We woke up close to midnight and Marjo said “burglars”. Now is there not a lot to steal and if it actually was a burglar (s)he would have bumped any part of their body three times, stepped on the dogs and landed in our bed. Unless they of course wanted to take our chairs or dog beds. So I went out, put undies on and with a torch saw a bandicoot who found the biscuits in Marjo’s beachbag.
The weather forecast (which I seem to use a lot) says, lots-of-wind, the trees say I-don’t-think-so. Unfortunately the trees win. So after breakfast (plenty of time for an egg) we pack up and leave. We wanted to thank Vanessa, who runs the camping, for not turning on the lights in our row (as we camped right beside it) but she must also have seen the lack of wind and seems nowhere around. Or as Jenny commented, there are people who sleep in on a Sunday.
At 9.30 we’re on the road, first restocking at Woollies. Error. Somehow not everyone in Australia has gotten the memo that Sunday is a normal day for retail and in the winter in North Queensland they just keep the doors closed and sleep in. Hmmmm.
So we continue. First we discussed whether we should follow the Bruce Highway to Cairns and then turn off to make the loop to Cooktown or otherwise turn inland first and follow the Kennedy Highway more inland. First to Innisfail for the shopping at Woollies, because without my muesli I won’t be much. Innisfail is ok, but nothing spectacular. It has all the shops of a regional town, but no real heart. Here we turn off the Bruce Highway and go towards Millaa Millaa, 800 meters higher than Mission Beach.
Immediately the roads turn different. More lush, and definitely more hilly. No Cassowaries and less cane sugar (well we saw the train with chopped cane). More bananas and red earth! We have been looking for that, showing that we are really in Australia, without actually having to go to the red centre.
We pass pittoresque places and views and stop at the Mamu Rainforest Canopy Walkway to have a look at the local flora and fauna. Not. Apparently they need two cash register ladies, an office and $20 pp. The killer was that the dogs are not allowed so we turned around and made a move. Marjo finally spotted a Cassowary.
From there we had the sight seeing bug and stopped at a close by view of the valley.
Then we stopped at Ellinjaa Falls, which were surprisingly nice, just in the middle of the hills.
Later we stopped at the Malanda Falls as well.
And made a stop on the side of the road fur lunch, yummy sausages on bread. The dogs thought so too and after lunch they did a little nap.
Then Marjo made a sidestep to South America and visited a crystal heaven. In Atherton lives a woman with the world’s best collection of crystals that she has turned into a cave open to the public. Some of the pictures:
Meanwhile Axel and the dogs passed time in the local Rotary park and viewed art.
I had no clue what it was and zooming in on the sign that was the idea.
By now it got too late to go to our planned location at Mt Carbine, so we looked at campings.
But decided against the easy options and then decided to go off the highway and ended up at Granite Gorge (with actual mini rock wallabies), this is a really nice place:
So we had our dinner over a nice wood fire and slept like roses.
Posted from Chewko, Queensland, Australia.
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