Yungaburra, Atherton, Herberton to Lake Jumna

We stay two nights in Yungaburra at the RV park. Awesome wildlife. An awesome powered camp with wild animal feeding - and we saw Platypus in the wild also.

Drive out to see the "Curtain Fig"

(not our Platypus photo)

At Yungaburra we attended the Folk festival.

(I'll attach more photos here soon)

We uploaded Episode 13 - We Get Going while we still had good internet coverage. There link to watch it is here

I (Darren) decided to change over to a 80GB plan with Amaysim form herein, which means we have both Telstra and Optus going forward - although unlikely to have any coverage for the next 10 or so days. We will see.

We did a day drip down to Ravenshoe, and did the waterfall loops back to Yungaburra (which is an ideal base for the Tablelands). We stopped at the Windfarm.

Great Waterfalls. 

We did a day trip to Herberton to see the Old Village there - this is well worth a see!!. Spend a good two days here.

We set out for our next camp which was at Lake Jumna. Quite a rough road in (the old Petford road). More info on the camp here

And it was Low Range and a bit of slipping to get the van up to the camp site - but well worth it.

On the way out we used the Hill Decent feature on the Prado in low range, we reckon you would not get out without it - as it was too rocky and crumbly and steep - the TRC managed our way down safely from the camp with the heavy van pushing on the back (sure glad I got those brakes done!). 

Before breakfast the following day we drive only 10 mins to Irvinebank and stay right here - again amazing. See next Post when I get back online.

Cairns, Kuranda, Speewah to Kauri Creek at Lake Tinaroo

 

After Cairns, we headed up the Kuranda Range and the Prado handed it very nicely towing the van).

We drove into our Prebooked campsite at Speewah.

Here we saw Bandicoots and a lot of birdlife. It is a gorgeous national parks site. We had reasonable 4G connection here in Camp # 1. We unhitched so we could explore Kuranda and locked up the van securely.

Loved the Railway Station - its really worth seeing

We walked from the Station along the Esplanade River Walk up by the main road and back into Kuranda to explore the shops. Here we had a kangaroo pie ... sorry Skip !

We stayed at Speewah 2 nights before heading to Kauri Creek via Mareeba.

Stopping in Mareeba we used a Laundromat to get some washing done. Tried to visit a Wind farm but had to turn around on the one land access road that was blocked (this with the caravan on lol).

At the dam (road not suitable for caravans, it was easy)

Camp all set up

Babinda Boulders to Cairns

We decided to leave Babinda Boulder Camp a little early, so we packed up that after noon and went for a quick swim before we left.

Getting away from Babinda Boulders in the afternoon we headed about 40 mins north to Gordonvale where there is a rest area just south of the town.

A great overnight stop, but the facilities were quite badly maintained. We stayed at Gordonvale for the night.

Arriving in Cairns approx 8am we;

• Dropped of a Fire Extinguisher at the Cairns Toyota dealership for Tully Toyota to collect
• We dropped into a Brake and Clutch place just as they opened to check a squeak we have in our front left wheel (all seemed to be ok). 
• We filled our two Gas bottles (as both had just run out - perfect timing
• Had a swim in the awesome lagoon !

Headed out to Smithfiend for Groceries etc before heading up the range to Kuranda.

Tully to Babinda Boulders

We left Caboolture by train (10 Oct) toward Tully.

 
It was a much better trip than our trip down, bit still very tiring.
The train ran late - making the whole trip 24 hours.

Pretty uneventful except nearly being kicked off the train for taking on our own food.

We arrived at Paronella Park on the 10th. Stayed the night and did the night tour. You must do this !.
$52 per head but that includes camping. Paronella is about an hour north of Tully.

Then after just a 45 min drive on Thursday we arrived at the awesome town of Babinda. 

We stopped at South Johnston to see the funky pub.

In Babinda we found the Best Bakery, Best Butcher and the people are actually really friendly.

We stayed a few day to enjoy the creeks at Babinda Boulders (5 kms out of town).

Croc free swimming.
We felt super rested from our months long ordeal. 

It was well worth a few days here.

We left on Sunday (its normally a 1 hour trip to Cairns) and we just went 30 mins to stop at Green Patch Camp Ground (free) - then an early start tomorrow morning to Cairns.

The car is running really well, and the van is also perfect.

We plan to have a day in Cairns to visit Chef Ruthie, do some food and supply shopping, have a swim and fill Gas Bottles etc. Then we are booked at Speewah Camp for Monday and Tuesday night so we can take a look around Kuranda. Below is a map of this area.