Atherton Tablelands (written 29 August)

On Monday, we left Endeavour Falls heading for Tinaroo Falls in the Atherton Tablelands, arriving at the caravan park late in the afternoon – after the trusty GPS took us on the scenic route via two dead end roads!   One thing we discovered about the Atherton Tablelands was that to get anywhere, you follow the road signs – don’t try and follow a map or GPS!

We had a lovely three days at Tinaroo Falls.  On Tuesday, we headed off for Cairns to catch the Skytrain over the Atherton rainforest, and I think we drove down the windiest road in existence!  The scenery was quite spectacular, but we were all glad to reach the bottom of the mountain – or should I say mountains.

The Skytrain is a 6-person gondola, which took us from Smithfield just north of Cairns up to Kuranda over the tops of the trees in the rainforest and across the Barron River and Barron Falls.  The whole experience was just fantastic – spectacular picturesque views and amazing fauna.  The size of the trees alone was just awesome!

On Wednesday, we had a quiet morning at the park doing domestics and hired a boat for the afternoon to try and catch a barra or two in Lake Tinaroo. 

 Luckily, I’ve had many years of experience with John’s lack of fishing luck, so I’d organised dinner before we left – beef stew in the camp oven.

On Thursday, we explored the Atherton Tablelands – discovered a gorgeous little village called Yungaburra, which we spent a few hours exploring.  Unfortunately, this was where Ken decided to leave us and head home back to Brisbane.  We were all sorry to see him go, as he was a great companion on our adventure.
 

We then went to see the Curtain Fig Tree, which was an absolutely awesome sight.  

We had lunch at a local cheese and chocolate factory – the only way to improve it would be to make it a wine and cheese factory!
  

After lunch, we drove back to Atherton and visited the Crystal Caves, which was disappointing in that the caves were made of painted polystyrene, but the crystal collection was impressive.

Back to our campsite for what felt like our last supper, as Ann and Bob and John and I were heading off in different directions on Friday morning.