Cairns (for Feb. 26)

Wouldn’t you know that, as soon as I make some generalizations, they cease to be consistent. The weather stayed beautiful through yesterday afternoon, evening, and this morning. There was a little bit of cloud build up today, but nothing serious. Only a bit of drizzle in late afternoon. And those scattered hills became a range of hills/mountains to the west of us all day.

Before leaving Townsville, we checked out their Sunday morning market. It was a bit of a disappointment. There was nothing special there – mostly the same old arts and crafts you would see at home. The main difference was the produce. Here there is fresh mango, pineapple, star fruit, passion fruit, avocado, etc. compared to the carrots and lettuce at home.

We hit the road at 11 and drove through some forested parkland. Even when we weren’t in parkland, there was a corridor of trees on each side of the road most of the time. When you could see through, there was sugar cane again, mango orchards, and cattle grazing. Eventually, the land became more open and the same land uses were evident. As we went further north we also began to see bananas.



I had planned for a decision point at Innisfail, 80 km south of Cairns. If we reached there in good time, we would turn inland to the Atherton Tablelands. If not, we would drive straight through to Cairns. We arrived at Innisfail at 2:30 a little late, but still doable, and decided to take the detour. We first drove 65 km west, stopping at Millaa Millaa Falls. As we left the coastal area, at first we drove through very green rolling hills with grazing cattle and a little sugar cane. That gave way to thick rainforest as we climbed the steeper face of the tableland. At the top, I expected more rainforest, but, instead, it opened up into rolling grazing land. It was very green and hilly, looking like Switzerland without the Alps. Apparently there is a large dairy industry here.

We turned north for 75 km and the further we went, the flatter and drier the land became. It must be in a bit of a rain shadow, something like the Okanagan, from a couple of larger mountains nearer to the coast. Although there was still some grazing, we started to get into more sugar cane again, and then corn became predominant. There was now a real mixture, with some bananas thrown in, a couple of wineries, mangoes, and irrigated coffee and strawberries. We turned east for 50 km and the land became hillier again, mostly covered with scrubby forest and cattle grazing, then becoming thicker forest, although never becoming like the rainforest we had climbed through originally. Finally, we made a steep descent from the plain on 15 km of curvy road that Tony Jones would love, and drove the last 15 km on the coastal plain, arriving at our hotel at 7. After a bit of touring around, we settled in for the next few days.

We learned one of the advantages of a bus tour at Millaa Millaa Falls. Entering the area a sign directed cars to one parking area and buses to another. I figured they needed a special place for buses due to their size. Like good law-abiding Saskatchewanians (suckers) we drove to the car park and walked down the 50+ steps only to find the bus parking area right at the foot of the falls!