Blink and you miss Rollingstone, this tiny blimp on the Bruce Highway that is barely even a town. We just happened to get the map out the night before and say, hmmm next stop is meant to be Airlie Beach – that’s over 6 hours away!! That’s just not cricket. So we looked up a caravanners blogs (hee hee, funny that) and found discussion about this little caravan park by the sea at a place called Rollingstone. So we figured, hey we’ll pull in for the night, break up the trip and keep going. But oh, little old Rollingstone turned out to be a stunning jewel of a place, literally right on the beach. So we stayed a few days instead and soaked up the rays, walked along the beach and generally chilled.

Atherton was our next stop. It was a last minute decision to detour somewhat inland to see this pretty area, however after growing up on a dairy farm, I had heard rumours of the Atherton Tablelands. I am so glad we decided to see this amazing area in person. I will remember our adventures here with a smile!

On the afternoon we arrived, we decided to check out Gallo Dairy. This is a working dairy farm that produces its own line of dairy products. They have their own little cheese factory, a resident chocolatier and, outside, a viewing platform for the 42 Unit Rotary dairy. There is also a petting area with calves, sheep, chickens and pigs. After they got over the smell, the family was absolutely fascinated by the milking process. We stood at the viewing platform for ages and ages. The farm girl in my blood (it’s there Dad, really) was stunned to hear that this setup milks 280 head of cows in 1 hour and 20 minutes!!

Another place marked by the girls as a “please Mum and Dad, could we visit?” was the Crystal Caves in Atherton. Showcasing some of the most beautiful crystals, gemstones and geodes (including the word’s biggest Amethyst geode),  this place was unbelievable. What can be more thrilling for a kid, than to be given a hemet with a light and told to crawl underground and explore till your heart’s content? Can we touch the pretty rocks? Sure you can touch whatever you like!

Of course a trip to the Atherton tablelands wouldn’t be complete without a visit to one of the local produce markets. Top on the list for Conrad and I was the 2 local nut markets. Imagine it:  wall to wall of different flavoured nuts, peanut brittle and candied fruit... paradise!

Little did we know that the trip out of Atherton would be so huge! Not only did we face roadwork after roadwork, including some nasty looping detours (you know the kind that bring you back to where you started 40 kilometres later!!), but we also got to travel Queensland’s highest road. Reaching elevations of 1100 metres above sea level, the Beast had its work cut out for it as it hauled the van up some windy hills. But oh my goodness, the views were spectacular.

OK – yes, I have been very slow at updating the blog. My apologies everyone! We went without phone reception for ages out west, then we’ve been busy having adventures. However, it’s now time to begin our return journey home for Christmas, so I better update it before I need to add the south-ward escapades!! 

Well the heat so far has sometimes been intense, but woah.... we must have crossed some other invisible line on the highway as we were heading to our northernmost point, because all of a sudden we were in the extremely steamy tropics. By the time we had set up the van at Cooktown, Conrad and I were both drenched in sweat and feeling like we’d been breathing through a hot sock for the last hour or so. It just didn’t let up the whole time we were here. When you got to the coast, I mean right on the water, it became somewhat bearable, but the humidity was off the chart to anything we had experienced so far. One upshot of this time of year is the tropical fruit. The park we stayed at was overflowing with hundreds of ripe mangoes... yum!

At the start of the journey, I really wanted to go all the way to the top of Australia. You know, to stand at the little sign that said “you are standing at the northernmost point of Australia”. That’s before I found out that Cape York is a massive, savage, barely inhabited, steamy mud track that doesn’t accommodate a caravan and barely accommodates humans! (slight exaggeration). So I compromised and said we really need to get to Cooktown at least. The girls had been learning about Captain Cook and his adventures and I thought this area would really cement some of that information. It sure did! We started with Captain Cook lookout. This is situated at the head of the Endeavour River, where Cook limped in with his busted ship all those years ago.

Next on the historical trek, was the Captain James Cook Museum. These guys have an ingenious artefact finding sheet for kids that makes the museum like a game. Stuff like “somewhere in the Endeavour gallery is a golden key salvaged from the..... can you find it?”. I was also fascinated by the incredible building that housed the museum. Originally a convent, this stunning 19^th century building had soaring ceilings, beautiful moldings and amazing stories.

While visiting the Captain Cook memorial in the foreshore park and sitting on one of the Endeavour canons, we came across the “Musical Ship”. If I hadn’t already seen The Musical Fence, I would have been gob-smacked, as it was I was still pretty blown away. This is an impressive collection of recycled poly-pipe, stainless steel and aluminium that have been fashioned into actual tuned instruments in a ship sculpture. There’s marimbas, xylophones, chimes and even a doof doof (base drum!).

Perhaps the most amazing sight in Cooktown was our real honest-to-goodness, right-in-front-of-us sighting of a crocodile swimming along the foreshore. Even though you see the croc signs everywhere, and we haven’t even stuck a toe in the water up here, it’s still quite a shock to see a real life specimen coast by. We all scrambled to get our cameras out, but only managed to get him going back under.

While we still had that Steve Irwin feeling, we decided to go exploring down a dirt road to see Finch Bay.  Minus the croc tracks, this was like a scene out of that movie Castaway. Something tells me that Tom Hanks (or Wilson for that matter) mightn’t have made it 4 years here!

Once you got away from the pretty coast road, it really did feel like we were heading back to the outback on the trip to and from Cooktown. There were long stretches of red dirt-lined road and some massive ant hills. The other incredible sight we encountered on this stretch, was Black Mountain. As you drive down the Mulligan Highway, you notice these funny coloured mountains emerge from the horizon. As you get closer you realise they are made up of massive black granite boulders, some the size of small houses, all piled on top of one another!! 

During our journey so far we have gravitated towards Big 4 Caravan Parks, due to our membership, but also due to the facilities and activities they have for the girls. We were in for a treat for our next Big 4 stay, as Cairns is home to a Big4 park that is ranked 10^th in the world. This place was off the dial! It had its own restaurant, mini-shop, water park and the world’s largest jumping pillow!

One of the things we were looking forward to in Cairns was the scenic railway and the skyrail that takes you up over the rainforest canopy. It turns out, these are both really expensive. So we gave the girls the choice – train or skyrail. They chose the train. I was really keen for this too, as I remember my Mum and Dad speaking about this railway from their honeymoon. There were some amazing sights as we wound our way up the mountain, past the Baron Gorge and up to the little village of Kuranda in the treetops.

While in Kuranda, it was time to tick off the list something I had not been looking forward to! Back when we were preparing for our journey, we sat down with the girls and showed them all our Queensland travel books. We gave them sticky notes and said they could choose 6 things (to start with) that they really wanted to see. Much to my horror, Ellysia’s first sticky note went straight on to the Australian Venom Zoo in Kuranda, ugh! So after some window shopping along the quaint little main street, we wandered up to the Venom Zoo. The girls were thrilled to see all the snakes and spiders and other creepy crawlies. I just stayed at the back and cringed, and when the time came, said “no thanks, nice man with the pony tail, I do not want to hold that snake!”.... but of course, everyone else in the family did! Even Lily – which was a shock.

Next on the agenda in Kuranda was the Army Duck tours through the rainforest. An innovative place called Rainforestation provide brilliant tours through the dense tropical rainforest in re-purposed, open-air Army Ducks. We had a hilarious lady tour guide who was an expert at negotiating some pretty slippery, muddy hills and wrestling this antique into gear. She was an absolute wealth of information on the plants and animals in the rainforest.

While in Cairns, we took the opportunity to catch up with our friends Max and Miriam and their two adorable boys. Even though we haven’t seen these for a few years, it felt like only yesterday we’d caught up. We had a fantastic night with these guys catching up and hanging out. Miriam and I went to lunch the next day, just for girls time!

 

The lovely Max and Miriam.

The other memorable thing that happened in Cairns, was my birthday. I was treated to a night at the ‘L.E.D Restaurant’ (L-Lily, E-Ellysia, D-Daddy). I was given an impressive menu to choose from and waited on like a princess! Earlier in the day we all had a giggle with some snorkelling lessons.

Now it was time to head on to the last stop of our north-ward journey, Cooktown. We decided to take the coast road and check out Port Douglas as well. The locals had told us about this amazing stretch of road and the brochures described it as the Qld equivalent of the Great Ocean Road, but oh my goodness, it was breathtaking!