14 - Atherton Tablelands & South of Cairns 5/8 - 16/8/2019

Entry 14           Atherton Tablelands & Coastal regions south of Cairns 5/8 – 16/8/2019

We had tidied up our Lake Tinaroo accommodation including attention to the grounds and packed ready for our departure. The Smicks had invited us around for a farewell tea. Michael had misplaced his phone and Sue pressed the button on her phone to ring, to see if we could locate the lost phone. We knew one of their phones had exactly the same ring tone as our phone and we could all hear the phone ringing and ignored it as it was ringing in the kitchen near where our bag was located. Mary eventually checked our phone expecting to say tongue in cheek, we had a missed phone call (from Sue.) Yes, we had a missed phone call not from Sue but from Norton who had rung our phone at exactly the same time Sue had rung Michaels phone. An apology to Norty for not answering was quickly provided. He was letting us know he would be coming to stay the next night. We were pleased with this so he could see for himself the condition we had left his residence and we happily delayed our departure for another day to be able to personally thank him for the use of his “Lake Tinaroo Chalet”.

Once again, we experienced a lovely evening chatting with Norty along with him pleading for us to stay longer, showing his appreciation of our endeavours looking after his property. We had spent 58 nights at his Lake Tinaroo Chalet which we could have easily extended, other than there were many other locations for us to experience on our wish list. The below pictures showing our viewing scenery from our last day at Lake Tinaroo.

Our planned destination, Granite Gorge was a drive of around 40 kilometres for the day.

Granite Gorge was another one of those very publicised locations with walking trails and a rare species of rock wallaby that can be hand fed. One of its main target markets, the overseas tourist whom were in excess of 75% of the caravan park clientele. You could camp at their caravan park; we would describe it as a bush camp ground with your camping fee inclusive for access to the walks and wallaby location. For day visitors there was a $13 entry fee per person of which there were a regular daily flow of vehicles including a constant stream of buses with a majority of Asian tourists.

Disappointingly, ‘what was not mentioned’ in all the publicity brochures, there were two short walking trails rated at difficulty level 3 and 4 where dobs of yellow and red paint was marked on boulders to show the route and that you are required to scramble over a trail comprised of granite boulders covered with a dusting of slippery sand along a water course. We started on the level 3 trail and it wasn’t long before Mary became quite anxious with the difficulty of scaling steepish slippery boulders. To add to the above disappointment, we were required to sign a comprehensive disclaimer absolving the Granite Gorge owners of any liability before entering the wallaby / walking area.

We paid $1 for a small amount of kangaroo food consisting of small pellets, deciding to enter the wallaby area late afternoon with the thought this would be a good time for wallaby spotting. Once the wallabies spotted us feeding a fellow wallaby, many more hopped over for some food. It was a wonderful pleasurable experience and we were lucky to have it to ourselves for about 5 minutes before the arrival of another bus load of foreign tourists smothering what appeared to be the main feeding area with about 30 wallabies scattered about its boulder edges. Most of the below wallaby pictures were taken about half way along our walk away from the bus load of tourists with a few friendly rock wallabies sighted along our walk.

Steve at base of rock

Please Mrs we understand you are a good food provider

Yes. Good.

More. More.

A wet nose

Our initial interpretation of the publicity for Granite Gorge showed a couple of days to be a nice time frame to view all the sights but in hind sight a couple of hours would have been sufficient. Annoyingly we had paid for two nights up front.

Day two at Granite Gorge we strategized with ideas to keep ourselves occupied and safe. In the morning we walked along an emergency track bypassing some of the rock climbing along the grade 4 track, emerging near the farthest point of this track. Mary halted when more rock hopping was required. Steve continued rock hopping to get that good photograph showing our view back towards where Mary had stopped.

Steve did some extra rock hopping to a location publicised as Dinosaur Foot Prints.

We stayed in camp for a few hours where the locals enjoyed our company.

Late afternoon we ventured out for another wallaby feeding experience just after another bus load of tourists had departed. We took a stool placing our camera and tripod on the stool, utilizing the 10 second timer to obtain some pictures of us both feeding the wallabies at the same time.

Our next planned destination, Babinda Boulders was located about 60 kilometres south of Cairns, a required drive of about 170 kilometres from our current location. We were both awoken at 7am by an outside noise. Thus, it was an early departure of 7.45am for us. We did enjoy the scenery, driving along the back roads of the Atherton Tablelands through its market gardens countryside.

We arrived at Babinda Boulders a busy free camp location at around 10.15am parking in the only available camp site of around 16 sites. Ironically, we parked in exactly the same site when we had previously experienced at this location in 2013.

Babinda was a nice country town with all your needs. We utilized the post office, supermarket and stocked up with plenty of tourist publications from the Tourist Information Centre for our drive south, down the coast.

We utilized Babinda as our base to assess nearby attractions. Bramston Beach looked ok but the bush camp caravan park was very busy, full of RV’S making it somewhat unenticing for us. Driving north from Bramston Beach to Graham Range National Park in a rain forest setting we inspected 5 separate private camp sites, amongst the rain forest, each with its own magnificent beach front locale. Unfortunately, they were a bit on the tight side for our caravan access.

Josephine Falls was another great location with a short walk to three separate viewing areas with one providing access to the water. People were having a wonderful time swimming in the cold pristine waters, utilizing one of the natural sloping rocks as a water slide.

The Babinda Boulders would be one of the most scenic settings we had experienced for a free camp. But all good things come with some form of sacrifice. One of those annoyances, this location gets swamped by the European back packer community whom are rather pushy and sometimes feral. The below picture showing a vehicle that drove under our awning close to the side of our caravan to get to the rear of our camp site. Then the following morning we were asked to move our vehicle so they could get out. And many of them partied very loudly into the night with zero consideration of their close proximity to others. There was the resident rooster whom would go around to individual sites early in the morning crowing till it had woken most people. One morning Mary was up early and when she opened our door, sure enough the rooster was standing in our doorway crowing away. We didn’t see the rooster all of that day, nor heard it the following night. We suspect someone was having a meal of fresh chicken.

After the ute drove under our awning, we hooked up our shower curtain as a deterrent closing in our awning.

A couple  of blue birds

The main swimming area

We still managed to stay 3 nights, the maximum allotment of time for this camp site. It was about another 60-kilometre drive for the day to our next camp spot at Etty Bay where we had booked into the caravan park.

One item we were keen to tick off on our wish list, was to see a Cassowary in the wild. We had been regularly questioning the locals over the last couple of months for a location we might experience seeing a Cassowary and Etty Bay Caravan Park was suggested a couple of times. We rang the caravan park to be told there was only one caravan sight available and we could have it for five days. We were keen to see a Cassowary and accepted a five-night stay giving ourselves every opportunity we could to see a Cassowary.

Once away from all the traffic about 2 kilometres from our destination we drove around a bend to see a Cassowary crossing the road. ✔ Just as we were stopping at the entrance to the caravan park, we saw a juvenile Cassowary. ✔✔

 

We were setting up camp and we were subject to a camp site Cassowary inspection. ✔✔✔

Finally, after staying in this region of North Queensland for nearly 4 months we got to see a Cassowary in the wild. To say we were pleased or feeling excited from a rush of adrenaline would be most appropriate. Once we had set camp we went for a walk along our beach, checked out the camp ground and didn’t see another Cassowary till late evening whilst on our sunset beach stroll.

Etty Bay is located about a 20-kilometre drive south of Innisfail. It has a beautiful sandy beach which is about half a kilometre in length, changing at each end to a rugged volcanic rocky shoreline. The road surface to Etty Bay was a bitumen surface, which travels along the shore line for about 200 metres where it terminates. Buildings along the shore line consisted of a surf lifesaving club rooms and a very small caravan park with 21 powered caravan sites, 11 cabin type residents, an amenities block looking like it was possibly built 70 years prior with no serious maintenance conducted since and with some obvious septic issues. The caravan park grounds were set on a reasonably flat area appearing to be full of semi permanents or possibly people staying for several months during the peak season. To the side/rear was a sloped hillside consisting of 8 sites for transient people like us. We were provided the top site with the door side of the caravan on the downhill side of the slope. After much jiggling the best we could do was have the door side wheels balanced on our caravan ramps at double the intended height and we still had a lean towards the door side.

The caravan park is surrounded by a dense rainforest, part of the Moresby Range National Park with no entry points or designated walking tracks into the N.P. Bluntly there is minimal available physical activities other than walking back and forth along the beach which we did a few times daily. Though it is in a very beautiful, quiet setting without phone reception where you could watch a Cassowary walk through the caravan park each day.

One evening each week the group of semi permanents (peak season occupants) put on a quiz night alternating with a singing night. Our week corresponded with the music night with 4 singing. Evidentially two of them had played in various bands most of their lives. It was a superb performance where every song they performed we knew.

Part of the bands interlude was the ‘Etty Bay Race Club, horse races.’ There was the club steward, bookie and the race caller. We even placed a couple of bets with all money raised going towards the Etty Bay Surf Lifesaving Club. Another excitable electric atmosphere. It was a hoot.

Another day we got to watch an Echidna foraging for food along a log next to the beach on one of our evening beach strolls.

Sun was setting over the hills with the moon rising from the ocean

We had finally ticked off our motivation towards seeing a Cassowary in the wild on the drive into Etty Bay and had initially thought we didn’t need to stay in the caravan park any more. Though at the time we decided to stay with the thought of further Cassowary sightings. Yes, it was a caravan park where you were cramped in and there were a number of not so nice people. Overall, we were delighted with our Etty Bay experience with each day just as delightful as the previous. We were especially happy with the composition of the beach. It was an almost flat surface to walk along without steepish slopes, with sand not too soft, not too hard but just right.

Etty Bay was also a good base to view the surrounding area. One day we drove about 12 kilometres to Innisfail (population about 10,000) where we restocked our pantry and fridge. We enjoyed viewing some of Innisfail’s housing with their tropical themes and at Flying Fish Point there was a loo with a view. Just around the corner from Etty Bay was the beautiful setting of Mourilyan Harbour with a tanker ship loading facility for bulk sugar and molasses.

Loo with un-interupted views

It was time to say bye to Etty Bay with another 50-kilometre drive to our next destination, Paronella Park. A location we had been regularly hearing, ‘you need to go there,’ it’s amazing. And so we did.