Without the sun there would be no Toast

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DAY 288

It was a colder night but we woke up to a beautiful morning, I emerged from the trailer and put the kettle on, the morning was just beginning its new day. Caroline was already out of the Wendy house on wheels and we sat in the sun enjoying our cup of tea.

We see one of the kids in the landcruiser get out of his tiny tent, so we asked him if he and his chums wanted us to put the kettle on for them as we know what its like when you are just gagging for a cup of morning tea, and you have to mess about building the fire to boil the Billy, as they seemed not to have any cooking gear with them.

This guy was truly grateful, he explained that they had run out of gas, they had come from Darwin via the Savannah Way, the same route as us, but had only just run out. He was Canadian and his travelling companions were British and German.

Soon we are sitting down to some breakfast, our friends from Power Traveller in the UK have asked us to try their solar powered toaster to see how effective it is, as we are using some other of their equipment, in the solar Gorilla and the Power Gorilla, which we use to Charge the I-pods, phones and Power the Laptop.

We still puzzle how these back packers survive, travelling around this mighty huge country, with rusty beat up old vehicles, with jerry cans of fuel on the roof, and sleeping in the truck; I just don’t know how they do it. My only grumble about some of them is that they turn up at National Parks, and rarely pay their fee’s to camp so put no monies back in to the system. Still my moaning won’t make the system any better, but as long as we pay our fee’s it allows me to have my opinion.

Karen and John are up and again we have started talking to them, they briefly tell us about their lives and we do the same.

We also get talking to this chap who has this great dog, its pretty big and it decides to have a huge dump just over from where our trailer is parked, that’s just brilliant, this dog I reckon is something like a pointer, so we ask the guy what it is.

The fella’s name is Clint they are from Wollongong and is the editor of Bacon Busters the pig hunting enthusiasts magazine, Bean the dog, is a Bull Arab Pointer and they reckon he could bring a bull down by its nose. this dog is full of muscle and is sporting two big wounds where she was tusked recently by a wild boar, she usually goes out wearing a leather vest when she is off hunting, so the boars tusks should not penetrate. Clint very kindly gives us a DVD to watch, unfortunately he does not have one of his magazines, but we will see if we can find one in the newsagents.

It’s about 11.30 now and we eventually hit the road, towards the tablelands then on to Cairns where we need to be again in the next few days. We drive into Ravenshoe just to see what the town is like, it seems a nice clean tidy pleasant typical small country town, we fuel up at the BP station on the main road at $1.34 per litre for Diesel.

Taking the scenic drive from just outside Ravenshoe toward Millaa Millaa, this place is in many respects like England, the scenery that is, the grass and surrounding woodland is such a lush green colour, it is cooler up here in the mountains, yet so lovely. The Misty Mountain drive is just stunning and I cannot really describe to you how gorgeous this place is, but today the mountains are far from misty on this beautiful hot day. We stop every now and again to admire the view and take a photo or two; I can see someone on a quad herding cattle in the distance.

We stopped in the little village of Millaa Millaa for coffee and pie, looked around which took about 10 minutes, and then drove to the Millaa Millaa falls, which were equally stunning a lush tropical environment and large inviting pool at the bottom of these gushing falls. We then drive on toward Innisfail where we plan on stopping for the night.

As we drive down toward Innisfail we see signs indicating that there are Fauna crossings, this puzzles us both, what is a fauna crossing and how does the wildlife know that it is supposed to use a crossing? However this is soon answered when we drive underneath what seems to be some kind of rope trellis/bridge that is strung from a pole on one side of the road to a pole on the other. I must say that there is not a lot of road kill on this stretch of road, so perhaps it works.

We stumble across Henrietta Creek, Camps 5 ref 234, page 53 QLD, Jane who has been reading our blog has mentioned it to us, we stop for a look and decide that it would be nice to stop here for the night. It is part of the National Parks so there is a fee of $4.85 per adult per night, the only problem being there is no Internet access here, but one night without Internet is no problem, after all we have had several days without access while coming across some parts of Australia.

We find a nice spot to pitch and once again our bed is soon set up for the night. We now have a good few hours to enjoy this area. One of the first things that Andy wants to do is have a wash, so we use the gas burners provided by the National Parks people to boil the Billy.

Andy took the bowl of water to the picnic table where he promptly stripped off for a wash, he has no shame! It is a good job this is not a very busy site, at this end of the track anyway. When it is my turn for a wash I take the bowl of hot water and hide in the tent
it’s a great feeling being nice and clean.

As usual we make a cup of tea, we chat to one or two of the other campers here including Ken and Roz (who’s name is really Mary, but I don’t know why), we seem to have spent a lot of time chatting to other people today, nothing unusual for us though and Andy seems to be getting worse at telling more of his “just a quick story”, I think he needs to get back to work!

The afternoon moves on and at around 5.00pm we walk along the soft forest floor down to the creek and take a seat on a log it is our intention, hopefully, to see Platypus in the wild.
They are such timid creatures that noise scares them away so we sit there quite as church mice. We have been lucky enough to see a Platypus but it was at Cradle Mountain and it was only brief before it was frightened off, I need to get a photograph of one.

We sit on our log and wait, enjoying the tranquillity and the lovely tropical surrounds, but around 1 hour later we are still waiting on Platypus, sitting quietly. Another couple that are camping at Henrietta Creek came down to chance their luck, however they seem to think that we are too late in the day, but Andy and I think that we are too early, we need to do some internet research as we think they are more dusk/nocturnal creatures.


While chatting to one of the other campers, 3 camper vans turned up, this guy described them as “Whizz Bangs”, he explained that if you listen you can hear the sliding door whiz before it bangs into place.

We cooked up some dinner and sat and ate in the picnic area by torchlight, we switched the torches off to look up at the night sky, we could identify a few more of the stars/constellations as we have been teaching ourselves, but we soon go and sit in the Patrol and finish typing up yesterdays blog.

Andy and I walk up to the amenities before going to bed, the amenities here are great, they are flushable long drop loos, but they are more modern and very clean, there is no smell emitting from these at all. We found out that these are new facilities as someone burnt down the previous ones.

On the way we here a rustling in the bushes so we turn our torches off and wait for it to get closer, we then flick them on only to see what we think is a Bilby, our first Bilby, it is only a fleeting glance and we could not get a good look at its ears which would have confirmed it, but it did have a pointy nose.

To date, we have not seen any Cassowary though we are now back in Cassowary territory and have seen the road warning signs, we intend on keeping our eyes peeled for these big birds which sadly are in decline and are on the endangered list.

We go to bed early, the night is not so cold as last night, but getting into bed to stay warm is a good option. We drift off to sleep to the sound of squeaking in the bush, I do hope a Python isn’t making a meal of one of those lovely little marsupials.

Goodnight bloggers, another dawn another day tomorrow.

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Photos

Me and Bean
Trying to get Bean to look at the Camera

John and Karen
From Tin Can Bay.(Lovely people)

Huge Tree Round
This was taken down after a Cyclone for Safety Purposes

Comments

[Darryl and Sarah]

Powered by the sun
We're so jealous that you've got a solar powered toaster!!!!!! Wink Wink, nudge nudge!!!! Great to talk to you earlier, hope you managed to get your pizza!!

[Jane]

Where is the platypus!
Sorry no platypus, hope you managed the Nandroya walk from henrietta creek, two lots of falls. One smaller one is part of the track. I love it. Good for a chilly swim. I am pretty sure that red cedar actually fell down during the cyclone, the area was pretty well trashed so nice to see the rainforest getting dense again.