We left Mission Beach early as it was thrashing it down and wasn't really the weather for exploring. We headed towards the Atherton Tablelands and the heart of the Queensland rainforests.
We had a really fun day, we haven't travelled that far, but have just spent the day exploring.
It was nice to get off the Bruce Highway which is unbelievably the real name of the A1 that runs right up the east coast (We've yet to find the Sheila Highway). It makes me chuckle everytime I see a sign for it, it's very Monty Python.
There were no specific plans for the day so we just drove, took in the scenery and stopped at things we like the look of.
First stop was a scenic drive through the rain forest. I thought we might see quite a bit of wildlife, but all we saw were loads of Brush Turkeys:
Mid morning we pulled up at a dairy for a coffee and some cheese tasting. We were given the free taster plate which was pretty good, but we didn't buy anything as I'm sure it would have gone off in the heat!
The we did the waterfall drive. Waterfalls are very common and you pass one about every 2 seconds, but the drive was really good and there was a short rain forest walk to get to each fall.
Then we stopped off at Lake Eacham where loads of locals were swimming. The lake is formed from an old volcano crater and the water was a beautiful blue colour. We did a short 4km walk through the rain forest and around the lake and heard loads of Kookaburras.
We picked up a few leaflets and read about a small local village called Yungaburra which is a good place to try and spot Duck Billed Platypus. So we headed there and found somewhere to stay.
The village is gorgeous a really lovely little place and they have a fig tree called the curtain fig. It's essentially a parasitic fig tree that uses other trees to grow on and then kills them. The way in which it grows creates huge cutrains of roots coming from the canopy:
In the evening we headed to the river and camped out on a small swing bridge overlooking the river in the hope that we might see one of the elusive platypus.
Unfortunately we saw nothing - well other than a duck and a few fresh water turtles, that we actually initially thought were platypus until they popped their heads out of the water.
Feeling a little deflated we went out for dinner at a small restaurant in the village. This had to be our best meal of the trip - fine food, fine wine and great service and the torrential rain even managed to add to the evening as it tinkled off the tin roof - cracking!
No comments:
Post a Comment