Cairns pt 2

The weather continued to be quite showery and windy but we had a sunny day when we went to Palm Cove for the day. Palm Cove is one of the northern beaches of Cairns, and is the most lovely in our opinion.

We all had a lovely day on the beach enjoying the sunshine and ambiance.

We also took a day trip to Kuranda. Again, it rained for most of the day, but we managed to get a lovely walk through the rainforest to the Baron Gorge lookout. We all enjoyed the rainforest and admired the spectacular scenery.

The drive from Cairns to Kuranda is spectacular too, with some fabulous lookouts.

On our last day with James, we went out to the reef on a tour. The day didn't start well, as it was raining, we had a bit of confusion walking to the wharf and then found that the boat (which had been recommended as having low numbers and being family friendly) was actually packed to capacity with 20-something tourists - we were the oldest and the youngest on board, with Ben being the only kid. I guess everyone was waiting for the better weather (it had been very windy over the previous week). Luckily, the weather magically became sunny, and we had a couple of excellent snorkles on two locations of Hastings reef.  We saw great fish and the coral was more colourful than I had expected with some pretty pinks and blues.  It was a great day for our last day with James.

Cairns

We headed off to Cairns with a great deal of anticipation. We had stayed at the amazing Cairns Coconut caravan park last year, and were keen to get back to its resort like luxury. And an ensuite! Also, James was joining us for a week, yay!

Sadly the weather wasn't singing from our songbook, and we had rain pretty much every day. But the Coconut was its luxurious comfortable self, even though it was absolutely overrunning with children in school holidays. It has 2 huge resort pools, both heated, a massive splash park, playground, movie screen, free pancakes on Thursdays - the list goes on, and it is Ben's favourite park ever.

Once James joined us we revisited a number of our favourite spots from our visit last year, as we were keen to share them with him.

First stop was the Botanic Gardens, and its wonderful enclosed dome garden, filled with bromeliads, pitcher plants, butterflies and other treasures, including this watermelon pepperomia. Those leaves are absolutely flat - talk about natural tromp l'oeil!

The plants outside were spectacular as well. 

  

The following equally soggy day we journeyed for a couple of hours to the incomparable Paronella Park. A now ruined castle built in the 1920s as a pleasure park, complete with its own hydroelectric plant which enabled it to have icecream and movies - very advanced given the rest of the area didn't get electricity until the 1960s!  It is such a beautiful place, and it rains so often there that they supply umbrellas! It has wonderful gardens and is so worth a visit.  Entry is current for 2 years and includes a tour, food for the fish/turtles/eels, a night in the caravan park and a night tour. We haven't done the night tour so we may yet go back! 

This tower houses the recommissioned hydroelectric plant! Note the modern swing bridge over the falls.

The view back to Paronella Park from the swing bridge.

Of course, no visit to Cairns would be complete without a meal at one of its esplanade restaurants!  We choose the Raw Prawn this time and I had a wondrous asian style seafood in mild coconut curry. Absolutely delicious! 

I think this post is long enough - stay tuned for Cairns part 2!

Mareeba and Chillagoe

A highlight of our stay in Mareeba was a day trip 2 hours inland to Chillagoe. The striking black rock formations were fascinating to walk around, and we also went on a tour of an enormous cave system, with microbats flitting about our heads.

Balancing rock

Tree root deep in cave 

Back in Mareeba, we enjoyed a delicious lunch at Jaques Coffee Plantation, and went on a guided tour with Jason Jaques, who was happy to pose for a photo with his coffee beans.

Coffee is a major theme in Mareeba, and we also visited Coffeeworks, which is a museum of all things coffee and tea related, with a fabulous tasting room, with tea, coffee, chocolates and coffee/chocolate liquer available for as much tasting as you can manage! Ben certainly enjoyed the chocolates, while Garry actually confessed to having had so much coffee he had the coffee jitters (unheard of!).  I had a bit of everything, and really liked the historical teapots. 

The Mareeba Wetlands were also lovely, and quite astonishing to learn they are man made, with nothing planted. They are covered in waterlillies and attract a great deal of birdlife - we saw green pygmy geese, which were great to see. 

Mt Surprise

I am madly in love with Mt Surprise. It's a bit difficult to put a finger on why, as there isn't much there. Perhaps it is Bedrock village caravan park, which is a lovely oasis, with large private sites and the most enormous showers I've ever seen.  It also has dinners every night and a great cafe, and a pool, although it was a bit chilly for that.  The cold snap was surprising to all, and the poor residents were all rugged up.

We did a tour of the nearby Undara lava tubes, which are caves left by a long lava flow through the area.  The tour started with a walk up the Kalkani crater and around its rim.

We then headed off to the lava tubes.

The second tube was deeper, and there were some bats!

The tour also included a look at the Undara International Airport.

The other main attraction here is topaz fossicking.  No tag along tours here - we hired gear and I finally got my own fossicking licence!  Yay!  We drove 40km to the public site along the creek and set to work. It was a glorious place to spend a day, and we had a picnic lunch.

And yes, we did find some topaz!

I think I could really get into gem fossicking :-)

Charters Towers

Charters Towers was founded after gold had been discovered there, and has many gorgeous buildings built with the great wealth discovered there.  In its heyday in 1899 it was the second largest town in Queensland and was nicknamed 'The World'.

Now it has just on 9000 people and its four main sources of income are education, agriculture, mining and tourism. Why education, I hear you ask?  It has three large boarding schools, which service the outlying towns which don't have high schools. Charters Towers also played a major role during World War II.

My favourite experience here was the Texas longhorn cattle station.

Our tour with Lynda got us up close to their gorgeous cattle and their Guiness book of records steer JR, with his record 3m horn span!

They also have some Watusi crossed with longhorn,

Bison

Buffalo

and shade camoflaged Scottish Highlander cattle.

A great morning!

Richmond

Richmond is a lovely outback town that is doing a lot to make itself attractive to tourists and locals. It has a man-made lake that they use for rowing and fishing, a water play park, and the absolutely world class Kronosaurus Korner museum.

We arrived early, and as we were checking in to our van park we were told about a 'dig at dusk' on that afternoon, where you could go to the fossil site with a paleontologist. Naturally we signed up.

It turned out to be the three of us, and three experts - the outgoing museum curator, the acting museum curator and Dennis, a really experienced volunteer. They explained the mysteries of the fish-mash layer and helped up find a small collection of interesting bits and pieces.

Life sized model of Kronosaurus found in Richmond

The next day we explorerd Kronosaurus Korner and were blown away by the amazing fossils on display, many of which had been found in the fossil site we had been at the previous afternoon.

Kronosaurus jaw with croc jaw for comparison

Fossilised, mummified, Minmi 

Most complete pleisiosaur skeleton, in position it was found in,  on a nearby farm

Anyone can dig there, but they do ask that if you find anything interesting you alert the museum, and don't take it.  You are not allowed to sell fossils you find there either.

The following day we ventured back to the fossil site, and found a few more little bits and pieces. My favourite bit is a small piece of icthyosaur rib bone.

Fossil site 1

The dig site even has amenities!

It was amazing to think we were unearthing remnants from 110 million years ago.