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Published: October 2nd 2007
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Mothers and Daughters
At the TwinKauris at lake Barrine Cairns Days 177 -178
Saturday, August 18, 2007 - Sunday, August 19,2007
Brayden was keen to come to the airport pick up Nana and Pop, despite the time, so off we went with Brayden in a fairly garrulous mood. Couldn’t stop him and the words were a mile a minute! The plane was on time and Nan and Pop got off in good time. Brayden saw them first and was pretty excited. Greetings, hugs and kisses out of the way we drove into Cairns proper to try and get an early morning coffee as getting back to the caravan park and making noise was probably not the most neighbourly thing to do. Might have attracted some black marks against our name in the Big4 bad neighbours book and we couldn’t have that! Getting an early morning coffee in Cairns proved a little harder than expected but we finally found a place to sit and have our caffeine fix
whilst the city’s workers cleaned the streets and emptied the bins. 5:00 am is probably not the best time to see the best face of any city methinks!
Got back into the caravan park where Amanda and Rhiannon were waiting.
With more of the aforementioned hugs/kisses and the odd tear from Rhiannon just appearing the long awaited catch up with Nana and Pop was complete.
A couple of lazy days with the grandparents. Went into Cairns where their festival had just started and watched some street performance from a 3 piece band that were quite good. Kids got quite into it. There was also an old hippy character who obviously decided he wanted in on the act and he was happy playing his tambourines off to the side and doing his unique ta- chi type dancing. Real character. Other than that the weather was pretty overcast and drizzling so didn’t lend itself to doing lots of things.
Cairns - Lake Barrine - Lake Eacham / Atherton Tablelands Days 179
Monday, August 20, 2007
Off to the Atherton Tablelands area via the most twisty road in Australia apparently. Not setting any speed records going up there that’s for sure. We had a couple of boy racers pass us and we pulled over a couple of times to let the ‘not so slow’ traffic past. I’m sure there is an unofficial record up here as well that gets a
bit of a hammering on a Friday and Saturday night.
Stopped at Lake Barrine - a little snapshot in time that seems very 1950’s ish. Walked to the twin Kauris- great big trees purported to be about 1000 years old. Lake Barrine has long been a tourist mecca for the surrounding hinterland and was so well renowned that it was taken over by the army during WWII as a convalescent hostel / hospice for recovering servicemen. Our “luxurious” (in the loosest sense of the word) abode at Lake Eacham was painted a brilliant blue - which fitted in perfectly with the others that were green yellow and purple.
Atherton Tablelands and surrounds Days 180 - 181
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
We covered many of the sights in and around the Atherton Tablelands, but by no means all, including Lake Eacham, Lake Tinaroo, Yungaburra and Malanda townships (quite quaint), the waterfall circuit (Millaa Millaa, Elinnjaa, Zillie Falls), Bromfield swamp (now this doesn’t sound very interesting I hear you say but it was a mecca for a multitude of Brolgas surprisingly), Curtain Fig
Tree and, most importantly according to the females amongst us, the dairy/cheese/chocolate factory. We did a brief view at the platypus viewing area in Yungaburra but were really a ;little early so lucked out in that department - there will be other opportunities though.
A couple of good days - although still surprisingly tiring so hopefully we didn’t do too much with Nana and Pop in tow.
Lake Eacham- Yungaburra - Atherton - Tolga - Mareeba - Kuranda - Cairns Day 182
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Back to Cairns to complete our circuit of the Atherton Tablelands - but not before stopping at the Coffee Works facility in Mareeba. Never really knew we had a thriving coffee plantation industry in Australia (or tea for that matter). We decided against the fairly expensive tour of the place - besides a bottomless cup of 21 different coffees perhaps might not have been the best thing to have prior to driving down the twisty road from Kuranda to Cairns…. with that amount of caffeine in the system I might have thought the Tojo / trailer combo could go a lot faster than it should! We stayed for a salubrious coffee
Elinjaa Falls
Amanda playing the fool - reckons on losing enough weight to use her daughters clothes...I think not! (admittedly a touch better than my Moccona/milk powder combo in the morning!)
Arrived at our bright red unit at Lake Placid caravan park - must have had a great deal going on bright paints a little while back at Bunnings. Good little spot near the river where all the rafters finish their trip. Equipped with TV also so the kids got another dose of TV - I must admit just hearing commercials on the TV was pretty annoying….if not the the box itself. Still it was far too easy to slip back into the (old) routine of sitting down in front of it and turning it on.
Cairns / Lake Placid Days 183 - 185
Friday, August 24, 2007 - Sunday, August 26, 2007
Whiled away the time with the kids spending time with their grandparents and being spoilt rotten!
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Janelle Poad
non-member comment
A Good Read!
I look forward to reading your blogg. You look like you are having a ball! The kids have grown and changed in appearance, espescially Brayden. He looks all grown up. The pictures are great and make me want to be a part of your journey (and extremely jealous). Keep writing! Maybe it can be published one day.