Queensland continued

Russ at the wheel of 'the Tallabrook'

We had a great couple of days in Port Douglas relaxing on the beach and eating out at the restaurants. 4 mile beach is beautiful with hard sand that you can run and cycle on and hire sun lounges (like Bali!!). We went out to the Low Iles for some snorkelling on a historic sailing boat ‘The Tallabrook’ which was great. The coral is so much more colourful here than the Ningaloo reef. We saw heap of different brightly coloured fish and little Nemo fish which was cool.

Enjoying the ride

Horney turkey showing off

Following a day in Cairns we went out to Granite Gorge Nature park in Mareeba where we camped for the night. This is a lovely spot with some nice walking trails, and you can hand feed the little wallabies. The following day we went to coffee world which is this incredible place where you can try a dozen different types of coffee, different teas, liqueurs and chocolates. There is a museum with everything coffee related. We were buzzing after visiting coffee world!! We drove onto Innersfail and went to the Innersfail Show which was cool, but Russ wouldn’t go on any scary rides with me : (

Sneaky wallabies trying to get at Russ' food

 

Me feeding the wallaby

Our next stop was Paronella park which was cool. It is a castle that this guy José Paronella built in the early 1900’s. It has been severely damaged a number of times due to floods and is being eroded, but it is really pretty and situated by a couple of waterfalls. You can camp there the night and do a night tour of it which is cool.

Beautiful Butterfly at Paronella Park

Waterfall at Paronella Park with the grand staircase

Another waterfall at Paronella Park

View from the suspension bridge, Paronella Park

Paronella Park at night

The following day we drove through Mission Beach, Tully, Cardwell and Silkwood which were all severely hit by Cyclone Yasi. There are still houses without roofs and the rainforest has been striped to just sticks!! We continued down the coast to Townsville. We were going to spend a couple of days here and then continue down the coast, however the weather remained overcast and cold and the weather forecast wasn’t getting any better (which isn’t fun when your camping!!!) so we decided to leave the coast and head inland towards Uluru.

Banjo Patterson statue, Walzing Matilda Centre, Winton

We went to Winton to see the Waltzing Matilda Centre which is a huge visitors centre with all sorts of Australian Historic memorabilia, with a particular focus on the swagman and Waltzing Matilda song. It was really good and you could spend a whole day there reading and looking at everything. We camped at Mary Kathleen ruins which is an old mining town that is now deserted. There are still housing slabs everywhere, and roads, but all the building materials have been removed, its quite eerie.

We continued onto Mt Isa, and as we came into phone reception Russ started to receive phonecalls and emails from all over about his you-tube vid (Dog has a ride on shark). He spoke to Sunrise and set up the interview with them in Alice Springs. We couldn’t believe how much interest there was in the video and were happy to get out of phone range so that we couldn’t be contacted about it.