Heading East ...

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10th July: Saturday’s special event in the caravan park is a free Barramundi BBQ, singalong and general group participation concert. I sang 2 songs accompanied by the visiting priest on his guitar! There were all kinds of acts, some good and some pretty, shall we say, unusual.
Sun 11th July: Breakfast at Sunset Tavern - yummy bacon and eggs overlooking the incoming tide, and then some acquisitions in the adjacent markets (to be revealed upon our return).

12th July: Set off reasonably early this morning for the drive to our next campsite, Mt Surprise. We stopped for lunch in Croydon - nothing like its English namesake! In its Gold Rush days it boasted a population of about 7,000, and 90 hotels!! Only 1 hotel left now, and a population of about ?250. The Gulflander train (a red rattler) still makes the 150km trip from Normanton to Croydon once a week - I suppose for the benefit of tourists these days.

13th July: Left Mt Surprise bright and early this morning to get to Undara in plenty of time for the Lava Tubes tour. Undara is a National Park, and beautifully presented. We chose just a short tour of the Lava Tubes as we wanted to move on to Atherton in the afternoon. It was an interesting place, although not as beautiful as the brochures lead you to believe. There are heaps of walks and other areas of interest there besides the Lava Tubes, so maybe there’ll be a return visit someday. After leaving Undara, we continued east, and then north to Atherton. It's astounding how quickly the landscape changes from the relatively dry Savannah of inland Queensland to the lushest, greenest, most forested in all of Australia - it's as if someone lowered the curtain on Savannah and then raised it on Tropical Rainforest! Correspondingly population and traffic seems to have increased 10 or even 20-fold. We've left the wild well and truly behind for now.

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