After spending one night in the Atherton Tablelands three years ago, we decided to have a real good look around and almost three weeks later we are still here.  Its been a lovely area to explore with so much variety in a compact area and extremely well set up for visitors with lots of great places to camp or stay.  Its known for agriculture and we think you’d be hard pressed to find another area in Australia that produces the following: fruit and veg, dairy, nuts, tropical fruits, beef, honey, wine, liquors, whiskey, tea, coffee and of course, chocolate!

We’ve done heaps of walks, camped in 8 different campsites and visited lots of interesting places -including some on a food theme (ie two dairies, an ice creamery, coffee, chocolate and a tea plantation), some man-made sights (gems and history) and amazing nature (plants, animals, hot springs and waterfalls) .  The photos below tell the story.

 

 

In Yungaburra, which is a lovely, quaint village, we did the Peterson Creek 4 km walking track, along a wildlife corridor replanted by volunteers in 1998 and still maintained by volunteers.  Got a stiff neck from trying to see a tree kangaroo there (no luck).

THE HUNT FOR A TREE KANGAROO CONTINUES – We’d heard that they have two tree kangaroos at the Nerada Tea Plantation, so we headed off.  On the drive through some back roads, an oncoming car stopped us and said there was a tree kangaroo on the road.

MORE INFO ON TREE-KANGAROOS – Although aboriginal people knew them all along, they were first found by a Norwegian naturalist, Lumholz in 1882. Size – 0.5 m tall, av weight 7kg and a long tail (600-700mm).  They are not nocturnal so active day and night (cathemeral), and they are the only kangaroos that can “walk” or move each foot independently forwards and backwards bipedal (which is up on backlegs and helps when climbing).  After habitat loss, the biggest threats to them are being hit by cars or killed by dogs when moving on the ground between trees or forests.

The only other species of tree-kangaroo in Aus is called Bennetts Tree Kangaroo and it lives from the Daintree to Cooktown and is larger.  There are 14 other species in PNG (Papua New Guinea).  After the excitement of our personal sighting, we continued on to the Nerada Tea plantation and saw one of their ‘almost pet‘ ones very high up in a tree near the cafe. All we could see was the back of him – no excitement there!  We missed out on the tour of the tea plantation (Nerada is the largest supplier of tea in Aus) so continued on to Gallo Dairyland and indulged in extravagant cheese, chocolate, and ice cream purchases.

SOCIALIZING IN THE TABLELANDS – Even though there is less socializing happening during these times, we seem to still meet fellow travellers and enjoy sharing stories, playing ukes, and playing games. Ran into fellow Explorer owners, Jeff and Sue, in a Herbeton car park, had drinks with the neighbors, Wendy & Colin, in a Caravan Park (CP) on Lake Tinaroo, had a great uke playing session with Shelley in a Mareeba CP and then enjoyed catching up with Geoff & Vicki and learning a new game, Sequence, with them.

The Historic Village at Herbeton is the largest privately owned historic village in Aus and its set within 16 acres of beautifully landscaped grounds.  Its a living museum experience and has been laid out to resemble a tin mining town with a garage, newspaper office, butchers, chemist, grocery store, frock salon, toy shop, coach house, tractor shed, radio store and tool shed; all stocked with period wares.

In 2008 the owners, Craig and Connie Kimberley were on a driving holiday and spotted the closed attraction.  Five months later, they owned it and undertook extensive restoration and repair projects to reflect everyday life in FNQ as it was from the 1880’s onwards.

 

PS – WE LOVE OUR BOOTS!!! They’ve looked after us well and taken us hundreds of kilometers into interesting places.

 

 

We had not heard of Paronella Park until recently when it was raved about by a couple of different groups of people. Although we are not usually attracted to manmade settings, this sounded different and interesting – AND IT WAS!

The park embodies the story of one man, Jose Paronella, and his dream to build a castle in Australia.  Jose arrived in Australia from Spain in 1913.  He worked in copper mining and cane cutting before creating his wealth by buying land, developing it and selling it as cane farms.  It is a great story which is now being made into a movie and has already been published in a book.  Its a family saga as well as a historical update on life in far north Queensland; from Jose’s arrival in 1913 and his family’s development and management of the park until 1977, to the current owners’ endeavours from 1993 to the present day.

Short version timeline -1913 – Jose arrives in Aus and makes a fortune. 1924 – Jose returns to Spain to his fiancee who he did not write to the 11 years he was away. After 6 years she married another, so Jose married her younger sister. After a year of touring around Europe, they returned to Aus.1929 – Jose bought the land of his dreams and began building. They built their cottage, the grand staircase, entertainment area and cafe, movie theatre/ballroom (with a ball of mirrors) , a park (planted more than 7000 trees including the Avenue of Kauris) around a lake and a waterfall.  1933 – Jose built North Queensland’s first hydro electric plant to power his 13 acre park. The local region got electricity in the 1960’s and Jose had it at his park in the 1930’s.1935 – Paronella Park opened to the public!

 

Various natural disasters impacted the park: logs from an upstream clearing swept thru and destroyed the refreshment rooms (1946), a fire swept thru the Castle (1979), Cyclone Winifred hit (1986), Cyclone Larry (2006), Cyclone Yasi (2011).

1948 – Jose died. Jose’s family continued to run the park until it was sold in 1977.

1993 – Mark and Judy Evans discovered and bought the almost lost park that had been abandoned for many years.  They envisaged reviving Jose’s dream.

2009 – The original hydro turbine was refurbished (in Germany). All electricity at the park comes from the waterfall via the 1930’s turbine.

2009 – Paronella Park was voted No. 1 “Must Do” in Queensland by over 150,000 people in an RACQ ‘Must Do’ promotion.

We did the day tour and the night tour.  The day tour gave us the history and a tour of all the park and the night tour gave us a light and music show.

In keeping with our past pattern, we headed for another beach camp and ended up in the Russell River NP at Graham Range campground; where walking on the beach is the only activity on offer.  It was a good opportunity to deal with catchup projects, emails, regular maintenance, blog work and Uke practices etc. After 3 nights I was very ready to leave!

Next stop was Wonga Beach for a visit with Chris and Chris.  It felt a bit like coming home! We enjoyed quite a few days of generous hospitality in their lovely home.  Even got to attend a neighbor’s party,  enjoy lunch out, go clothes shopping in Port Douglas and get my hair cut.  Were also spoiled with a day trip to Cape Tribulation where we saw lots of beautiful places we wouldn’t have found on our own.

Chris and Chris joined us for a few days camping, so our little convoy headed off to Chillagoe via Mareeba and a lunch stop in Dimbulah.  When we arrived at the Chillagoe Observatory and Eco Lodge, we were greeted as VIP’s by the owner, Ian Porter, who is an old friend of David Ridings, the owner of Explorer Motorhomes.  Ian was very helpful with lots of info on where to go etc.

Our next camp was at Kingsborough, which originally was a significant township on the Hodgkinson River, where gold was discovered in 1876.  By the 1880’s that general area was reported to have had a population of 10,000.  Very interesting to imagine what was once there, when today there is one station where we stayed and lots of abandoned mining equipment.  

Evidence of aboriginal habitation at Mt Mulligan dates back 37,000 years making it the oldest dated site in Queensland.  Another sorry history here as from the 1880’s to the 1950’s, the aboriginal people were massacred or forcibly removed.  Some returned to country in 1930-1945 and native title rights were recognised in 2012.

Three coal seams sere mined from 1914-1958 and by 1921 Mt Mulligan was a township of 300 people.  A railway to Dimbulah was built in 1915.  On 19 September 1921 a coal dust explosion ripped through the mine and the 75 men in it were killed.  This was the third largest mining disaster in Australia’s history.  The mine closed in 1957 and the town was abandoned in 1958.

Deciding that we wanted to see more caves, we headed back to Chillagoe.

In spite of travel restrictions and social distancing, the Chillagoe Caves are busier than normal, even taking into account smaller tour numbers.  We managed to book a guided afternoon tour and then had time to do a self-guided tour, have lunch and a rest, before the guided tour.  It was 34C so quite draining outside.

By the end of the tour we figured we had “done the caves” and were ready to move on.