One night stands - Bowen, Clairview and Tannum Sands - 4th-6th September 2011

Anne here - We now began to trek south in earnest to meet our deadlines.   We could have done with an extra day to visit Wallaman Falls, but I have put the seven 'waterfall' national parks in North Queensland's coastal hinterland back on the bucket list until we can do a visit during the wet season.  

Our first stop was at Bowen staying at the same Top Tourist park on the Fort Dennison side, although we have decided we will not stay here again – the cleanliness of the amenities did not match the price demanded.   We unhitched and went for a drive.  Once again we had reached town on a weekend and after 1pm Saturday nothing is open.  The lure of the beaches was strong and we visited Horse Shoe Bay, Rose Bay and Port Dennison again.

Rose Bay, Bowen - Qld

(Double click on any photo to enlarge)

Looking across from the Port Dennison jetty to the marina, Bowen

It was disappointing to find the dugongs have moved on – I suppose the sea grass in the area is exhausted.  Only a lone turtle remained and he was floating, an indication of illness.   I did try to ring around to get him some attention but the local vets were not available and the turtle hospital at Reef HQ Aquarium in Townsville did not have an after-hours number listed for marine animal emergencies.

Next morning we travelled on to Clairview, between Camilla and St Lawrence. The Clairview Beach Holiday Park is opposite highway and railway line, but right on the beach and relatively quiet.  There is a licensed bar and they have a set meal menu at night. It would seem a very popular place with anglers year round as the beach, estuary and islands have a great reputation for their great fishing. The park ships in water used for drinking and showers, but the rest is bore water.  It was a pleasant enough stop-over with one of the locals feeding the lorikeets and another showing off the tricks his dog could do.  Jim got a chance to swap helpful tips with one of the caravaners parked next to us.

Looking north along Clairview Beach

Looking south along Clairview Beach

In the morning we headed south, stopping briefly at Malborough to fill up with diesel.  We stopped at the local park for lunch and found this bird which the locals called Lazy Jacks, but are really Apostle Birds

Apostle Bird at Marlborough, Qld

Tannum Sands is south of Boyne Island and Gladstone and a place we visited briefly and marked for a future stop. The caravan owners had taken over four days before and the amenities had been recently renovated.  We took the opportunity to do the washing.  It is really a very quiet, clean caravan park with the odd Eastern Grey Kangaroo and Kookaburra and really worth more than one day, but we were hurrying south towards Hervey Bay.

Eastern Grey Kangaroos at Tannum Sands

The Kookaburras visit the neighbours at Tannum Sands

Ingham - 1-3 September 2011

The Canecutter Way took us down from Paronella Park through Mena Creek, Japoonvale and Silkwood to the Bruce Highway and then we went on to Ingham (as promised when we did not have time to stay on the way up). The area around Silkwood took some really heavy damage in the cyclones and will take some years yet to recover. We bypassed the winery at Murdering Point - in part because we have been almost tee-totalling this trip.

Ingham’s Palm Tree Caravan Park is a beauty, drive through sites, and the best little amenities block we have found on the trip, free clean BBQs plus a TV of watchable size in a well equipped and laid-out camp kitchen, a laundry and a handy dump point. The town provided good shopping opportunities and a haircut for me at $17.00 (cheapest I’ve had this century). Our weekend there coincided with the Aero and Veteran Motorcar Show at the local aerodrome and as Anne had hit the usual Caravan Park Trifector (Highway, railway and aerodrome) we had free ringside seats both at the caravan park and in the Tyto Wetlands.  Anne here: I could have added RAAF base testing jets + industrial area as in townsville. It was glorious to get back and clean up after the hot dry dusty tip to Undarra and back - Washing, cooking and getting clean occupied at least a day of my time and asthma did not make it any easier. 

Ingham airshow rehearsal
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I took the camera walking through the Tyto Wetlands and took a few shots of the planes doing aerobatics, some birds, wallabies and the sunset both as it set and its colour on some distant hills. One of the locals was doing his daily constitutional walk (pretty fast walk) through the place so we had a couple of conversations and he took me to see a wagtail nest. I noticed a lot of ant nests in the trees too. They are quite large, about the size of a 1 kilo bag of muesli.

Heron at Tyto wetlands

Pretty-faced Wallaby

sunset at Tyto wetlands

Looking towards the sunset at Tyto wetlands 

Lookingaway from the sunset at Tyto wetlands

Spring has sprung - Willy Wag-Tail nest with eggs at Tyto Wetlands

Another couple in the park were singing the praises of the Palmura circuit so we took an afternoon and drove down to the giant Roman arch stone bridge over Little Chrystal creek which was built in the 1930s.  We also visited various waterfalls and popular local waterholes and picnic places, but Anne was in no condition to climb up and down hills due to asthma so we abandonned it after a while.

Roman Arch stone bridge over Little Chrystal creek

(This photo from visit.Queensland.com.au)

another waterfall on the road into Little Chrystal Creek.

We did our usual exploring of the beaches (Forrest Beach, Taylors Beach and Lucinda) with views out across the Hinchinbrook Channel to Hinchinbrook Island. We drove out past the Victoria Sugar Mill Ingham(where they have a collection of the old sugar trains) to Lucinda where the 6km long offshore sugar loading jetty was damaged in the cyclones so there is a lot of sugar being trucked out by road and rail.

Sugar train in operation Victoria Sugar Mill

Sugar world shuttle Victoria Sugar Mill Ingham

Victoria Sugar Mill

Another of locos at Victoria Sugar Mill

We noticed a variety of birds foraging in the train tracks inshore of the vast loading facility – even the honey-eaters were there.  In the recently harvested cane fields surrounding Ingham we found flocks of brolgas and some Swamp(Marsh) Harriers.

Chestnut-breasted mannikins at the Lucinda Sugar Loading Facility

Swamp (Marsh) Harrier taking off from among a group of pied herons ( they appear to ignore each other) in a recently harvested sugar cane field

The same bird in flight over the fields

Brolgas working over sugar cane fields Ingham

Paronella Park - 31 August 2011

Paronella Castle ruins

Paronella Park is indeed special. José Paronella a very energetic Spaniard came to cut cane in Queensland, made some money, bought a run-down sugar farm, built it up and sold at a profit, repeated that formula until he was very very rich, went home to find that his fiancée had married another (he had not written in 12 years), married the younger sister, toured Europe looking at gardens and castles, came back to Australia in 1929 and bought 30 acres of rainforest with two waterfalls next to a road. Over the next few years he and his wife built Paronella Park. He used the major waterfall to power a hydro electric generator that has been restored and now generates more power than the complex requires so feed some into the grid.

The Main Falls at Paronella Park

The building that houses the generator

The castle he built had all the trappings of a castle including a ballroom with a huge mirrored ball and a stage for visiting entertainers. There were fountains flowing from cleverly channelled waterfall water, a swimming and rowing pond with ‘pet’ fish, turtles and eels, tennis courts, picnic tables and refreshment rooms, change areas, delightful walks in the forest and marvellous vistas of the waterfalls.

The top of the castle

The back of the castle and the fountain

Close-up of the lilly pond and fountain

The fish and Tortoises line up to be fed

Mircobats in the park

He hand-dug a long ditch and recovered it to form a tunnel, complete with ticket office, to bring people from one area to a small freshwater spring fed second waterfall which he had named after his daughter,Teresa.

Teresa Falls

This waterfall provided hot and cold running water and flushing toilets in his house. The tunnel was intended as a huge aquarium but when that proved unfeasible he grew mushrooms which were sold at local markets. Unfortunately he used the local sand in his concrete and the high silica content attracted water which rusted the metal of the railway line he used in his suspended floors, roofs and columns hence there is a tremendous problem of concrete cancer that will slowly destroy what is left by the fires, years of neglect by previous owners and the climatic incidents such as cyclone Larry. Although even Larry had a benefit in that it knocked down a huge old tree that had grown to interrupt one of the lines of sight of the waterfall through the ground-floor arches of the castle.

An avenue of Kauri Trees planted by Jose that provides a vista back to the waterfall

Another avenue affording a view to the waterfall

The swimming area and the outdoor dining area

One of our guides at Paronella Park is a local and his enthusiasm for the place clashes with that of his grandmother who came there frequently as a girl and a young woman. The grandmother remembers the park and the Paronella family in their glory. It is at once sad to see the decay and uplifting to listen to the people enjoying and marvelling at this wonderful place so effectively brought to life by the people who work there.  

If you would like to see more of Paronella Park, here is a link:
http://www.paronellapark.com.au/index.html

We were fortunate to capture a number of unusual birds on film while we were there:

Forest Kingfisher

catbird - difficult to catch on film - so fast.

Metallic starlings

Millaa Millaa - 30 August 2011

Millaa Millaa is the beginning of another waterfall way. The Caravan Park is managed by a couple of Thick Knees in the absence of the people who think they are in charge. The Birds gave us a warning that we should not be wandering around until we had formally checked in and kept a very close eye on us until we had. 

The Security Detail

Double click on any photo to enlarge to full size

Anne here: Just so you know who is in charge - the Millaa Millaa Women for Culture and Community have a number of statues round town.  This one is called 'the reluctant cow'.

It rained a fine rain the night we stayed there. Anne decided to nurse the beginnings of a cold and I took a look at a few of the many waterfalls in the district. 

Millaa Millaa Falls

Zillie Falls

Ellinjaa Falls

In the morning I was able to drive Anne in to see the Millaa Millaa falls which were quite accessible by car before we fuelled up at the general store. This store carries most things in reasonable quantities including groceries, hardware, electrical goods, clothing and the fuel outside.  Anne here: It was strange to buy bread and milk (low-fat jersey - a contradictionin terms) both locally produced.  We returned to the camping ground in time to checkout and set off again for a two day stay at Paronella Park

Undarra Lava Tubes 28-29 August 2011

The drive out to the Undara Lava Tubes took us through Ravenshoe where we found this school

and this pub

and then past the little Millstream Falls to whet our appetite for the Millaa Millaa experience. We found that the advertised dirt road is now a very nice bitumen road all the way in to the camp and we amused by this sign. 

Somehow the person who had taken all our details when we booked it a couple of weeks ago had failed to record anything of the conversation. So we wasted a bit of time on a very dodgy internet trying to find out if we had been charged. Fortunately we were able to get the ‘last site’ – we met two other couples that afternoon who got the ‘last site’ too! (it seems to be a thing the caravan park receptionists do - give out a series of ‘last sites’). After all that we rebooked for the sunset tour and for the Lava Tubes the next day.

The sunset tour was mostly by vehicle spotting fauna and flora – lots of different species of kangaroo and wallaby, a Wedge Tailed Eagle and (after a short climb to a hilltop) a champers and orange juice with cheese platter while we took in the sunset – complete with distant rain shower caught in the evening light. This got us to the entrance of one of the Lava Tubes in time for the evening departure of the bats. From a platform halfway across the entrance to the tube we were able to watch the bats against the sky and were given several opportunities to ‘go mad with the flashes and photograph as fast as you can’ in an attempt to catch some bats in flight – Anne had more success than I did. We gave the evening campfire talk on stars a miss to get up fairly early for the Lava Tube Tour.

Pale-headed Rosella at Undara

Bats emerging from the lava tubes for the evening feed of insects

The Tubes are spectacular and the tour guide burst all the myths I had heard in the sixties of these mysterious tubes caused by volcanic actions that were unexplored and dangerous as they ran for ran for hundreds of miles, were big enough for cattle to disappear into, were sometimes filled with water and other times not and the air in them could be poisonous. These myths, however, reflected the early cattleman’s views for a hundred years of grazing in the area. Then one of the Collins boys (Brian) started to take an interest and get professionals out to investigate, study and survey the tubes. Based on the information he gained the Collins Family were able to buy up the relevant properties and deal with the Queensland National Parks people to have the area not only declared a National Park but to retain a licence to enable public visitation to this unique site. The statistics of this volcanic site are staggering with lava flows of 90k in one direction and 160k in another and enough lava to create these tubes or fill Sydney Harbour in six days but the flow went on for many many years.

Normally one can walk right through this passage, but after the heavy wet season this section is flooded

The only fruit bat in Undara - it became lost, died and then mummified!

Looking back at the roof cave-in that allows access to this part of the tube

Anne ventures into the knee deep water in the other section of the lava tube

In the afternoon Anne and I took a trip out to the Kalkani Crater which is a very neat volcanic crater now supporting a wide range of trees, shrubs and grasses so it is impossible to get a photo from the rim that does justice to this almost symmetrical crater.

In the morning we stopped at the Fourty Mile scrub to have a look at the rainforest there - so different from the savannah forest at Undarra.  We saw this broad leaved Bottle tree - taller and slimmer than the ones at Roma

Broad-leaved bottle tree at the Fourty Mile Scrub on the Savannah Way

Anne here:  One tip - if you decide to visit go out there on day, stay the night and do either your crater walk or the sunset tour, stay in the caravan park and then pack up and park in the public carpark before you do your day tour through the Arch cave.  It will save you a night's accommodation.  The facilities leave something to be desired at the price they are charging.  Below is a link to Undara's website if you are interested in how these lava tubes are formed or in the microbats

http://undara.com.au/lava-tubes/tunnels-to-a-wildlife-underworld/

Anne here: Somehow with all the up and down the mountains and out to Undara and then back into the tablelands rainforest area I developed a cold and of course some asthma so of course I could not do much walking for a day or two, so Jim took this pix of the Millstream waterfall for me just outside Ravenshoe.