Off We Go Again

16th August

After a week relaxing in Cairns after our flying trip we are on the road again. Our time in Cairns was filled with relaxing, doing some research and unlocking another “missing link”into Philips late fathers war service on the Atherton Tablelands, visiting a few tourist spots and a few not so tourist spots and then organising to head off again. In all a totally enjoyable week.

17th. And we are off. Not sure where to, but our first stop will be Chillagoe, up over the range and heading west. We are amazed at the agriculture west of Mareeba. Mainly sugar cane with a sugar mill at Aguirre for processing, also mangoes, pawpaws, avocados, table grapes and essential oils. This makes for some very pretty agricultural scenery. There is also a massive wind farm being constructed on the hills in the distance which adds to the views.

Part of the road follows the Savannah Lander train line before turning south at Almaden. This train is now just a tourist ride from Cairns to Forsayth. This is considered one of Australia’s iconic rail journeys and is definitely on our bucket list. It winds up the Kuranda Range from Cairns, through the wet tropics to the Savannah lands of Forsayth and return over a period of four days while travelling in a “silver bullet” rail motor. Several years ago we had a taster of this, doing a short trip from Forsayth and return of several hours. We stopped for a wander at several of the old stations along the route.

Closer to Chillagoe we pass several old marble quarries. Great blocks of marble (20 tonne blocks) were mined here at over 40 different locations with varying colours from pure white to pinks and oranges. Chillagoe is a quaint little town with only four shops, two pubs, a fuel station and two caravan parks/hotels and a few houses. Population is 192. After parking we unleashed the push bikes and went for a ride round town. Stopping at the cafe for an iced coffee, the hardware store, which has a bit of everything and across the road to the general store, where the owners live in the back of the store. This has everything that the hardware store doesn’t, except ice creams, which we we going to get except all the packets in the ice cream fridge were empty, we are still not sure why they were keeping the boxes frozen. We also visited the info centre and booked a tour of one of the local caves. There are several tour options one of which is done in the dark with torches. Guess which one Philip wanted to do. But no, we booked Trezkinn cave tour for tomorrow, thankfully.

(P- shhhhh – see what tomorrow brings as the self guided Cave is my agenda in the morning!)

After returning to the caravan we went for a swim and then had a delicious dinner while sitting outside enjoying the gorgeous evening. No breeze, still 25 degrees at 8pm and a glorious sky. We could have wandered up to the outdoor movie screen to watch Star Wars, but as neither of us like this movie we just enjoyed the evening.

18th Aug. Saturday.

A leisurely breakfast and the housework (P- fairly sure that took all of 10 minutes)- this morning then we drove to Trezkinn Cave for our tour. This cave is one of a series of caves on the outskirts of Chillagoe. The Stainless steel catwalk circles a huge mass of limestone with spectacular stalactites and stalagmites, shawls and a very impressive stalactite cluster called the “chandelier”. Inside the cave there are 250 ladder like steps to ascend and descend. Quite impressive. After the tour we talked to the ranger about the road that we want to take over the next few days and got some great tips from him.

(P- it was quite amazing the difference in the predominantly dry Limestone Cave colours and features compared to our very wet Tasmanian Limestone Caves.)

From the cave we drove round the road and after a short walk through some pretty specky scenery we found the Balancing Rock. A massive limestone rock balanced precariously on another outcrop. There are many limestone outcrops or bluffs throughout this area and it makes for some great vistas. After a recommendation from the ranger we stopped at the Post Office Hotel and had a delicious hamburger for lunch.

After lunch (P- I am sure there may have been a drink to wash the burger down that Judith omitted to share), we drove out to the old smelter, just out of town. The slag heap here is the largest slag heap left in Queensland. The smelter operated during the early 1900’s. There are three chimneys still standing, the Pre Treatment chimney, the Powerhouse Chimney and the main Smelter Chimney on the top of the hill. Between 1901 and 1943 The smelter treated 1,250,000 tonnes of ore and produced 60,000 tones of copper over 37 years, 50,000 tonnes of Lead over 25 years, 6,500,000 ounces of silver and 175,000 ounces of gold.

Back at the park we cooled off with a nice swim in the pool before cooking roast lamb for dinner and preparing some gear to take with us for the next couple of days. We are leaving the van here and tenting so we can go into some more mining areas which aren’t suitable for vans.

Again we have a beautiful evening, no breeze and still 29 degrees at 6pm.

Another great day in this wonderful country.

(P – a very pleasant change to our time in Cairns -although we do enjoy a short visit there. Great to be amongst country people, more yarns and stories to be swapped and way more to learn about our history)