13 - Lake Tinaroo QLD. 12/7 - 5/08/2019

Entry 13           Lake Tinaroo 12/7 – 5/8/2019

On saying bye to our Adelaide friends, Lyn & Pete we were still chuckling over their exceptional good luck with wildlife sightings, purposefully rubbing shoulders with them hoping for some of their luck to transfer to us. We had spent days monitoring waterways searching, hoping for a sighting of the elusive platypus. It seemed like, when the platypus saw Lyn & Pete approaching their first waterway viewing spot that the platypus popped up to wave hello.

True to form for our Adelaide couples once Lyn & Pete had set their plans for their week in Cairns, they invited us to accompany them for a day travelling by train from Cairns to Kuranda, returning via Sky Rail, knowing it was on our wish list.

Three days after waving them on their way we were up early on a sunrise drive to Cairns for our Kuranda experience. Along our way we spotted a group of six hot air balloons in the sky near Mareeba, thinking the occupants must have risen exceptionally early for their ballooning experience.

Picture taken through drivers window

Both the train and sky rail travel through world heritage listed rainforests, commencing at Cairns and travelling high up into the Barron Gorge National Park, ending at the small town of Kuranda. For the train trip you are allocated seat numbers similar to plane travel. There were many train carriages full with people.

There was one 15-minute stop where you were able to get out for a look at the Barren River Waterfalls. As it transpired there was only a small area where you could sight the waterfall clearly which was inaccessible due to the large volume of people.

The below pictures show our train stopped at Kuranda looking to the rear and the front.

We spent about two hours walking around the very publicized Kuranda markets. As it turned out it was located in a ramshackle environment of often dilapidated buildings scattered about on a hillside at times with steepish derelict steps and pathways. Put simply, it had an unenthusiastic atmosphere. We found our Kuranda experience, to be nothing like the enormous generated publicity hype, more like a cattle market where you felt like you were being corralled down narrow passageways bordered by stalls with plenty of useless items for sale. It felt very uninspiring in comparison to the various markets we had experienced recently in the Atherton Tablelands, Port Douglas, Cairns and our previous years’ experience, at other Australian locations. Ironically the only picture we took of Kuranda was of the first building we sighted leaving the train station. Though there were many art galleries where we enjoyed viewing some of the displays even if it felt like we were striving to find something to occupy ourselves.

We had also been allocated a time for our Sky rail return trip gondola ride. We arrived at the gondola station hoping for an early boarding. There was a huge queue (possibly full of other disappointed people,) which we joined. The line in front slowly diminished (over a period of about 45 minutes) and we got to board a gondola close to our allocated time.

Unbeknown to us Lyn suffered from height anxiety. The below two pictures were taken on entering our gondola.

The Sky rail trip had been publicised as a 1 ½ hour trip with two viewing stops. We found ourselves spending plenty of time with various activities trying to distract Lyn from her height anxiety. When we got to the first stop, we looked at a nervous Lyn, considered the possible waiting time to get back on and decided to stay put moving on.

We had to get off at the second stop due to the sky rail looping at this point returning to Kuranda. The sky rail travelled around a distance of 7.5-kilometres, comprised of two gondola circuits over this length. There was a board walk at this location which we started out on but didn’t complete due to lots of people and Lyn’s lingering sense of anxiety. We still had to wait over 20 minutes to get back onto a gondola.

The train trip was most enjoyable. After spending many, many hours of walking time, exploring the rainforest floor over the last couple of months, we found the sky rail trip very satisfying with an opportunity to view the vast rainforest canopy from above. If we ever returned to view Kuranda it would be with a different mindset with minimal expectations not that we had any perceived expectations for this visit.

The Cairns - Kuranda - Mareeba road

Back in the Atherton Tablelands, we were very content spending day after day gazing across Lake Tinaroo with the scenery tingling all of our good senses. It even got better when the clouds cleared with day after day of beautiful blue skies reflecting on the water.

Our setting from the porch table - superb

Pelicans & Cormorants rounding up fish into our small inlet bay

After a feed they fly off for another fish gathering location

A wonderful setting

We continued to spend regular happy times socialising with the Smicks, sharing meals, playing cards, helping one another out with all sort of things. Sunday’s were extra special with the Smicks for ‘Champagne Sunday Afternoons,’ where there would be an abundance of different types of nibbles. Sue would partake in her love of bubbly with the rest of us partaking in a drink or two be it alcoholic, water or a cuppa. Champagne Sunday Afternoons rarely wound up under 3 hours with no further food required for an evening meal, it was a happy time. Some Sunday’s it would be the four of us with regular visitors at other times expanding to eight one Sunday afternoon.

Without the cloud covered skies the day time maximum temperatures dropped from around the mid 20’s to the low 20’s. Night time minimums also dropped from the upper teens, a couple of mornings dropping to a chilly 8 C. The cool mornings did provide a different setting with a fog covered lake.

Low fog with beautiful blue overhead skies

It was even foggy in our waterfront location

All of our good senses continued to tingle in appreciation of our magnificent setting, but it was also an ideal time to check for any maintenance requirements while we had a cement pad to work off and a secure home base. One of those horrible jobs was to conduct a wheel alignment on the caravan with Steve under the caravan, pulling and pushing and Mary checking the wheel alignment measurements providing Steve with feedback for directional adjustments. It was all performed in a beautiful locale.

The view of our Lake Tinaroo residence from the road

Mary continued to spend time with her love of having access to a good sized kitchen.

It's always good to see the cook appreciating their home made vanilla slice

Crispy skin salmon

And we also attended to those home duties requirements.

In between our above work duties, we would watch various lake activities, one a wooden boat gathering.

Each day the lake scenery would be a little different.

We spent time at Malanda watching a play “39 Steps”put on by the local theatre company.

With the Smicks and their visiting Aunty

Mary’s Aunty Eileen and Uncle Joe from Moonta, South Australia were visiting their son Greg in Cairns and we caught up with them at Kuranda. Prior to our lunch time catch up we participated in a couple of lookout walks. One being a nice walk through the rainforest to the Barron Falls lookout. We emerged out of the dense rainforest onto a pedestrian bridge travelling over the Kuranda Train track, finishing at the train station where our Kuranda train ride had stopped for a few minutes for passengers to view the Barron Falls. The station was deserted and it was a pleasure not having to jostle with hordes of people for what transpired to be a great viewing location of a large waterfall.

A nearby lookout view towards Cairns

We did have a nice chat with Aunty Eileen and Uncle Joe over lunch. Our thoughts concerning the Kuranda markets didn’t improve from our previous visit though Mary did purchase a top that took her fancy.

Time spent viewing a nearby 100 plus year old Chinese temple was most interesting.

One of our retirement thoughts, once we tired from travelling all over Australia had been to stay for an extended period in the same locale at one of our loved locations. Staying in the same location for a few months in the Atherton Tablelands had been a wonderful unplanned experience. We were finding ourselves becoming quite content with our location easily adjusting to the Lake Tinaroo / Atherton Tablelands lifestyle.

Psychologically we were feeling we should have been out and about in our caravan experiencing other locations. We had compiled a list of nearby (within a couple of hundred kilometres or so) locations we thought worthy to experience, deciding to spread our wings whilst the weather conditions were ideal.

We had also been discussing various route options for our return trip home. Out of the blue the Smicks (whom were not privy to our travel thoughts) asked if we would like to accompany them whilst they were on route to Bourke late August. Ironically their proposed route was an extension of our planned route commencing around a similar planned time line. They were travelling along a route we hadn’t considered and in turn they liked the sound of our planned route. Neither of us had travelled one another’s proposed routes. We liked this suggestion as we would be travelling along about 1000 kilometres of dirt back roads with some areas through roughish terrain and it would be good to be in company with another in case assistance was required.

It was time to say goodbye to Lake Tinaroo, planning to tick off a few nearby locations on our wish list before joining up with the Smicks for another road trip experience.