Posts From Queensland Australia

Today marks the start of a new Australian adventure. Well at least "sort of".

Anyone that has travelled by vehicle will understand the idea of a getting organized day. This involves repacking the entire vehicle so we both know where things are, buying food and packing it into the very limited space provided by this new vehicle, planning a detailed route for the first few days.

This morning we continued along the Herberton-Petford road towards the town of Irvinebank with various attractions, an old tin mining town, a very large snake with a black head, a very impressive Brahman bull, and in Irvinebank a very industrious flock of guinea fowl, and an impressive display of old ford cars and trucks in the garage of a local resident.

This morning we completed the Railway Trail to Lappa and dropped in to the Lappa train station which apparently still operates with two trains per week. Interestingly next to the station are the remains of the hotel that once served railway passengers. It is now a private museum of sorts. We had quite a long chat with the operator of the museum, a gentleman in his 60's who has lived 35 years in this location.

We decided overnight that today we would return to Lappa, say hello to the old guy (look whose talking) at the Lappa Train Station pub and drive the old railway trail otherwise known as the Lappa-Mt Garnett Road. Why, becuase we would like to get a better photograph of the cuttings and culverts constructed to flatten the train route.

This morning Nina informed me that she did not like the sleeping bag she was using; and after much discussion we concluded that we were close enough to Cairns that a return journey with the goal of getting a "better" sleeping bag would be possible. In addition we quickly invented a list of other essential items that we could get IF we went back to Cairns. This list included a few things that Brendon (currently between Georgetown and Croydon) would like us to get for him. So that set the plan for the day. Drive back towards Cairns. Stay the night somewhere close but not in Cairns and tomorrow (Monday) do a bunch of shopping.

We did not get Nina a new sleeping bag. She decided that the choices on offer at the Cairns Anaconda store were less appealing than our current bags. But we got everything else on our list except the M15x1.75 nut that Brendon wanted for the front axle of his mates bicycle.

Babinda, where we stayed last night, has a tourist attraction called The Boulders, which we thought was a very uninspiring name. But it turned out to be a jungle creek just west of the town center where the water runs through a steep gorge and has carved channels and holes in the granite bedrock. A very pleasant and well presented place.

Somewhat west of Mt Garnett is an area called The Forty Mile Scrub which has been designated a National Park. It has a picnic area just off the highway and a short walking track. On one of the information panels Nina learned that many of the trees in the Forty Mile Scrub NP are semi-evergreen. That is they have leaves most of the year, but can shed them briefly at the end of the dry winter months to reduce the loss of precious moisture to preserve the tree.

The next few days are going to be an exercise in "delaying". There are two reasons for this. The first is that we have to be in Croydon (west of here) as late as Friday 4th August to pickup some parcels from the Croydon post office for Brendon and Daniel. Second we could not get either a tour of the Lava Tubes at Undara (now booked for the afternoon of 30th July), nor a tour of Cobbold Gorge with out some delay(now booked for the afternoon of 1st Aug). Thus the next few days are an exercise of finding something to do.

Today continued the "finding something to do" exercise started yesterday. So from our gravel pit camping spot we headed back into Greenvale so that Nina had somewhere safe and civilized to walk (rather than doing laps of the gravel pit) while I bought coffee at the local gas station and sat at one of their picnic tables and was entertained by a wide variety of local feathered birds who tried to entice me into sharing my breakfast and coffee with them.

We started our day with a walk in Copperfield Gorge. This is in actuallity the river bed of the Einasleigh River in the town of Einasleigh. But it really is a small, spectacular, rock gorge. In past days this was the site of a short lived copper mine.

In 1862 Thomas and Charles Collins travelled beyond the blazed tree to claim new land. About 40km south of here one of the thirsty bullocks strayed. The sound of its bell drew the stockman to a spring fed creek. Recognizing the importance of permanent water they claimed 100 squre miles of surrounding country and named it Spring Creek Station. They built a hut similar to the one in the photos below.

Today we simply had to move on from Undara to be within easy driving distance of Cobbold Gorge tomorrow morning. We chose to target the small town of Forsayth via Einasleigh.

The story of discovery of Cobbold Gorge and it becoming a tourist attraction is quite interesting. The gorge is situated on land that was established as Robin Hood Station in the 1800s by the Clark family. On the sandstone walls of the pool at the entrance to the gorge is a carving J E Clark 1900 but despite having obviously found the pool the clark family did not know about the gorge. The property was sold to Cobb Terry and his family in 1964. In the 1990s the Terry family decided to divide the property between the members of the next generation and the youngest son Simon Terry got the worst of the subdivision. It was considered the worst because it had large areas of sandstone outcroppings which cannot support cattle. Simon discovered the gorge 1992 after the division and almost immediately started running tours through the gorge.

As I mentioned a few posts back we have been "marking time" around the Forsayth/Georgetown area waiting for the expected delivery date of some parcels in Croydon. Well today we moved on to Croydon and were pleasantly surprised to find that 2 of the 3 parcels were waiting for us. The final one is not expected until Friday (4th) so we will spend 2 nights here in Croydon.

A waiting day in Croydon. A chance to do the washing. Nina started her day with a walk to the railway station to watch the Gulflander depart on its weekly return journey to Normanton. There are a number of interesting buildings and other sites in town. We spent some time looking at those.

Unfortunately the parcel we expected did not arrive in todays mail. The lady at the Post Office offered to forward it to Katherine, so with that we departed Croydon. We did however require a couple more photos of True Blue and the town pub.

The day started with a few Icons of Normanton. Krys, the largest confirmed salt water crocodile in the world ( see this link for more info) and the associated info paque, the Purple Pub and in tribute to Nina's father the local Westpac Branch.