Cairns to Cooktown to Wajul Wajul to Cape Tribulation, the Daintree, Port Douglas via the Bloomfield Track

Murray was keen to drive the Bloomfield Track. We did some research and decided not to tow the van – we left it at the caravan park in Cairns.

To get to Cooktown we travelled the inland route - Mulligan Highway. The landscape changed from sugar cane plantations to sparse savannah grasses, with scraggly trees.  Coming into Cooktown is the famous black mountain – indeed it is black – from the rock formations – very spectacular.

Being a keen historian Murray wanted to explore Cooktown – so named after Captain Cook. CC spent some time there exploring the botany and doing repairs to his ship.

We both enjoyed the esplanade walk, the information and displays were creative and interactive-especially the Musical Ship.

A ‘standby rate’, ($89.00),  saw us enjoy a river view from our motel room.

the motel in the background is where we stayed

view from motel over Endeavour river

Up bright and early the next day, we were on the road by 8.30am – off to drive the Bloomfield Track. This track has steep gradients of 8-10% - these patches are concreted in parts, the track is very narrow and has many water crossings which are tidal. The scenery is superb-rainforests, birds cheeping, and tropical plants.

We stopped briefly at the Lion’s Den Hotel – another hotel with memoriblla.

A morning tea stop at Waul Waul – the Aboriginal Art Centre – once again more of the glass bead works.

For the first time on our trip Murray expressed his disappointment at paying $13.00 for a 53 second ferry ride – there was no option – we needed to cross the river! Such a rip off – in SA the punts/ferries are free.

The Cape Tribulation/Daintree side of the track is very commercial with lodges, resorts and boutiques.

At the Daintree National Park we saw what looked like a leaf nest – or is it a spider’s nest?

From Port Douglas -the landscape is one of continuous sugar cane, banana/tea plantations. Running alongside the sugar cane plantations are train tracks – cane trains take the harvested cane to the processing sheds. Over 95% of Australia’s sugar is produced in FNQ. It is so green up here, so tropical with date palms, paw paws growing on the roadsides.

We both enjoyed the lushness of the area, the coast was clean and clear. Very pristine, clean green.

And now we are at Mission Beach - Murray looks like he has settled in .....

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Cairns festival

Julia has not had an outing for a while, so we took her with us into Cairns to visit the Cairns Festival.

We loved the esplanade and as you can see from these photos – Julia had a wonderful time.

Because Cairn beaches are not suitable to swim at due to salties and box stinger jellyfish-a lagoon and beach have been created on the esplande - a very popular spot.

She met a dog made from plywood

 made friends with Ruth,

met a crab

 became caught in the ghost net weaving workshop and exhibits at the Cairns Regional Art Gallery,

went fishing and enjoyed a cold drink

Another WOW Factor – on par with our flight over Kakadu.

Free camping gives us the opportunity to build up our ‘kitty’, thus allowing us the opportunity to experience those special touristy must dooooooooos……………….

The Kuranda Railway and Skyrail is one of those experiences……

$114.00 each – very good value- we were picked up from our camping ground – into the city to pick up more passengers and out to Freshwater Train Station to board our carriage. The train trip takes 1 1/2hrs and winds up to Kuranda, through the rainforests – this village is renowned for markets and arty farty stuff. We found it like another Bali-not too much quality.

We had a nice lunch, wandered around for a couple hours,  then the highlight- caught the Skyrail down the mountain.

The railway was started in 1886 –is 37 kilometres in length,  ascends 327 meters, includes 15 tunnels, 55 bridges and 98 curves. It was built to link the rich mining belt to the sea and took 5 years to complete.

The train runs twice a day – carrying up to 1000 people at a time! A wonderful rich tourist venture.

The Skyrail comprises of a 7.5km cableway journey through heritage rainforest. There are 2 stopping points – Red Peak station – view the giant kauri and Barron Falls station – a 260 metre falls. The entire trip takes 1 ½ hours. I don’t know how high we were but we looked down on the tree tops.

Each gondola holds up to 6 people – we were fortunate and had it to ourselves.

A very good day out – the wet humid weather has gone and now we are having sunny days and balmy evenings…

Round the bend....

and around and around we twisted for 21kms – rounding over 200 bend, climbing 805 metres above sea level, on the Gillies Highway – from Cairns to the Atherton Tableland. We are so pleased we did not drive to Cairns on this road last Tuesday-mind you, we did not see anyone towing a rig on this Gillies Highway.

Arriving in Yungabarra – a heritage listed village-we were tempted to purchase the smoked pork ribs and the locally made sausages – we can recommend the ribs – we have cooked one. The ladies at the ‘I’ were most helpful and persuaded me to buy a childrens’ counting book – depicting the local animals and birds and they allowed me to take photos of bags made from hessian (sacking).

Found a funky coffee lounge – loved the walls and furniture – an idea for the new COP ‘wedge’?

Couldn't resist taking this photo for Anna and

and felt badges for Merrilyn and

sushi for Ingrid

Onto the Atherton Tablelands to purchase fresh fruit/vegies/ nuts/chia etc. Not disappointed with the prices-buying 5 avocadoes for $1.50!

Lunch was at Tolga Woodworks – very nice meal of cauliflower/macaroni and cheese sauce.

Murray visited the Hou Wang Miau – which he found fascinating.

 We are both now wearing our ‘pendants’ – myself the monkey and Murray the ox.

This trip was making us thirtsy – so a quick stop at Mt Uncle distillery – Murray to taste the distilled white rum made from bananas – a purchase made for that special occasion.

We had intended to stop at Coffee Works for a tour, but we were too late, never mind we finished the day with a sorbet from the Icecreamery.

That night – we had nibbles with our happy hour.

Contrasts...

‘Rip it and Roll It’ – our first advertising board we read as we came over the dividing range from the Atherton Tablelands into Cairns. Perhaps we have been too long away from cities – maybe this advertisement has been around for a awhile. (advertising safe sex)

 No ‘Welcome to Cairns’ – but what a city – so diverse – so green and clean-many world famous hotel chains – we haven’t explored the esplanade yet.

Such contrasts on our trip from Undara, through to Ravenshoe (pronounced Ravens-hoe), we left the Savannah Way grasses and climbed the dividing range reaching Ravenshoe – just as the mist decended. This is the highest town in Queensland at 902 metres above sea level. So cold and windy, we decided not to free camp and made our way to a free camp outside Tolga.

The Atherton Tablelands remind us so much of NZ and the Bombay Hills – red soil – market gardens-and many sugar cane plantations, mango orchards, banana plantations, new potatoes. We passed Mr Peanut, chocolate and coffee plantations – places to visit in the next day or so.

We are staying in Cairns at a caravan park. Our first experience of the FNQ culture-we were queued at Dan Murphy’s yesterday – and lo and behold no boxed port/wine/sherry sales until 4pm. We only had to wait 5 minutes! Apparently this is only in FNQ.

It is very humid and showery – 27 degs during the day and only dropping to 20 degs at night. Haven’t seen the sun yet.

Today we have visited the Cairns Tropical Zoo – loved the bird life until we saw the snake – off chicken now.

The Undara Experience/Expensive

Many people we met along the way recommended the lava tubes as a must see! Now, my experience of lava tubes are the floating colour in the glass tubes – so my expectation of Undara was along these lines......

Once upon a time the Collins family farmed thousands of acres. One day the government of the day – Labour came along and wanted the Colllins family land-they could see potential. Alas, the Collins family had to sell their land which had been in their family for 6 generations.

Mr 6th generation Collins came to an agreement? With the government-he would retain some of the land on a  75 year lease , utilize the lava tubes into a tourist paying venture. The National  Parks and Recreations would have the remaining acres.

The lava tubes have always been there, but it wasn’t until the 1970’s that scientists began to take an interest in them and in the 1990’s the Collins family developed this natural phenomena into a money making venture. At $16pp per night to camp and $50 each for a 2hr tour-it won’t take too long.

Also firewood is not supplied here - $7.50 for a small bag – how lucky we were to be given our neighbours pile he had collected on the way in.

Unfortunately the only way to see these tubes is on a tour either from here at the resort or from Mt Surprise you can join a local tour. Undara is 15 kms off the Savannah Way between Mt Surprise and Ravenshoe.

 The lava tubes were formed 190,000 years ago from a volcanic eruption. It is like walking into a tunnel like cave, except  instead of rock it is coral like lava layers with tree roots hanging down. We saw little bats hanging from the ceiling of the caves, and tree roots growing down into the lava tunnels. The day we went was cold – it was our first day of cloud and showery weather.

'down in the tube-looking back to the steps'

The ‘resort’  has renovated railway carriages set in a quad – restaurant and bar. Meal prices are expensive for food that has been reheated in a microwave or similar. Soft mushy chips mixed in with local midges – is not ‘resort’ standard.

We walked to the Kalkani Volcano – a 2.5km round trip – nothing spectacular. The campsites have kangaroos and their joeys jumping around. The local currawong population welcomed us – standing outside our van chirping for food. The reminded us of the magpie – you couldn’t leave any food out-they ripped into everything.

Not our van!

 Would I come again or would I look at lava tubes again – NO!, been there done that!

One flat tyre.....

One flat tyre, one dingo, one cat, one way, one steep dip, more than one corrugation and one Hell’s Gate….

Just out of Cape Crawford, opposite the local community camp we dropped our  tyre pressure to 35psi. I couldn’t get over the amount of rubbish on the road – wish I could have taken a photo of the rest of the rubbish – but it would have been too invading….

The Savannah Way – according to a brochure is a series of highways linking Cairns to Broome. Hardly a highway as we would know it-most roads are single lane, many are gravel, red dirt with 100’s of corrugations. We met people who had broken windscreens, broken leaf springs in their camper trailer, broken water tank taps, broken jars of strawberry jam throughout their fridge – and us – well we suffered our first flat tyre.

Previously we did the Savannah Way from Cape Crawford to Roper Bar, but now we picked it up at Cape Crawford and headed to Normanton.

Our first camp  was Robinson River – an apt name – some of you may recognise…

Driving along we never saw anyone else-yet when we got a flat tyre-4 campers driving in the opposite direction stopped to help us-we were fine.

Along this very dusty road we saw very little wildlife-actually we only saw a dingo and cattle. There were plenty of burnoffs-one at Lawn Hill National Park was out of control and the road to Kingfisher Camp closed.

At long last we arrived in Queensland – but what a welcome – the road was extremely corrugated – the worst we have travelled – far worse than the Giles Laverton Road – not the same ruts, but endless – about 50kms of corrugation on the Queensland side.

 When we arrived at Hells Gate that afternoon-1^st here, by 4pm 5 other campers had arrived. This is often the case-we are the first to a campsite and will often have it to ourselves for the evening. That evening we had a communal campfire-sharing stories-where were you going etc….

Burketown provided us with hokey pokey icecreams – the first for months-we had 3!! And we met a lady who makes artificial flowers from barramundi scales. I left a flower for her.

Filling out a survey about the Savannah way at the Info centre and we were given a book on Savannah Way Landscapes.

the steepest dip we have encounted on our trip

We made good time and arrived at our next camp-Leichaardt River Falls. A year ago this area was under 4 metres of sand-we camped beside the river-not really a good idea as there are crocs in the area-but we secured a prime spot-sunset and river views. We had a huge area to explore – rocky crops – lovely flat surfaces, the water to watch, the falls to explore – bearing in mind that we had to keep away from the water…..

On our first night we shared the area with 9 other campers. The 2^nd night 5 campers stayed. Murray cooked 2 lovely loaves of bread and a chicken roast in the camp oven that night.

Onto Normanton – this leg of 150kms – we had been told was rough and we expected to share it with the many road trains.

However it was a ‘piece of cake’ – not rough to us and we were very lucky – we didn’t see any road trains. We stopped at the Burke Wills camp memorial, arriving in Normanton -ready to explore...