Atherton Qld. July 22-24

I was awake at 6:30am and next thing we knew, it was 7:30 and we were pulling out of the van park and heading towards the Gregory Developmental road, heading toward Atherton, via The Lynd, Mt Garnett and Ravenshoe.  Any idea we had of a nice easy run were dashed as we proceeded to drive through thick fog for the first 85km, caused no doubt by the fact that the road runs parallel to the Burdekin River. Once clear of the fog, the road immediately turned to a true development road for 10km but was ok then for a while. 

After clearing the fog and the dodgy road, we hit a good patch and were making good time when I failed to see the dead 'roo in the middle of our lane early enough to avoid it. The sound as it thudded along under the car and the thunk as it hit the towbar and the van chassis was pretty ugly. One has to blot these things out, the car felt OK and so we pushed on, and on and 'smack', a dirty big rock from a car and trailer going the other way, put a huge star in our windscreen. These things never happen when you expect them, such as on a dirt road, it always happens on a perfectly good clean-looking bitumen road. 

We stopped after 250km, at The Lynd, which is weirdly about 2km up a side road and consists of exactly 1 roadhouse run by 1 lady, for a cuppa before bashing on to Atherton. The road alternated been good bitumen and rubbish development road but got better after the Gulf Development Road joined in, at the delightfully named 40 Mile Scrub National Park. The road now graced itself with the title of Kennedy Highway and was fine up through Mt Garnett and on to Ravenshoe. You don't actually go into Ravenshoe unless you want to, and this year we decided to give it a miss, feeling like we were finally on a roll and wanting to get to Atherton and a full stop to the day. The trip had one last wrinkle for us: it becomes very, very hilly and twisty and narrow, we were probably driving around the rim of one of the many extinct volcanoes which give the country its fabulous scenery. Five hundred and twenty five kilometres and just over 6 hours after our bright-eyed and bushy-tailed start, we made it safely into the van park. 

Mind you the car and van have a rather 'odd' smell of half-cooked meat about them!

Not surprisingly, we did nothing much until much later the next day, when we wandered out to Yungaburra where we checked out the giant curtain fig tree and then went hunting platypus. The most obvious spot is Petersons Creek, which has a carpark and a 'hide' for the expectant platypus watcher. It was full of people speaking foreign tongues, so we took the 15 minute walk that goes back across and under the bridge before following the creek a short way. Naturally we stopped on the bridge and were rewarded with a water snake sliding through the water. We saw nothing else until we had turned to come back when we came across a platypus on the water's surface. It seemed in no hurry and dived and resurfaced for 10 minutes or more before taking itself over to a handy tree root where it climbed out, turn onto its back and had a lovely old scratch. This went on for ages before it returned to the water and started to make its way down stream.

Curtain fig tree. Yungaburra Qld

Curtain fig tree. Yungaburra Qld

Water snake. Petersons Creek. Yungaburra Qld

Platypus. Petersons Creek. Yungaburra Qld

Platypus having a nice old scratch on a tree root
Petersons Creek, Yungaburra Qld

We returned to Atherton, then out past the town to Hasties Swamp, to try our luck at bird-snapping. We found birds, lots of 'em. Mostly wandering whistling ducks, but Judy spotted a Pink-eared duck and the two bird-fanciers in the hide were waxing lyrical about a Shovel-nosed duck or something they had spotted further down the road. 'Quite rare, you should have been there!'

View from the two-story bird hide. Hasties Swamp, Atherton Qld

Pink-eared duck. Hasties Swamp, Atherton Qld

A flock of non-Wandering whistling duck, Hasties Swamp, Atherton Qld

Today we went out in another direction to Malanda, which we were at last in 2013. We had a look at the Malanda Falls, which doubled for a hundred years as the local swimming pool.

Malanda Falls, Malanda Qld

From here we took ourselves out to the Nerada Tea plantation and factory, where we had a rather nice lunch, and a cup of tea, of course. The thing about the Atherton Tablelands is that it's all lush green due to  the volcanic soil, and it always seems to be about to rain, which it does, often. And today was no exception, just a pleasant misty drizzle starting to settle in.

Nerada Tea plantation. Malanda Qld

But we had other ideas: we were also on the hunt to find a tree-kangaroo, and rumour had it that there was one or two out here. Guided by the nice lady in the cafe, we went looking and sure enough, there it was, some 20 metres up the top of a bare tree. It's probably as close as we are going to get to one, so  enjoy the snap!

Tree kangaroo. Malanda Qld

Anyhow that's our day in or at least around Atherton, tomorrow we are off to Craiglee, which is as close to Port Douglas as we will get the van, and the most northern part of our trip.