Atherton Tablelands

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Hi again,

Seeing as I had about a week left in Cairns and not much to do, I booked onto a tour up to Yungaburra in the Atherton Tablelands. The Tablelands are basically a lot of green, gently sloping hills, all on top of the mountain range, about 1000ft above sea level. To start the tour, Paul picked us all up at about 7am, and took us on a quick tour of Cairns' industrial estate, where we saw some "native wildlife" - the workmen in trucks and working on the road. Paul explained how they can be identified by their hairy faces and florescent jackets (yellow=junior, orange=adult). Every time we passed one Paul would beep his horn and get everyone to wave. Following this we headed out onto the highway, past a "dingo" (pet dog) about to eat some school kids, whilst listening to a song about how Australia has the most deadly animals. Then once we were out on the highway, Paul started off the "proper" tour by demonstrating the emergency exits. This involved opening the front door whilst driving, accidentally letting go, and nearly taking out a little Mini. Five minutes later he suddenly pulled off the highway onto a field next to it to show us some fruit bats. Then we were driving up the windy road into the mountains, with Paul pointing out interesting things such as the corner where a school bus drove off the cliff last week. Our first proper stop was at a lookout point, looking back over the cane sugar fields, and Paul told us about how after Cyclone Larry, all the crop was destroyed so they went jetskiing over the fields.

Then, a few corners later the scenery changed to rainforest (to be precise: highland tropical mesophile complex rainforest, where if you buried a body, it would decompose completely in less than 9 months), and we went for a walk down to the Cathdral fig tree. This is a massive strangler fig which is hundreds of years old, and had started growing at the top of another tree, eventually killed it, and now it's roots reach all the way to the ground, but the actual tree only starts about a hundred feet up. Also during the walk Paul showed us a wait-a-while vine, which is so strong that if you get it caught on you whilst cycling it will pull you off your bike, a whip-bird which made quite a cool noise, and some sakata insects which were hard to spot but there must be thousands of them as everywhere you go they are being noisy - kindof like crickets. Then we drove up to Lake Barrine where we did some more wildlife hunting, and found a water dragon and some musky rat kangaroos. The water dragon was easy to see once we found it because they are quite stupid and think that if they stay really still we won't be able to see them, but the kangaroos were harder as they hopped about really quickly and were really small. Also, the musky rat kangaroos are the oldest, smallest type of kangaroo, and their method of staying un-eaten is slightly better than the water dragons as they lean against a tree, pick up some leaves with their tail, and then hold them up behind them to try and make themselves look like a bush.

The next stop was Lake Eacham for lunch and a cool swim, and then we went up to Millaa Millaa falls. Despite the uninventive name (Millaa means "Falling Water), the waterfall was really pretty, a view obviously shared by lots of people, as it is where they filmed Peter Andre's appalling song "Mysterious girl" and the Herbal Essences advert. Paul made it even more impressive by putting on tension-building music as we drove into the carpark, and just as the music reached the climax, he spun the car around to face the waterfalls and slammed on the brakes, nearly hitting the car parked next to us, but making our first view of the waterfall pretty cool. Then we chilled out in the plunge pool for a while, and swam through the waterfall fall to the rocks behind it which was pretty awesome, before all piling back onto the bus. The next stop was "Log" in Millaa Millaa town, which as the name suggests was literally just a big log. It was from an ancient tree that fell down in a cyclone, and the locals brought it up to the town and put it in a shed for tourists to look at. We were very unimpressed but apparently it's even inspired a song. Then we headed up to Dinner Falls, which was harder to swim behind as the space behind was just a little cave, and the current was quite strong, and we saw a tree kangaroo. Then we went to On The Wallaby, where we would stay the night, for biscuits and fruit, followed by platypus spotting - we saw one as soon as we arrived, and then no more, and unfortunately no night canoeing as the rest of my group were pathetic and wanted to sleep, and they need 3 people to run it.

The next day me and Nini got up at half 5 to go wakesurfing (the other 2 were scared of lakes or something and so stayed in bed). It turned out to be just us, Ray (our new guide), a girl called Bridget and Vern, who owned all the kit. We started off just bodyboarding, and then moved onto wakesurfing which was way more fun, and more tiring. Then we had to rush back to the hostel in order to get some breakfast before the start of the tour at 9. The tour started off with us driving out to near Lake Eacham, and then getting kitted out with mountain bikes and helmets, and going cycling. As we had the 2 German girls on tour still it wasn't massively hardcore (they were more out for a gentle ride - one of them even tried to wear flipflops), but was still pretty good, and we did a massive loop, stopping at Lake Eacham for lunch at the cafe. Then we climbed up a tree to a branch about 15ft above the water and jumped in, then as this was not dangerous enough, Ray tried to do a backflip off, and failed miserably. Just before we left the Lake we found a carpet python chilling out in one of the bushes - though Ray reckoned it was only a baby as it was only 2m long.

After cycling back, we went over to Lake Tinaroo for canoeing which was pretty cool - we paddled up to the top of the lake where a little river with lots of ochre in it entered the lake, and spent abour 45minutes painting ourselves aborigini-style. On the way back, we saw a dingo, a massive waterlizard, and some wallabies. After canoeing we went platypus spotting again and this time saw 2 platypus. Then Damo cooked up an awesome BBQ, and we went night canoeing, and saw loads more animals than during the day, including lots of platypus, some pademelon kangaroos, green ring-tail, common ring-tail and copprry bush possums, and a tree kangaroo. We got really close to some of the kangaroos chilling on the bank, but the best was 2 possums (a mum and baby) chilling right on the edge of the water. The mum was just sitting there eating whilst the baby clung to her back, and we got within about a metre of them, and sat there watching for ages - they were very cute! Then we got back at about 10.30, and hung out with Ray, Damo etc for a while. The next day I went hiking down Dawsons Creek which was a little river, with a cool spot for swimming half way down, before heading back to Cairns the day after.

Back in Cairns, I went out with some of the guys from my room, but ended up losing them in the end and hanging out with Vern (the wakesurfer guy) who happened to be the Woolshed and he knew the staff so we got free drinks all night. The next morning me and Vern drove up to see Vern's friend Cameron, who was living in his parents house and cooked us a massive breakfast of sausage, bacon, egg, etc, and we all chilled out in the pool for a bit before going on his mini-motorbikes, mini-quad bikes and a 6-wheeler. Then we went back up to the lake and Yungaburra to go wakesurfing again - this time I actually managed to surf a bit, which made it easier on my arms. After about 3 hours, we got bored, I managed to cut my cheek on the handle, and it started thundering, so called it a day and headed back to the Greenhouse, where I packed up to go to Darwin the next day.

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Photos

Me and roots
woopwoop

Paul poking a stinging tree
This could explain why he's been stung 5 times before

Comments

[GDM]

Auntie would have a fit! xx GDM

[KatieHedgecock]

haha i guess i'll find out whether she reads this or not ;) xxx