The beginning of the week was spent enjoying tasty bakery goods in Ravenshoe, an old school bakery, like the good old days when everything tasted good, and you couldn’t help but wanting to go back again and again, like we did 3 times! (In one hour). Here we also found our first passion fruits and bought up big! They were delicious and we have since found many more exotic fruits for Brett to fill up on!
After our bakery session we decided to head to the first of many waterfall excursions! Still on the outskirts of the rainforest, Mill stream falls was also an area where the army trained and rehabilitated troops during world war two. A short walk around the area uncovered old, tent sights, training areas and even toilet blocks from 1943.
From Millstream we entered the rainforest of the Misty Mountains, an absolutely beautiful area with tiny winding roads and intimidating, giant drop offs into the jungle below. Along the drive we checked out some more falls which meant the start of many jungle treks trying to avoid the stinging nettle tree, the “stop you dead” barbed tentacle vine, leaches mosquitoes and other crazy looking insects.
The firsts few falls were deffinlaty our favourites because as you entered the waterfall loop of Milla Milla, the hoards of tourists are worse than the mosquitoes! Mungalli Creek Biodynamic Dairy Farm was our next stop, unfortunately we arrived late in the afternoon so all we got was a few tastings, the plan was to head back to devour more of its goodness the next day, but Bob decided to change our plans.
As we slowly climbed the tiny windy roads, up some not so tiny hills, Bob failed to keep his cool for the second time of the trip. (Even though the poor bugger is carrying a few 1000kgs on his back). Pulling over on these roads in most circumstances is not possible, there is no road to pull off on, unless you feel like a thousand meter vertical tumble. So up the hill we were climbing, slowly watching the temperature gauge heating up, trying to find somewhere to pull over without ending our lives. Luckily we found a half decent spot on the top of a hill where Bob could cool down for half an hour. Camp was only 20km away down hill so after a quick stop we cruised down to a very beautiful camping area, Nandroya, right in the middle of the rain forest.
After our recent mechanical problem and many hours behind the wheel we were over being in the car. So we decided to stretch the legs and put some K’s under our feet instead of behind the wheel. Early Friday morning saw us walking the Nandroya loop down to a number of beautiful waterfalls. Hearing that the track was quite muddy we decided to tackle the trail in our thongs, which seemed like a logical idea at the time although we had no idea of the conditions on the walk.
Once we were well into our trek though the forest we realised that it probably would have been a wiser move to wear shoes, especially since the walk ended up being over 4.5km long. One of the main reasons the thongs were such a hindrance, aside from getting stuck in the mud all the time, was when Meegan started noticing all the weird looking little worms that were being flicked up onto her legs. When we looked a little closer we realised that these worms had began sucking the blood out of Meegan's legs. We soon figured out that our beloved thongs were actually helping the nasty little blood suckers onto some prime, juicy flesh. So sure enough every ten minutes we would have to stop and do a leach check. At one stage with Meegan screaming bloody murder, we found the little buggers had managed to find prime real-estate between our toes.
Needless to say the walk and waterfalls were beautiful and since we didn’t meet anyone else on the track it was nice just to have the entire area to ourselves.
Figuring we needed to get to a major town or at least somewhere to receive mobile phone coverage we scooted on to Innisfail. Along the way we stopped at many of the roadside fruit stalls to stock up on cheap, yummy, plentiful fruity goodness. A quick stop in Innisfail (the wettest city in Australia, receiving over 8 meters of rain a year) to stock up on food, we then headed to a camp spot for the night.
Anyone that owns a GPS will know how unpredictable these handy little devises are. Sometimes they are unable to tell their heads from their asses. Not knowing where we were or where we were going we put our trust into our Navman. For some reason the cheeky little bugger decided to take us right into Deliverance country. We could hear the banjo’s strumming away in the background as we drove thru a few km’s of sugar cane fields, along some apparent road. But luckily the little man and his redneck mates we unable to capture the almighty BOB, and we were delivered safely to camp just outside of Babinda.
Saturday we slowly made our way though the thousands of crazy pink cyclists doing a charity ride from Townsville to Cairns. We had a laugh at the colourful language coming from the Truck drivers on the two-way, who were not too impressed with the holdups the cyclists were creating. Brett got a free didge lesson in town and we spent the rest of the day at Babinda Boulders. This place was pretty amazing, the swimming hole was yet another small piece of heaven we have found. The water was so crystal clear and the back drop so peaceful and relaxing you felt like you never wanted to leave!
That night we stayed 20k out of cairns at Gordonvale, we arrived pretty late, and as per usual after we set up and start cooking dinner the “Bob Show” was on. The “Bob Show” refers to the amount of people we have being basically bedazzled by the resourcefulness and uniqueness of Bob. The feedback we have been getting has absolutely blown us away, as you will hear in a few stories coming up later in the piece.
Through this we have been meeting some pretty vibrant characters. This particular night at Gordonvale there was a strange man who was travelling around with his pet cockatoo who came over and introduced himself, and a Belgian couple who were on there first night ever camping. Mr Belgian was quite concerned that he wouldn’t be able to get out of one of the seven or eight ten meter gaps between caravans the next morning, he kept coming out at all hours of the night with his little torch to check no one else had come in to block his exit.
Later in the night when most of the campers were tucked in is when it started to get a little interesting. To start with the strange cockatoo man had a little brown dog; it refused to shut up the entire night. Instead of getting out and calming the dog down or bringing it inside, he insisted on yelling from his bed in a very loud drunken stupor “Shut the %$#^ up, you’ll wake the lovely people up”. Therefore further disturbing the 50 campers within very close proximity to old mates caravan. At about 12o’clock he suddenly decided to jump out of bed, (quiet heavily boozed up) and into his car, and he took off down the road. Luckily the dog was still alive the next morning as we both thought he maybe had decided to go and chuck it in to the river to give the crocs a feed.
The rest of the night was filled with lots of yelling from the locals camping down on the river, casually taking dips in the croc infested waters. As well as shouting and beeping from the cars crossing over the bridge above the campsite and of course Mr Belgian’s little torch tours every hour checking his escape route.
Sunday morning we headed into cairns to the Rusty markets, the fruit and veg over here is pretty amazing, Brett is in heaven. In the arvo we tried to get out to Crystal Cascades but the road was blocked. Spent the after noon listening to a live band on the Cairns foreshore then headed out to a new land release to find a block to park up on for the night. Found an awesome block, high on a hill with amazing views only 2 minutes from the Crystal Cascades. Woke early Monday morning to walk down to the cascades then headed into cairns to drop Bob at the mechanic.
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