Advertisement
Published: December 18th 2007
The Catherdral Tree
Names so as it looks like a cathedral inside through being strangled to death by the big fern!
Today we are off to the famous Atherton Tablelands - basically a huge rainforest with loads of waterfalls.
We were picked up from our hostel at 8am in the morning (quite late for us now!) and driven to the tablelands.
The tour guide on the bus was called Hutch and was very amusing entertaining us with stories and jokes along the way.
Our first stop was at the Cathedral fig tree, also known as the Strangler tree. Basically they have a plant over here which they call the strangler as when a bird eats a seed and passes it through onto a tree, the seed can be dormant for about 50 years. However when it starts to grow, it attaches itself to the tree and grows on and around it until basically it has strangled the tree to death. By then the plant is strong enough to life on it's own but still uses the old tree's carcass as its base - they're quite wicked the animals and plants here in Oz!
After that we had a swim stop and some lunch (can't remember the name of the park, oops!). The water was beautiful and the lake
was home to some small wild turtles - but this breed actually breathed through their bottoms! It enabled them to stay under water for longer though, clever little creatures!
We then drove onto a town called Milla Milla and the beautiful Millaa Millaa waterfall - this is the actual place where the Timotei shampoo advert was filmed and shot here! I absolutely love waterfalls anyway but this was stunning. We had the complusory swim (so cold!) and then all took it in turns to do the Timotei Flick like the girl in the advert - personally I think I look better than her! (I wish).
We then drove onto the crater lake national park. I didn't know that Australia had an volcanic eruption here but the crater in the park is that deep that scientists have not been able to measure how far it actually goes!
Then it was onto the Dinner Falls, another beauftiful waterfall in the middle of the Crater park.
It had a little cave under the waterfall where you could swim to and it reminded me a bit of the scene in Cocktail where they are swimming in the waterfall there -
A forest dragon
He's havin a snooze! only I was with about 12 other people so not quite as romantic.
As some people were staying overnight here in the Tablelands, we stopped briefly in the town called Yungaburra where the hostel was.
After holding another snake (they wouldn't tell us what type it was, but it didn't look like a python so good job it didn't bite!) and then Hutch made us all sing Kareoke on the coach ride back to Cairns - me and Di were by far the best!
On the trip we got talking to a girl called Jacky who was from Melbourne, a guy called Dan who was travelling on his own and had travelled over land to Australia (took him about 8 months) and an older American guy called Bill who was on his own and off his rocker!
We all decided to meet up for an after tour drink (these are getting a bit regualr now) and went to the most famous backpacker bar here - The Woolshed. It has everything going off, dancing on tables, people stripping (wasn't me mum!) but turned out to be a really good night.
By 1am we were ready for
the off and said our goodbyes. We couldn't really drink much anyway as tomorrow we are going diving in the Great Barrier Reef - woo hoo!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.15s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0947s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Nicky goodland
non-member comment
love your pics
Great seein your stories, im savin like mad to take my two kids lucy 13 charlie 12, and hubby dave,to oz for 4 weeks ,hopin to be flyin out xmas day, ive said we all have to do a dream thing and mine is to swim in a water fall x x shame it cold x x cheers x nicky x