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Water’s edge Apartments, Cairns, Queensland, Australia

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Australian word of the day: Wallaby – a small kangaroo-like animal. Photographs especially well when being fed by young children.

We had a good night’s sleep and a relatively calm morning yesterday before heading off to explore Australia nature. We drove east to where the tropics meet the outback, a place known as the Atherton Tableland. On the roads were signs warning of kangaroos present. Every few miles you see some roadkill; I hope we won’t run over something driving around here.

Our first station was a small park called Granite Gorge. We got there just before noon. The big attraction was a group of rock wallabies that we fed with pellets we got from the park “ranger”. The animals are wild, but seem to have been trained to hear humans approach. When we walked to their area in the rocks it took no more than 3 minutes for these mini-kangaroos to come out of their hiding places in the shade of the rocks and started to eat right out of our hands. Very cute. The children went wild with glee.

We then scrambled on the rock path for 10 minutes before reaching a nice cool swimming hole. The water was cool and refreshing albeit deep, so the kids had to take turns riding on daddy’s back as I swam. The water was filled with fish and small turtles.

We left the park and drove on to Lake Tinaroo, and artificial body of water created when a dam was built here. We had a late lunch in a funky restaurant overlooking the lake and then took the kids to a playground on the water’s edge.

Our last stop for the day was Curtain Fig, a huge tree standing on roots hanging like a … curtain. The drive back to Cairns took just over an hour and by the time we got back it was already dark. The first part of the road was long winding, I think the most zigzagging road I have driven on.

Today we returned to the same general area, but a bit further south. We drove for almost two hours to the “waterfall circuit”. This is an area with several impressive waterfalls. We started off with Mungalli falls, where we walked down to the falls and back exactly at noon. By the time we got back to the starting point we were all drenched in sweat. Thankfully a cool breeze and a sandwich lunch helped us recover and we drove on to the most impressive falls – Millaa Millaa falls.

Millaa Millaa is a local Aboriginal word meaning Wet Wet. The water falls in a sheet into a nice round pool that is beautiful to look at but cold to swim in. I tried to coax the children to come in with me, but they were content to play in the muddy ankle high area. We spent a good hour enjoying these falls and then drove to Lake Eacham.

When we got to this small pristine lake, all the kids were sleeping, so Paola and I joined them in a quick nap, while Alfredo and Raquel walked around the lake. When we got up we spent some time on the banks of the lake, admiring a pelican couple gliding effortlessly on the water.

We drove back through the same road as yesterday (highway 52) and Paola got nauseous from all the turning and twisting. When we got into Cairns just past 6, we wanted to buy floaters for the kids for the swimming pool. But alas, all the stores except for the supermarket were closed. What gives? I thought Australia was part of the western culture.

Good Night,

-Hemi

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 29th, 2007 at 6:47 am and is filed under Australia, Big Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.