The end of our tropical journey

Yesterday we passed back underneath the Tropic of Capricorn, so our tropical adventure is officially finished. I am particularly sad about this as the further south we head the colder it is going to get! After chasing warmth around the country for the last six months, the thought of returning to a Canberra winter is sending shivers down my spine.

But central Queensland is proving to still have some warmth in it (around 24 degrees) and we'll enjoy it for as long as it lasts. We'll also keep enjoying the 'big' items we're finding to add to our collection, this time it was the big mango (Bowen) and the big bull (Rockhampton).

Mackay was a lovely stop over for a couple of days, staying on the waterfront at Black's Beach. The kids spent hours building dams and castles in the sand and I even got time to read on the beach while they were having fun.

After many questions in the car about all the sugar cane we've driven past, we finally found some answers at the Sarina Sugar Shed. We learnt about the process of making sugar, saw some of the machinery used and tasted crushed sugar cane and sugar cane juice. The grand finale was of course fairy floss: Dylan loved his, Lukas got halfway through and felt sick, Evie said it was 'too sweet' and Max tentatively had a couple of licks.

Rockhampton was an impressive city with lovely old buildings, a free zoo in the botanic gardens and a CBD that was actually vibrant and open at 9am on a Sunday (Canberra take note). Gladstone received a round of applause out the windows of
Suzy Q for its beautifully landscaped roundabouts and median strips, but we didn't stop driving as Max was soundly asleep.

Oh, and here's a trivia question for you. Highest mountain in Queensland? Mount Bartle Frere. How do we know this I hear you ask? Because the roads department puts big trivia signs up on the side of the highway to keep you alert while driving!

After an overnight stop at Gin Gin (perceptive readers may remember that we also stopped in a town called Gin Gin in WA!) we had a thoroughly enjoyable day in Bundaberg. I enjoyed the beautiful historical buildings and an excellent coffee but the crowd favourite was the Bundaberg Barrel where, after visiting many wineries and breweries around the country, the kids were finally able to do their own tasting of Bundaberg soft drink. For kids that don't drink soft drink it was a fun and sugar-loaded experience that required lots of running around at the beach and playground afterwards.

I suppose we are in the sugar capital of Australia and that's why we seem to have stopped at a lot of sugary places of late. But that will be the end of our sweet visits - I don't want the kids to get a taste for it!!

Townsville and surrounds

After leaving behind our spanish mansion, we spent a few days exploring in and around Townsville. It was beautiful driving through lush green canefields on one side of the road and banana plantations on the other.

The kids thought the wide arms
made the gumboot bigger!

Suzy Q in the canefields

We added a golden gumboot to our 'big things' collection in Tully, although it was neither as big nor as golden as we were expecting. It was erected to celebrate (?) Tully being the wettest town in Australia, but we also heard that about Babinda and Innisfail on the way through, so it's obviously a hotly contested title!

Ingham provided a very well done visitor centre linked to the local natural wetlands where we went birdspotting for a few hours and were able to camp.

The tables are turned on the wide arms in this one!

The Frosty Mango cafe on the highway provided us with a lovely fresh pineapple and an awful,
un-drinkable cup of coffee. Luckily my mood was improved upon discovering Little Crystal Creek in Paluma Range National Park, a pristine stream with a series of waterfalls. We boulder-jumped upstream and down to view all the different pools and the water lived up to it's crystal-clear name.

Road over the top of Little Crystal Creek

In Townsville we spent all afternoon on the beautiful waterfront. A vibrant and diverse area, it includes public art and an old army barracks redesigned as a precinct from which to appreciate the landscape, military history and Aboriginal history all in one place. There's also a lovely lagoon pool right next to the ocean (to minimise the risk of irukandji jellyfish stings of course).

A visit to Reef HQ Aquarium finished off our Townsville stay and then it was on to Home Hill where we are camping tonight at a great free area provided by the local council. We've just broken the world shower record with all five of us managing to beat the five minute timer on a single shower. No mucking around these days, the kids know the value of free hot water!

A spanish castle in the rainforest

I started with photos for this post, because they really provide the best description of what we found: ruins of a spanish castle built in the 1930s by a sugar cane baron who had a dream. The years of natural disaster and abandonment haven't served his dream well but have created beautiful shells and tropical gardens with secret pathways for adventurous explorers to discover by both day and night.

In and around Cairns

Lovely views in Cairns

We had such a good time exploring around Cairns over a couple of days that we decided to stay an extra night. The area has a lot to do, a lovely friendly vibe, beautiful scenery and great weather.

Actually, scrap that last one because just as we decided to spend some extra time enjoying the outdoors in Cairns the weather gods decided it was about time our adventure finally saw rain again. So we've sadly packed up today and continued our journey south.

But I can tell you the things we enjoyed doing before the rain set in!

The drive from Port Douglas to Cairns has got to be one of the most stunning stretches of road in the country. Forget the Great Ocean Road, I'd rather do this one. Would be nicer in a sports car of some sort, but Suzy Q handled herself pretty well and loved the vistas of beach, rainforest and mountains.

First stops for us before hitting Cairns proper were Skyrail and the Armour and Artillery Museum. At first glance, both seemed rather touristy and I wondered whether we were going to feel as if we'd had a genuinely unique experience. Much to our delight, we ended up loving both!

The Skyrail carried us along 7.5 kilometres of cableway in a gondola up over the mountains to the town of Kuranda. There were lovely views over the top of the rainforest along the way and two stations where we jumped out to do walks through rainforest with kauri pines that are hundreds of years old and to view Barron Falls.

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Kuranda itself is basically a town setup for tourists and we had just a fleeting look at the typically cheap markets before heading to the butterfly sanctuary for a beautiful hour or so watching tropical colours flutter around us. Evie was so excited when a Ulysses butterfly landed on her despite not wearing her butterfly outfit that day. Fun stops together with the sheer excitement of riding on a cable car, proved to be a wonderful day out.

As did the Armour and Artillery Museum. Lukas found the brochure for this at the chocolate and cheese factory in the Atherton Tablelands and, to be honest, I probably would have given it a miss had we not seen it standing tall next to Skyrail.


It was setup by an individual with a passion for collecting cool things like tanks and surface-to-air-missiles and who must have very deep pockets to privately finance it all. Everything has been beautifully restored and apparently most of it is actually in operational condition.

We eagerly booked in for the ride on the APC which was seriously good fun as it rumbled through the carpark out into the back paddock and took us up, down and over hills, creeks and anything else in its way. We scored the museum unanimous 10/10s and I surprised myself with the amount of photos I wanted to take of tanks and guns!

Jami and Pa came along for the APC ride too

A genuine Russian surface-to-air missile on the back
of a truck, would have loved to seen the paperwork for
importing this one!

 

Racing thongs at the waterpark

 And in the centre of Cairns we had a ball (before it started raining) exploring the waterfront. There was gelato, there was a fantastic waterpark and there was the most beautiful lagoon surrounded by parkland perfect for barbecues and picnicking. The big boys loved the vibe of the city and were terribly sad that the rain bought an end to our exploring. Definitely a place to remember for future travels......

Pick the real children.....

Gorgeous fish statues in the lagoon

From the rainforest to the reef, with a little surprise along the way

After visiting the World Heritage listed Daintree Rainforest, the natural next step was to visit the World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef.

Views from Port Douglas out to sea

So we headed to Port Douglas to do a cruise out to the reef. Or so the kids thought.....

There was a big surprise waiting for them at the pub that night when two people that looked remarkably like their grandparents sat down at a table near us.

I have never heard two boys giggle quite as much as Dylan and Lukas when they realised it actually was Jami and Pa, who had flown to Port Douglas to see us all. What an awesome surprise.

Beautiful ocean-themed stained glass at
St Mary's of the Sea

So our adventurous gang grew by two for a few days as we explored Port Douglas and the reef.

We spent one day as a lovely quiet day around the hotel (yes, we were upgraded from Suzy Q for a few nights - lucky us!) swimming in the pool, exploring the vistas and walking down to the local playgrounds.

Another day was spent on our reef cruise which was great, apart from the rough seas. Lukas was sick on the way there, but doubling his seasickness medication on the way back seemed to do the trick!

The reef was beautiful and, while not as accessible as Ningaloo, there seemed to be a greater concentration of fish in one spot. We thought the colour of the coral would be much brighter, kinda like the tourist brochures, but the general tone is much more muted.


Included in our cruise was mooring on a floating platform for a few hours of snorkelling, an underwater observatory and short rides on a semi-submersible boat with viewing windows.
We've decided that it was close enough to a submarine that we've officially ticked that one off our 'vehicles we've travelled on' list.

Dylan snorkelling

So all of that packed into a busy day made for a rather tired tribe at the end of it all.

But there was still another experience that we just had to do while in Port Douglas and we weren't about to let tiredness get in our way.

Our 'submarine' experience

After some revival pizza, we headed to Iron Bar for the famous Cane Toad races. They are run by a very smart guy who does a brilliant job of playing the classic Aussie pub character, taking the piss out of pretty much everyone in the audience and himself as well. With names like "Camel Toad" you probably get the level the humour is pitched at, but it's pretty entertaining for adults and kids alike.

One lady piked on racing her toad, Pidgeon Toad, and offered it to Dylan who bravely took up the challenge. He held it, kissed it and received great cheers from the crowd when he placed a podium finish for the bronze medal.

How do you race a cane toad I hear you ask from across the internet? They simply get tipped out of a bucket and the competitors blow on them with those retractable party horns.

Never knew I wanted to see cane toad racing, but I quite enjoyed it!

Cassowaries in the Rainforest

You may have noticed from previous posts that the kids and I have enjoyed building up a collection of photos of our favourite signs. So it was pretty exciting to find this one as we approached the Daintree:

Yep, definitely hadn't seen that in Canberra, but then again Canberra isn't renown for its tropical rainforest. Which is where we've spent the last few days, exploring the region from Mossman Gorge to Cape Tribulation.

We were all surprised that it wasn't nearly as hot and steamy as expected. The walks that we did through various parts of the rainforest were all undertaken in low-twenties temperatures and the only intense periods of sweatiness weren't as a result of intense humidity but from intense rugby-playing between the big boys and their new friend from New Zealand at the campsite.


The ferry ride across the Daintree River, which is surrounded by pristine forest from bank to bank, made it feel as if we were entering a secret place, despite the fact it is pretty much accessible to all.

The landscape was just as stunning as I expected it to be and the pristine images from Where the Forest Meets the Sea are spot-on.

Evie spent a good half-hour one morning selecting her best butterfly-attracting attire hoping that she could encourage a bright blue Ulysses butterfly to land on her during our walks through the rainforest.

Clashing floral shorts, top and a bright
spotty hat is apparently the best outfit
for attracting butterflies!

No luck on that front unfortunately, but two hours of productive beach combing at Cow Bay proved just as exciting.

And the cassowaries? Yep, we saw them. A dad and baby strode out of the forest near our camp each morning to pick up and swallow whole bright blue berries the size of Max's fist. Another animal ticked off our 'see in the wild' list.

Max beach combing at Cow Bay in splendid isolation

Happy in the Tropics

Our day started today with smiling faces. First up, an hour riding scooters at the skate park in the morning.

The big grins came five minutes out of Ravenshoe, where we had stayed overnight at the old railway station, as we climbed up the hill to be greeted by a lushly green mountainous landscape. It's nice to be in a tropical landscape again.

Max found himself a new family at the station at Ravenshoe!

We had a great day touring around the Atherton Tablelands, a region that reminded us a lot of Margaret River.

There was Windy Hill Farm where we got up close to the huge windmills generating electricity and the waterfall 'circuit'  - three beautiful waterfalls on a 15km loop that easily rivalled those in Tasmania.

A stop at the dairy and chocolate factory helped keep our tummies happy around lunchtime, as did finding the avocado capital of Australia at a roadside stall where we snapped up ten avocadoes for $4.

Next find was the crystal capital of Australia in the main street of Atherton. It was one of those places that could have been kitsch - a series of fake caves created by one man to showcase his crystal collection - but was actually kind of cool. Donning hard hats was fun and Evie in particular loved the glittering colours. She purchased her very own amethyst necklace which she has worn proudly all afternoon.


















And here's the view from our campsite tonight:

That's right, we're at a drive in at Mareeba where we get to watch two movies and then have a sleep over. None of us have ever been to a drive-in movie before, so a brand new experience!

And Mareeba just happens to be home to numerous coffee plantations so I predict some delicious tasting tomorrow. For me anyway :)

The Queensland Outback

Sometimes you need to look quite hard for interesting. And when there's five people with different ages, interests and temperaments to consider, it can be hard work!

In the Queensland outback, I've found that sometimes I've had to try and convince the kids of the 'interestingness' of things. Like the WWII underground hospital at Mt Isa that I thought was great, Dylan ad Evie enjoyed but Lukas thought was average and Max just wanted to get out of. Or the little museum in Cloncurry where we saw Burke's drink bottle and learned about John Flynn on the $20 note. This historical significance really wasn't as interesting as the little playground next door that provided a much-needed reprieve from driving.

Or the promise of amazing dinosaurs at Kronosaurus Korner in Richmond, which had cool models on the outside but proved to be full of fossils of marine creatures that weren't that easily discernible as dinosaurs to a four year old.



I had to talk hard to convince the big boys of the significance of standing next to a 160 million year old fossil in pristine condition found just down the road from where we were standing.

They eventually agreed, but were disappointed when our own archaeological dig outside of town (in the hot sun using improvised tools) didn't magically turn up our own dinosaur.

But then sometimes interesting just finds you.

 Like the camper opposite us at the free camp at Julia Creek who provided the best entertainment of the day by walking around in rainbow-striped underpants and a giant white cowboy hat and serenaded us with the beautiful wafting sounds of the didgeridoo as we ate dinner.

Or Julia Creek in general, a tiny town with a population of 368, whose amazing visitor centre puts bigger towns to shame. We learned about the Julia Creek dunnart, endemic to the area, and watched it running around and eating. We also watched videos about the region and life in the area, so convincing that we all thought a cultural exchange to this town for a year would be great.

An overnight stop in Charters Towers erred on the generally un-interesting side as we walked around trying to find a funky cafe. Usually our radars are very good at picking the semi-trendy places in town with decent food and decent coffee (we found against the odds in Parkes, Katherine and Alice Springs) but not this time.

The nice buildings didn't rate on the interest radar for the kids, but at last we unearthed a gem or at least some gold, in the form of the mining cottage. Basically an old house filled with way too much hoarded second hand stuff (interest factor low) but where the dedicated old man running the place let the kids pan for gold - interest factor and fun factor high! We now have some gold flecks safely stowed in Suzy Q and new gold pans that will accompany us on the rest of the trip so we can stop at creeks to test out our new skills and make our fortune.

And that's our Queensland Outback experience. In a nutshell, interesting if you spend some time looking but expect some shrugs of 'yeah whatever mum' along the way.

You know you're in north-west Qld when.....

The kids couldn't understand why I stopped to take a photo!

An afternoon exploring Mt Isa today.

We found a big mine with a stripey smoke stack that reminded us of the lighthouse in Geraldton, a visitor's centre with a big sandpit and dinosaur and a really great adventure playground with a flying fox and scooter course which strangely enough was almost abandoned on a perfect-weather Saturday afternoon.













We got the vibe that that was probably most of the highlights so we'll continue the journey east along the Barkly Highway tomorrow morning.

Barring any celebrity photo moments with famous politicians of course. Is parliament sitting this week?
:)

Reality check - life on the highway

Just in case you thought that every day of the last five-and-a-bit-months for us has been filled with life-changing experiences and dream-like holiday adventures, we thought we'd journal one of our boring days for you.

Life on the road, by definition, involves a lot of travel. And sometimes there's just long days filled with driving. Like, for example, when you're finished with the Northern Territory and trying to get to Queensland from Alice Springs. So here's our day yesterday as we drove from Tennant Creek to Camooweal, just past the Qld border........

• This was our view for most of the day as we traversed the Barkly Highway. Fascinating landscape for about the first 200 metres!
• Spot the Queensland signs. These started just outside Tennant Creek at 471 kilometres and we saw them every 10km for the rest of the day. I thought it was boring seeing them so often, the kids liked the reassurance of knowing we were getting somewhere!

• Singing. Early on in the day I started a sing-a-long, thinking it would waste half an hour of time. Wrong. Mid-way through Old McDonald having a chicken Evie's screams of stopped drowned out our attempts at tuneful singing and so it was over in two minutes. Bummer

• Queueing for petrol with all the caravans. Driving in a headwind at 130km/hour uses a lot of petrol so there were multiple top-ups. It was us with dozens of caravans at most stops.

• Barkly Homestead Roadhouse. This was our lunch (and petrol) stop. As far as roadhouses go, and we've seen a few, it was up there with the best. The floor wasn't greasy, the toilets were clean and I even felt confident enough to let the kids choose some food! We hung out here for a while and played some race car games to break the monotony.

• Army trucks. These provided a good opportunity for counting, we must have passed more than fifty throughout the day. They also provided a good opportunity for story-telling as we all made up stories about why the army was on the move towards Alice Springs. We eventually settled on the fact that they were setting up a new headquarters at the SA/NT border to prevent any more grey nomads with caravans from migrating north for the winter. 

• Selfies. Nothing like letting the kids loose with the camera for an hour or so. The only rule was that I needed a selfie of everyone by the end of it. We decided it was safest if Dylan took mine!

• Toys. Pretty much every toy we have in Suzy Q was taken out and played with over the course of the day. While a motorhome is noisier and a rougher ride than the car, at least the options for entertainment is greater when you carry all your belongings with you and there's a table to sit around.

• Border crossing. Gotta love a good border crossing to add excitement to an otherwise boring day. Unfortunately this one was covered in graffiti and told us we're not allowed to go 130km/h anymore.

So that's how the day unfolded. We left Tennant Creek at 8:30am and arrived at Camooweal at 4pm, only to find we'd lost half an hour coming into Queensland and it was now 4.30pm. After a quick refuel and play at the playground we found a campsite next to the local billabong (which was code for dried up river with a couple of big puddles in it) and felt happy to have arrived.

Brian is flying back to Sydney and then onto Canberra to go back to work, but the kids and I are really keen to finish the loop so we'll be continuing the adventure. We've dubbed this second part of the adventure: "Embracing the Chaos Two - Just Keep Truckin"

Now, to find a truck........