Rain to Sunshine to Rainbow Beach to Sunshine Coast.

It started as a wart on my bottom.

Here we are at Rainbow Beach and it's great to be back in the sunshine again although the days are getting a little cooler as we head south. It got down to 7 degrees last night and I succumbed throwing a pair of socks on for the first time since March. Looking ahead we will be on he Sunshine Coast in a couple of days where it looks like it will be raining again! Awesome, just as well we are buying a surfboard as we will have a proper reason to get wet. Just checked out some second handies in the local surf shop yesterday and found an ex rental the size of a barge for $170 with a leg rope. Should be able to get the whole family on that one, pics to follow on next blog.

Give us a kiss and cut out those fancy words, I'll give you bucollicks

Since the last write up we have spent three wet days up in the Atherton Tableland, nice up there, very green, lots of cows and a few pigs, rolling hills, agricultural, rustic, bucolic and all that stuff but the air smelt mainly of manure. Except at Jaques Coffee plantation where we had a great time drinking coffee, coffee liqueurs and munching down on fudge and raw coffee beans, they taste sweet did you know. If you like your coffee and want to know how it is all done this is the place to come to learn all about it and in a most entertaining way. Great story of a family that came out from East Africa in the late 70's and struggled against banks and Dept of Primary Industries to get a crop up and in, they did it on their third attempt and the rest is history. Very successful operation that is now being run by the second and third generation and a very inspirational story about not giving up. Good coffee too so come around to our place and try some, if you like it you can order it over the internet.

Pretty much after we left Jaques it rained for the next three days, not camping in that. Booked a cabin for three days that had Foxtel. Brumbies/Rebel and Reds/Lion...few beers all good. Also went for a drive around the stunning Lake Tinaroo on roads that went through fur forest down to tropical rainforest and round the corner to an enormous fig tree, called the Cathedral Fig. No organ, no choir, no bishop though, just a big fig. Big Fig would have been a better name, here is a picture fig elf and a big fig.

Praise the lord and where's the choir gone?

 

Atherton Tablelands has a lot of waterfalls, lots and lots and there is a drive that will take you to them all. We resisted but here is a picture of Milla Milla Falls, very pretty and very cold. On the walk down we passed two shivering English boys in their underpants coming up. I didn't ask but from a sign down the bottom I realised they had just joined the Polar Bear Club, idiots.

No polar bears in here, just English students in their underpants.

Mount Hypipamee crater is also worth a visit. Created by basalt rocks being blasted through the earths crust millions of years ago (an earth fart as I explained to the kids and they went oh yeah like it finally made sense) creating a big hole, 80m wide, 60m from top to water surface and a further 65m under water. It has a green film of algae covering it. You need to go there with some small logs, rocks and anything else you can throw at the algae because it will make a massive echo sound and the algae will ripple outwards. We hurtled a pile of stuff off and these old echo warriors who originally gave us disparaging looks leaned over the rail and went "Wow, look at that." Finn replied "Yeah baby watch this monster." Photo does not do it justice.

Ewwwee, look what the earth coughed up. Kill it with a rock...yeah baby.

Elsewhere on the Atherton there is heaps of suff to do including the bizzare Crystal Caves on the main street. Looks tacky and rubbish from the outside but is amazing on the inside. Stuffed full of crystals and geodes from around the world by a Dutch guy who moved to Atherton because he liked the weather. Could have stayed in Holland if he liked the rain so much. He has built something quite awesome though and we loved it.

The Empress of Uruguay. 

We left Atherton in misty fog and rain, just as we arrived in it. Next stop Airlie Beach which took a while to get to, we arrived in the dark and in the rain. We had to camp this time, low on funds and there was no worthwhile footy on Fox anyway. I was last here after a 36 hour bus trip from Canberra 27 years ago. They have been busy since 1986, the place was unrecognisable but interestingly it looked better than it did although there seemed to be a lot of lilly white English kids in their underpants lying around the lagoon at the foreshore getting extremely red. We thought we would take the opportunity to take a ride out on a boat to the Whitsundays and go to the iconic Whitehaven Beach for lunch and have a snorkel on the way back. A great day, weather out the islands was awesome whilst it rained back on the mainland. We went with The Whitehaven Express with a completely nutty crew which added to the experience, the three of them including the skipper could have walked onto the set of Pirates of The Caribbean and fitted in perfectly. My initial feeling was that they did this day job as an illegal cover for some illegal night time seafaring activity but they were just mad looking. 

Looking out over Whitsunday lookout to the inlet.

Little pirates on Whitehaven Beach.

Next stop 1770. Old Cookie stopped here that year before he got ship wrecked. Nice spot but not much to do really and is really noteworthy for the fact that it s the most northerly part of eastern mainland Australia where you can surf. Too cold for us though, bugger didn't I say I was about to buy a surfboard?

Yes you did you silly sod.

Up North

The Sunshine State does not always deliver sunshine. Number plates should read The Drizzle State, State of Wetness, Cloudy State or Windy State with Occasional Cyclones. Well it has not been that bad really because when we have chosen to do something outdoors the weather has fined up and we really have been very fortunate. Most of the rain in all honesty has happened at night but we have been driven into a cabin for only the second time since Port Lincoln because the Atherton Tablelands has the sort of drizzle/rain that would put a Welsh summer to shame. Not all bad though because we got to see the Brumbies play on the TV last night against the Rebels and tonight we will hopefully watch a Reds and Lions go around.

What has happened since the last post. We have been to Cairns, Kuranda, Port Douglas, Cape Tribulation and are now sitting in a cabin in Atherton. From Cairns to Atherton we travelled with Uncle Gareth and Auntie Karyn which was great fun as the last ten days were fairly action packed, full of laughs and only one minor injury which I will get to.

All aboard and up the mountain.

I was last in Cairns some 27 years ago and my memories of it were tainted by the cockroach invested backpackers (since demolished), FNQ lager (fizzy formaldehyde) and a bay that stunk when the tide went out. It's bigger and fancier than I remember and because I had sinus complications I could not smell the bay and had the sense to drink XXXX Bitter which was blessed by Billy Moore. The Esplanade has had a makeover and we enjoyed a walk along it and the kids made the most of the water parks and the playgrounds. We also had a wander through the botanic gardens which was a lot of fun, a bit like Juraissic Park without the dinosaurs.

Nice place this, where can we get breakfast?

When in Cairns a trip on the tourist train through tropical rainforest Kuranda is a must do and even though it was a cloudy day the views were fantastic. The running recorded commentary with video slides on the train gave a very descriptive history of the building of the railway which was essentially and important link for the Atherton Tableland and beyond to the sea. So many facts to remember but I do know the line from Cairns to Kuranda is 37km of track where there are 15 tunnels, 37 bridges and at one stage had 38 licensed premises and one brewery. Thirsty work alright.

Kuranda is a very touristy place but still retains plenty of charm. It also has a very cool butterfly sanctuary where we learnt butterflies don't live very long but spend a lot of time mating, might be some sort of causal link there. These days you can return to Cairns via Skyrail which is great way to see the rain forest from atop whilst been blown around by the wind in a gondola. Great views and some good look outs on the way way down.

These butterflies seemed to like Finn..

...and Marley.

We passed 19 gondolas of Indians and Marley said hello to all of them

Just up the road from Cairns is Port Douglas where we camped for a couple of days and had perfect weather for a trip out to the reef. Having had some pretty average experiences on the reef previously I was not really expecting much but the good ship Poseidon took us to three excellent reefs which had plenty of coral and fish and not one crown of thorns so there are still some parts of the reef that are visibly very healthy. So if you are up here go Poseidon and give Quicksilver the flick and you will get to three good sights instead of one average sight and do it with 80 versus 400 people. The diving was also good and cheap, $60 for three dives. Good healthy fun, I should let Michael Douglas know that this sort of diving is less likely to give you cancer than the sort he has been up to.

Cape Tribulation was  probably our favourite campsite on tour so far. World heritage forest meets world heritage marine park. Unspoilt natural beauty would be one way to describe it. Might let some pictures do the commentary on this place but if you like tropical rainforest this is a place you must visit as there is no greater range of tropical rainforest plants anywhere else in the world. If you are up for it go jungle surfing through the canopy which is a ton of fun and after that go back to the campsite and enjoy a beer at the Sand Bar whilst munching on a wood fired pizza. Alternative activities could include building coconut castles on the beach, swinging on a rope from a tree, tug of war, sand sculptures but if you are over 60 don't have a skipping race with a nine year old or you might just tear your calf muscle, eh U. Gareth. Ice and cold beer did help reduce the inflamation though. Fun times, great memories.

Cape Tribulation....serenity

Cape Tribulation...stupidity

Mossman Gorge.....broken tranquility

Preparing to swing through the trees of the Daintree

The Sandbar at Cape Trib...great place

Fig tree..and fig tree elf.