The night was rather humid and Sylke and I were woken around 4am by some koala or other member of the bear family that had apparently decided to crawl into our mum’s bed – constant snoring. Giggling helped to drive the unwanted visitor out. Besides that we only listened to the rain and woke soaked in sweat around 7am. After a hearty breakfast we got on our way as we wanted to make it all the way to Townsville today – some 370 kilometers away from Cairns.
Instead of going on the main road through, we decided to take a little detour via Yunguburra which added about 100 km to the trip. At Gordonvale we got onto the Gillies Highway. Little did we know that soon we were to drive what resembled the Alpine serpentines rather closely. The cars behind our 6.80 meter campervan were happy about that too. Mum was a nice enough driver to let them pass – every once in a while. On the way to Yunguburra, we stopped at a platypus viewing area – where we saw … well … no platypus ( platypuses, platypusi, platypussies?) Oh well, next stop was the curtain fig tree, an approximately 500 year old fig tree that had grown into something that could have well served as a feature in one of the Lord of the Rings movies. It looked magnificent and unfortunately, it was fenced off. I had the hold off the urge to climb that thing or at least swing on one of its air roots.
On the way from Yungu to Innisfail the path was lined with waterfalls. The first majestic waterfalls were the Malanda Falls. Thinking of Dallas it looked like the outflow from White Rock Lake … and there was a manmade swimming pool at the bottom of the 3 meter drop. Disappointed we climbed back into the campervan and lowered our water fall expectations. There was really no need for that once we arrived at the Millaa Millaa Falls. They were awesome and made for some nice pictures. Since there were two car parks (one for cars and one for buses) we had also parked at the bus park because we thought our home on wheels surely would pass. A bus driver that shortly arrived after us thought the opposite and complained rather loudly that we had parked our home where he wanted to park his minibus. We informed him that our car was bigger (which it was!) and took our sweet time to move out of the way. The other two falls – Zillie and Ellinjaa – were also very nice though the rain rudely interrupted our enjoyment. Last stop on our detour was the Mungalli Creek Dairy where we had lunch in form of a massive cheese plate. This also resulted in us buying some cheese that we thought would go rather well with our chocolate port wine (a leftover from my Margaret River trip with the girls)
Finally back on the main road we looked at the lock and, oh my, it was already 4pm and we still had some 300 kilometers to Townsville and wanted to stop at Mission Beach. As we had nothing booked we changed our plans except that we did go to Mission Beach. That’s the beauty about having a motor home. Who cares if you arrive today. At Mission Beach we took a little walk along the beach which was covered in little sand balls – I mean covered!!! Everywhere! Looking closer we also saw the beach moving. There were hundreds of tiny little crabs that had dug there holes in the sand and covered the beach with the sand out of said holes in form of round sand balls. First we wanted to go swimming at Mission but there were enough signs about deadly stingers that we changed our plans (yet again) Instead we went shopping in one of the surf stores and mum bought some thongs (that’s flip flops in Aussie) while I bought myself a new bikini … and a billabong head for my sister. She now owes me an eternity of sisterly love.
After Mission Beach and fueling up the van, we made our way to Ingham and then went on a smaller road to one of the beaches where lucky enough there was a camping space available for us. Shame about the mosquitoes that surrounded us as soon as we got out of the van. We were prepared though – Autan (German bug spray) and tea tree oil are magical remedies.
One plan we did not change today was the dinner plan. We finally wanted a barbie and had taken our kangaroo steaks out of the freezer. There were bbqs available and Sylke and I did our best to cook the steaks and sweet corn on the grill. Everything tasted great, also the tomato and feta salad through the feta cheese was more a filler as it tasted of absolutely nothing.
After dinner and a mosquito hunt we wanted to take a little walk to the beach with a bottle of wine. First we completely missed the beach road and walked the wrong way. With limited light we finally found the beach but as it was way too dark and we had been telling each other horror stories about salties, snakes and all the other things that can kill you in Australia, we decided shortly after arriving to turn back. We did not want to end up in the newspaper as yet-another-stupid-tourist-story. Instead we had the wine in the security of our home.
