Roadtrip around the Atherton Tablelands
Trip Start
Jun 01, 2010
1
35
64
Trip End
Oct 08, 2010
Yungaburra, Queensland, Australia
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
We found a lovely quaint village called Yungaburra to stay in for the evening. It was good to see all the old traditional buildings and very friendly people.
We decided to go for a walk by the local river and to see the platypus viewing spot. We did sit for about 10 minutes before getting restless - we had tried to spot a platypus in the aquarium in Sydney with no luck...but were told they are very shy animals.
Instead we decided to continue our walk along the side of the river, only to be greeted with the sight of a platypus happily bobbing around on the river! It was great to see one in the wild and stood watching for a while as he kept diving down and coming back up. Further along the bank we came across more platypus, bush turkeys and three tree kangaroos sleeping up a tree (to be honest, they were well camouflaged and pointed out to us by a local - and just looked like balls of fur).
Next day we went to the nearby Lake Barrine, one of two lakes in the craters of dormant volcanoes in the Crater Lakes National Park - the smallest but most biologically diverse national park in Australia. From our boat around the lake, we spotted Water Dragons and a Red Bellied Black snake, as well as turtles, eels and the unspoilt rainforest around the crater rim. A fascinating place.
We also saw the Curtain Fig, a tree which has grown on and stangled three other trees, creating a 'curtain' of roots stretching to the forest floor - Strangler Fig trees are a common sight around the Queensland rainforest and we had seen several, but not one has big or impressive as this one.
Further south and following the coast we took a couple of short detours to see the sea - firstly at Mission Beach, where we found a beautiful wide palm fringed beach and mellow resort (great to see no great developments along the beach) - also spotted kangaroos and cassowaries in the countryside. Then we stopped at Cardwell Beach for fab sunset views of the mountainous wilderness of Hinchinbrook Island.
Day 4 of our roadtrip ended in Townsville, the capital of Queensland.
