Advertisement
Published: July 25th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Day 90 - Murray Falls to Mission Beach South
Happy Wedding Anniversary Mum and Dad Kettle! Hope you have a great day and have more sunshine than we’ve had! Fingers crossed we’ll talk to you a bit later on.
** Note for Lynne - the last but one photo includes a green slimy thing that hops! It's not a real one, it's on a large gumboot but it's still a 'you know what' so I'd avoid looking at the picture chick **
It was a bit of a wild night in Murray Falls, the wind got up late on and the rain came thundering down, most unexpected! We’d left our swimming towels out so they were a bit soggy when we dragged ourselves out of bed. The intention was to get up and watch the sunrise come up over the waterfall but with the amount of cloud and misty rain hanging about it didn’t seem worth it so we stayed under the covers for another hour!
‘Lady’ the stray dog, was up and about already. She was nearly in the caravan at one point as she seems to have taken a shine to us, either that or
she was looking for breakfast! We still think it’s pretty strange that the rangers are going to leave her here but at the moment she’s a nice enough dog that’s still very nervous of humans so I guess there’s some she’ll trust and some she won’t. We hope that in the future some sort of compromise is reached as we suspect this situation won’t be allowed to continue long term.
Off we went on another journey to find new exciting things to do and hopefully better weather! It wasn’t far to Mission Beach South and was mainly highway which never gives us much to exclaim over about except the varying fuel prices!
Tom Tom had estimated our arrival time as 10.49am originally which was perfect with the Big 4’s 11am check in schedule. We think a new road network assisted with the remarkable deduction of 35 minutes from our journey and we arrived at 10.25 instead! Luckily the people previously occupying our spot must have needed an early start themselves and we were cleared for touch down! Like most Big 4’s, the camp spots aren’t huge and we slot snugly onto pitch 11 with some accurate and trouble
free reversing from Mr Howells. We were just off for a shower when new neighbours arrived and it wasn’t long before we worked out that they’d too been camped at Murray Falls! It is funny how we just keep tripping over people along the way!
The weather seems set for the day, rain and overhanging clouds, so we decide on a drive out to Tully as it’s proclaimed to be the wettest town in Australia anyway! It’s large Gumboot at the entrance celebrates it’s iconic 7.9m rainfall and its mountain river network is the home to a couple of the white water rafting companies which we’re considering having a go on if they are wild enough! On the way up the mountain we spy the Tully Gorge National Park campsite so quickly check it out. It looks nice and there are a few people camping here including a guy we originally met at Alligator Creek! The rafting companies appear to use the BBQ area as their lunch spot so it was pretty busy what with their coach and about 50 rafters! We were pretty sure there would still be a group of rafters on the river so we carried
Come on my pretty, out you come
The croc trap! There were two of these of either side of the river and literally just around the corner from the campsite swimming hole! Lovely! on a bit further up and sure enough there they were with various activities being undertaken! Some were swimming in the ‘rapids’, some were sliding off the raft to bomb down a rapid to then bob up further downstream and some were bobbing around in the raft! It may have been because we were quite a distance from the river at some points, but neither of us would have described it as ‘white water’ rafting. There was a bit of white water courtesy of the fact that the water was flowing over rocks but it didn’t strike us as scare the pants of you sort of action that we were hoping it would be. Anyway, fair play to them for having a go although those we saw coming off the bus having just finished lunch to head back to the river for a bit more action just looked freezing, freezing cold and although they said it was fun they weren’t overly enthusiastic! The rain came and went but we headed back to the camp ground figuring that there must be a point there we’d be able to see them coming over the flurry of rocks. As we drove down the
mountain we noticed the buses pulled into a different lay by, strange as the best spot on the river appeared to be further along by the camp area. It all became clear when we walked to the steps leading down to the river bank. A new sign that we’d not seen on our travels before ‘Recent crocodile sighting here, swimming prohibited’! That explains quite a bit then! We didn’t venture down to the riverbank but instead stood further up on the rocks searching the banks on either side for the croc. If the weather had been better and there had been no sign put out it would have been a very different set of photographs taken today, lots of swimmers enjoying the cool, crystal clear water!
From the Frank Roberts lookout there’s another great view over the river back up to the edge of the camp ‘swimming hole’ but from here you can also see the two crocodile traps that the rangers have set up complete with hanging meat enticement! Ok, so now we’d found where they thought he was lurking but we still couldn’t spot him. Darn, that would have been a great photo opportunity, the croc succumbing
to the trap!
Back through Tully we went heading for ‘home’ passing field after field of banana trees with most of the fruit protected by silver bags. We’re happy to report that they are bendy bananas and don’t seem to have been straightened by the 'no bends in bananas' brigade!
We did make a couple of diversions on the way back, the first was in search of the endangered Southern Cassowary, a huge, flightless bird responsible for the pollination of extraordinary elements of the rainforest because of the way it eats whole fruits so when it comes out the other end the poo acts as a fertiliser for any encased seeds! Anyway, we went to the Tam O’Shanter National Park where these birds are known to frequent but they mustn’t like the rain either because we didn’t see any!
The second diversion was to good old Woolworths to stock up on some supplies as we were running low on food!
Today, was just one of those days where the weather can make a big difference in what you choose to do and we choose to run around in the car rather than get soaked cycling or
walking! We’ve been told to expect much the same tomorrow but things are looking up for Monday and Tuesday so hopefully we’ll be snorkelling the Great Barrier Reef and exploring Dunk Island on those days!
Love to all and thanks for the messages and emails, great to hear from everyone so often.
Take care, Dar and Sar
Advertisement
Tot: 0.463s; Tpl: 0.032s; cc: 22; qc: 133; dbt: 0.1911s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb