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Published: September 27th 2010
Malanda Falls
Waterfall number 1 with a swimming pool built at its baseIf anywhere in Australia has reminded us of New Zealand and the Waikato, it’s the Atherton Tablelands.
With rolling hills, volcanic origins, pockets of rainforest, dairying, waterfalls and rivers that run all year round, it also doesn’t have the humidity of Cairns, 70km the other side of the coastal ranges.
With only slight protestations from Rhys, we did the waterfall circuit, taking delightful short bush walks to seven waterfalls cascading over basalt ridges. Even he of the jaundiced “not-another-gorge/scenic lookout/waterfall/etc” admitted they all had their individual beauty and character.
In Yungaburra we walked alongside Peterson Creek and watched half a dozen platypus (platypie? platypussies??) ducking and diving - we’ve seen a few now, but it’s always a thrill to watch them in their natural habitat.
We were not so lucky looking for a Lumholtz tree kangaroo, the size of a small dog and supposedly to be found in the crook of branches like a koala. It’s quite hard to look up in the canopy of a rain forest and on the ground for snakes at the same time, although we had to look in the trees for snakes as well - for the amethystine
Milla Milla Falls
Waterfall number 2 - Rhys liked this one python, averaging 3.5m but sometimes reaching 6m long! Since this is as long as our caravan, I’m glad we didn’t see a python, although disappointed the tree kangaroo remains elusive.
What we did not expect to see, as they are equally rare, is a cassowary, a large emu sized flightless bird which has been known to attack and even kill humans. We’ve seen one disappearing into the bush from a car, but had a much closer encounter after viewing the Mt Hypipamee crater about 20km south of Atherton.
It was around 4.30pm and quite dark due to cloud cover and very dense rainforest. As we came to a small bridge near the exit of the track we saw four people, 2 on either side, very quietly taking photos of a large male cassowary which was pacing back and forth over the path in a deliberate and stately manner, preventing both parties from crossing the bridge.
As these birds are person-height, very bulky and armed with a hard fighting headpiece and vicious spur on their hind legs which can gouge a large hole in a foolish person’s chest, no-one was willing to cross its path.
We watched in awe for quite some time as it appeared to pose and preen for our cameras, completely unfazed by flashes. By this time another couple and three French backpackers had caught up with us and one of the backpackers (who I’d taken a photo of, climbing over the waterfall fence clearly marked “Danger Stay Behind Barrier”) carried on walking slowly towards the bird taking photos.
Suddenly the female half of the young couple rushed past me - “it’s chasing us!” I backed out of her way into a spikey lawyer vine and joined everyone else who was making a hasty retreat while simultaneously trying to put my camera away and pick spikes out of my arms.
The cassowary was indeed trotting up the path after us, then went up on a bank as we ran round a corner so he could look down on us. We stayed like this for a few more minutes and a few more photos, then the backpackers decided they’d had enough and started down the track again.
Rhys had already started jogging to catch up with them, while the cassowary was turning around to go
Ellinjaa Falls
Number 4, lots of steps to this one
in our direction and I realised I was at the back and now the closest to it. I was yelling at Rhys, “don’t leave the smallest at the back - I’ll be the first to be picked off!”
But everyone was running now and the cassowary was running through the bush alongside me. Discretion may be the better part of valour, but at this point I decided speed was wiser than discreet wildlife-friendly observation, so I ran past the backpackers, caught up with Rhys and we kept running till we crossed the bridge.
The backpackers were high-fiving, the couples disappeared quickly into their Wicked vans and we stood on the bridge for a while waiting to see if Big Bird would reappear, but he’d obviously had enough of stupid tourists. So we left him to a German with a very large lens and yet another young couple who were undaunted by the groups of people they’d passed warning them of rogue native fauna.
Signs in the car park warned not to feed or approach cassowaries, but considering the almost constant disregard for warning signs by both tourists and locals, I think that’s exactly what
Mt Bartle Frere
Highest Mt in Queensland, at1622metres
had been happening and Mr Cassowary had presumed we were about to supply him and his kids with their supper.
It’s ironic that you spend so much energy looking for wildlife, then when you encounter it you can’t get away fast enough.
We had a more soothing encounter with nature at Innot Springs west of the tablelands, where hot springs bubble up from a manky looking stream. People dig holes in the creek bed but risk scalding themselves as it bubbles up at around 72 degrees.
The van park next to the stream contains moderately less manky hot pools with the spring water cooled to varying degrees ranging from 37 - 45 and the water is wonderful - the hottest being too hot for us to even dip a toe in.
Continuing westwards into increasingly outback territory you come to the Undara Lava Tubes, the result of shield volcano eruptions 190,000 years ago. Having farmed the surrounding cattle station for 6 generations, the owners wanted to exploit the tourism potential of the lava tube formations and working with state environmental agencies have succeeded in providing a tourism experience which is environmentally friendly,
Mungalli Falls
Waterfall number 5, there was a cafe at this one
authentic and fascinating.
You are clearly out in the bush, but the ‘Undara Experience’ provides a bar, restaurant and swimming pool, and as well as the caravan park, cute safari tent accommodation or beautifully restored and converted historic railway carriages to stay in.
You can only access the lava tubes by guided tour, but tours are excellently executed, the guides are brilliant, wildlife is abundant and there are great bush walks around the lodge. If you’re holidaying in Cairns, make the effort to get out to Undara - it’s a cracker Aussie experience.
Now we ventured deep into the Queensland outback, where a TV ad for “Outback Whips and Leather” is not for a sex shop. In Charters Towers, Hughenden, Winton and Longreach, guys and gals walk around in high waisted jeans, check shirts, carved leather belts with big brass buckles and most important, a big western hat.
They keep their hats on in shops, in the car, probably even in bed, with or without whips and leather. A favourite with the guys is pink shirts, so who knows what goes on behind those swinging outback doors - weeee haa!
Millstream Falls
Number 6, reputedly the widest falls in the land
Truth is, there is a whole lot of nothing in the Queensland outback, and when there is something, they make a big deal about it. The landscape is generally flat and boring, the result of previously (and we’re talking 100 million years previously) being the floor of a huge inland sea.
Only Lake Eyre remains and that is usually a dry salt pan but now for the second year running it’s flooded by rain in its huge catchment of outback Queensland and northern NSW.
Before the sea evaporated at the end of the Cretaceous period, it and its jungle surrounds were teeming with prehistoric dinosaur-y life forms and their fossilized remains are now a major attraction. If we’ve learnt nothing else on this trip around an ancient continent, clearly climate change is not a new thing.
Fossickers flock to the dinosaur triangle of Hughenden, Winton and Richmond to prise ammonites, belemnites and various bits of fossilized creatures from the granite and clay soils, which on the surface grow Mitchell grass to feed huge cattle - a cross between Brahmin and Hereford to cope with the harsh continental climate.
Hughenden cashes in on
Little Millstream Falls
Number 7, getting late by now, need to go back for wine
the Muttaburrasaurus, an amiable herbivorous dinosaur whose fossilized skeleton was found nearby and is now immortalised by a replica skeleton in the Information Centre and a life size concrete reconstruction standing somewhat gormlessly at a main intersection.
Richmond has Kronosaurus Korner, advertised by a giant concrete Pliosaur, focussing on marine fossils and Winton promotes tours to Lark Quarry Dinosaur Trackways (virtually on the town’s doorstep - only 100km down a dirt road), the only known fossilised evidence of a dinosaur stampede which apparently was the inspiration for the stampede scene in Jurassic Park.
Winton also has the peculiar distinction of having the only museum in the world dedicated to a song. Not just any song - this is THE song, the one most Aussies think should be their national anthem and which is sung as if it IS the National Anthem - Waltzing Matilda, written by Banjo Patterson in 1895 when he was staying in the area and pissing up large every night with his bush poet mates.
The sorry saga of a swagman driven by deprivation to stealing and then topping himself rather than being caught by the cops has lodged itself deep
Cassowary!
"You shall not pass!!"
in the nations psyche, unaffected by more stately songs that sing of a nation ‘girt by sea’.
Now, so much part of the country’s zeitgeist that a whole museum is dedicated to its author, where ‘it is thought’ to have been written, who ‘it is thought’ to have been written about and various interpretations of the meaning of the tragic story. For a happy go lucky people, they take an inordinate interest in a depressing and dark ballad.
Winton however has created a booming tourism industry from it. We stayed at the Matilda Country Tourist Park, where the park manager’s phone rang with the familiar tune as he was booking us in. There is the Jumbuck Motel, Banjo’s Cabins, Billabong Takeaways etc...
We checked out a photography exhibition in the Waltzing Matilda Centre art gallery, but decided a whole museum for one folk song was a bit much.
While chatting with fellow travellers about our plans, many have insisted we go to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach. We intended to, then we started reading more about it. Maybe it was travel jaundice, maybe it was the $25 entry charge plus
We might be here all night...
If you look closely you can see the blue of Big Bird up on the ridge above the backpackers
extra for each show (such as the cattle wrangling), maybe it was our increasing uneasiness with the intense patriotism and glorification of the Aussie outback lifestyle and history, but we decided we just couldn’t handle two days worth of reading about the drovers, stockmen and bush poets that form the fabric of outback Australia.
The dry heat of the last week had been replaced by a big sky full of grey clouds and rain - yes, it does rain in the outback and Longreach looked a little depressing in the rain.
Instead we stayed at Ilfracombe, 27 km east, once a thriving town servicing the largest sheep station in the country. Ilfracombe has kept itself alive by opening numerous small museums free to the public as well as an artesian spa, constantly filled by the warm waters of the underground Great Artesian Basin.
It was a refreshing contrast to Longreach, with its many ways to extract the tourist $$. As a gesture of community support we dined on enormous rump steaks at the 100 year old Wellshot Hotel next to the van park and became part of living history, rather than passive onlookers of
Lake Tinaroo, near Atherton
Boating, fishing, swimming, skiing - and no stingers or crocodiles!
a romanticised past.
Then it was back to Sapphire, where in May we’d extracted rough gems from buckets of rocks and dust and left them in the skilful hands of a gem cutter. I couldn’t wait to see what he’d made of them and we were thrilled - we now have real jewels!
What amazing souvenirs to bring back to NZ - shining examples of the ancient rocks that make up Australia, the extreme forces of nature such as volcanic and tectonic activity around 50 million years ago (give or take 10 or 20 million years) that created gorgeously coloured crystals and valuable metals deep within a seemingly barren land.
I’m not a bling person, but when that bling would normally be out of our price range and we found it in a bucket of gravel, it’s pretty irresistible.
Sapphire looks like a Mad Max film set, the locals are rough, weird and weather beaten, yet the combination yields exquisite gemstones made into luxurious and expensive jewellery.
A land of extremes and contradictions indeed.
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