since Yasi, perhaps they have insurance problems. We saw quite a few tarps in Tully, too.
You can see where the cyclone ripped through the bush in many places. Large plots of advanced pine plantations, probably 20 years old, have had their tops completely stripped, leaving just a bare trunk- others have toppled. You can imagine how the sugarcane and banana plantations fared, if big trees can be felled or killed by the cyclone.
We had a shower of rain this morning but in view of the high rainfall here, we've been lucky and the sun came out later. Here's a sunrise photo.
Taken this morning in the caravan park.
We've decided to stay here longer, perhaps for a week. We don't have to be in Cairns till next Friday and it's only 130 kilometres away. This place is cheaper than anywhere else around, and the Qld school hols start tomorrow so places will be in short supply so staying here makes a lot of sense. It's not the most salubrious place we've stayed, but it's OK at the price- we have our own amenities anyway, we don't have to use theirs if we don't want to.
Ruby is barking as I type.Should I go and point my finger at her?
Change of plans- straight to Mission Beach instead of going to Forrest Beach. Drove up the Bruce Hwy through Cardwell- they call it Cardwell by the sea, and they are not kidding! One side of the main street is ocean. Not much of a town, really just a strip development across from the beach, and island views.
Cardwell Beach, Hinchinbrook Island in the distance.
On through Tully, reputedly one of the wettest towns in Australia, where they measure rainfall in metres. Average annual rainfall is between 4 and 5 metres, but one year they recorded 7.9 metres, and there's a giant gumboot in the main street to prove it!
Mission Beach is off the highway, and although it's quite a nice town, apparently it's not doing well since Cyclone Yasi destroyed two offshore islands, Dunk and Bedarra. Because no tourists are visiting these islands, the stores are feeling the pinch. We grey nomads fill two caravan parks and we are doing our best, but we don't tend to spend like the backpackers! We're in the council caravan park, which is pretty ordinary, but only $20 per night- the one over the road is more than twice that. And although ours is ordinary in terms of amenities, it's the most picturesque setting we've had yet.
Kite board at low tide, Mission Beach
The beach stretches for miles in either direction, almost dead flat with clean sand and blue water, and like all the beaches up here, the tide goes out for miles. There was a brisk wind blowing yesterday, which meant fun for the board riders, which use the wind more than the water- and there was even a little bit of surf.
Today we've been for a drive to Tully Gorge, luckily arriving when a group of tourists were going white water rafting. It was quite interesting to see them being trained prior to setting out, and watching them bounce through the first of the rapids.
Tourists about to get an adrenalin rush, Tully river.
The road to the gorge runs through kilometres of banana plantations, the first we've seen on this trip. After a while it runs beside the beautiful Tully River, which has crocodile warning signs all around, though I doubt if they go as far as the white water rafting area.
We next visited Tully Heads and Hull Heads, which are only 2 kilometres apart, though they are related to two different river systems. If you're thinking, as I did, of Sydney Heads, cliffs, headlands etc, forget it- here the term "heads" simply means the river estuary. Tully Heads was quite disappointing, with brown water (but many islands in view). We were surprised about the colour because the river's not muddy, far from it. In the end we decided the colour comes from the sandy bottom, which is a browny yellow shade- it's actually reasonably clean.
Hull Heads was more attractive and there's a cheap campsite there, $13 per night. We're told that the fishing's great but again there are crocodile signs.
Murray Falls in the dry season
Our next stop was Murray Falls and we all had to thank Chris for this- we were a bit tired and I think John and Marg, and certainly myself, would really have preferred to return to the vans, but we were glad we didn't. Murray Falls is stupendous- not tall like Wallaman Falls, but a huge volume of water coming down- imagine what it must be like in the wet season!
Wallaman Falls, 50 km west of Ingham, is the longest single drop falls in Australia. Oh, yeah, ahum, I hear you saying, but when you see them it will blow your mind.
The roads around Ingham, as in so much of Queensland, are dead flat, mostly dead straight. The last 10 or 15 kms of the trip, the road suddenly leaps upward, with a hairier road than Paluma- this is the other end of the same range. Hairpin bends, narrow road, looking at the tops of trees, and as you rise the dry tropics are replaced by the wet tropics, with dense rainforest growth, lots of palms of many varieties, many broad-leafed plants we couldn't identify but one looked very much like monstero delicioso- imagine it as a tree! Signs warned of cassowaries on the road, but we haven't yet seen one in the wild.
Finally we reached the falls carpark. We'd checked with a local before this trip and knew that the carpark was right next to the falls. So we walked up a slight incline to the fence and WOOOOOOOW!
Wallaman Falls, 268 metre sheer drop, 20 metre deep pool below.
The most impressive falls I've ever seen, and the photo doesn't do it justice.. Just the sound alone is impressive, with constant booming and spray rising a long way into the air. The surrounding sheer rock walls are breathtaking, even without the falls. Yet none of us had heard of them before, why not?
We walked down another path to view the massive gorge carved out by this Stony creek., which is a tributary of the Herbert River. This huge volume of water is simply a creek! The gorge lookout gives views of the creek winding through the dense greenery far below.
Wallaman Gorge
On the return trip we stopped to watch some sugar cane being harvested. In the photo you can see the feathery seed heads of the cane. The yellow thing on the extreme left cuts off the heads and spews them out of the black funnel so that it goes over the top of the bin and out onto the ground beyond. At the same time, an augur at the front of the yellow harvester cuts the cane and clears the leaves- it goes through some sort of chopper and is spat out into the bin already cut into small sections about six inches long.The bin is pulled by a tractor which travels at the same speed as the harvester (quite fast) along the length of the field. At the end of the run, this tractor tows the full bin off to load it into a rail wagon, and is immediately replaced by an identical outfit which has been waiting in place for a minute or so. The whole process is very efficient and we were astounded to think that in the old days, many men would have taken days to harvest the same amount of cane. This process, using three drivers and three machines, does the work in a fraction of the time.
On the way out to the falls this morning, we discovered that in our previous exploration of Ingham, we'd somehow missed the main street! It's a lot bigger than we thought. Chris found someone to cut his hair, I finally found an optometrist to replace the screw in my specs, and we all found a hole in the wall. Most towns have ATMs, but lack the other services. There are actually three supermarkets, not two, and Target Country.
