So remote, so eerie, so beautiful

We didn't spend much time on this route, as we’ve been up Daintree way before, so we headed inland on the Mulligan, winding our way slowly up the very long and winding narrow range road to Mount Molloy, and beyond. 

What we saw there surprised us. This far north we had expected Daintree vegetation. Thick, flourishing, tropical. Shiny, lush, green. Bursting with sapotes and dragon fruit. We were on the hunt for our first taste of sapote: the third part of our blog title. But we soon woke up we would not be finding them here. 

The route became drier and drier the longer we drove north. Grasses became browner. Leaves on trees drooped towards the ground, as if water might be there. The ground everywhere soon became pocked with termite hills, some in pyramid spires a metre tall, some in cathedral domes stockily taking up much more ground. The termites, we learned are not ants, but cockroaches. And they are vegetarians, loving their grasses and woods. Their homes are complex cellular constructions, honeycombed with laneways from east to west, as their activity tends to be closer to the edges of their buildings where they can maintain moisture and avoid the heat of the day. We found them endessly fascinating. 

Everywhere there are mountains. The mountains on all the routes we have taken have surprised us. We had not expected them to be with us every single day, and they have. Though, oftentimes, they are distant. Here, they are close. 

The Black Mountains loom large. Formed out of volcanic eruptions these mountains were once massive solid reefs of granite boring up from deep beneath the earth. The granite was very hot, but when cool rain hit the rock it literally exploded, fracturing into boulders, and gradually eroding away to pebbles. 

A coal-coloured lichen covers it all, ominously. Dreamtime tales tell us that once a headhunter who had a taste for human flesh ate a young and popular chieftan, and as punishment was banished into these hills. Since that time many folk have mysteriously disappeared into its cavernous depths never to reappear. So, today, there will be no picnic at this black rock for us: it is way too eerie. Even aircraft complain of strange turbulence as they fly over Black Mountain. Danger. Not just danger deep beneath, but also in the air. Add poisonous snakes to the mix and you have a good reason to move along quickly. 

The trees now are mainly eucalypts. I am amazed at how many different types there are. And, again this trip, I deplore the lack of natural science in our education system, for, though I have read that extraordinary piece of fiction: Eucalyptus, I hardly know which eucalypt a koala eats from, let alone am I able to identify these trees. And I wish to. They are so beautiful some of them. The ones I love have straight white trunks and might be ghost gums or poplar gums, or something else for all I know. I need a Which Tree is That? reference to leaf through, which I do not have and make a mental note to buy a copy, and bring it along next trip. Nor is there an internet connection enroute which might have helped the identification.

As well, there is a beautiful yellow flower, starting to appear on a leafless branching grey tree trunk. We have only seen it in one small cluster, enroute, but we keep looking for it everywhere now. It, too, is gorgeous and deserves a name. 

And there are brolgas. Since day one, Bec and I have been on the lookout for brolgas: my favourite birds, I think. Today we found two. They were drinking at a quiet lagoon full of floating waterlilies, but they would not let us photograph them at their prettiest. They saw us and hightailed it out of there, fleeing into hiding, so we could only catch a photo to them on the run. Such lovely birds. 

We stopped and had lunch by that beautiful lagoon and found egrets nesting in dry branched tree limbs, and colourful little birds dive-bombing to stay cool, and a single black cormorant lifting his wings in that idiotic, cooling off fashion they adopt that makes them look shaggy and ridiculous. 

Almost directly opposite our lagoon is an entrance to a nameless station: littered with termites, dry as dust earth, wire gate barbed and desiccated vegetation. How amazingly diverse this country is: such contrasts only metres apart?

We did, though, find coffee beans growing outside a coffee shop at Lakeland

Termite mounds pock the land

Eerie Black Mountains

Some white gums are smooth trunked; some are not

What flower is this? 

Brolgas, our favourite Australian birds

Waterlilies on our beautiful lagoon 

Dry, desolate station gate opposite the lagoon 

Tree huggers in the gorge

The beautifully run Daintree National Park (hectic with tourists being dropped off by the busload every ten to fifteen minutes) is a cool, refreshing change of pace from the traffic and tight roads. The beautiful walks to Mossman Gorge are lush, green and gorgeous, and the crowds disperse among the different walking tracks.    

Giant epiphytes hang from trunks that soar to find the sun. 

Fig seeds dropped by birds land high in many of these tall trees then send down roots seeking out moisture: hugging the trunk tight.  Enclosing it in a death grip.  We saw strangler figs wrapped around trunks that were once one and half metres in circumference.  Hollowed out now as the fig has sapped all its nutrition.  And you can see right through the hollowed interiors of what once were magnificent trees.   

The sound of water gushing is constant.  The flow powerful even now, and this is ‘the dry’.  In the wet season the strength and force of the running water is such that it is able to lift giant boulders, completely dislodging them, moving them further downstream, as if they were mere pebbles.  

The power of water never ceases to amaze us.  The older we get the more we are in awe of it. 

Tree huggers of one kind

Tree huggers of another: Strangler fig
hollowing out the trunk of the host
tree

Boulders moved like pebbles by rushing water from
the mountains

Bursting at the seams

The crowds continue as we head north. Rain was hanging from thick wet clouds in the mountains this morning so we decided to leave the tablelands till our return trip, waiting for better weather and instead headed towards Cairns. 

Major error. There the traffic was so dense we could barely move. The esplanade was a sea of people sunbathing and walking. We simply could not believe how busy it was all over the city. 

It’s about ten years since we visited Cairns. At that time it was a slow moving little country town with a random downtown area, that was more a hopping off place for backpackers intent on seeing the reef than a holiday destination in itself. How things have changed in such a short while! 

Now Cairns is a sea of glass-fronted high-rise hotels with endless boulevard restaurants lining the streets which used to house the odd colourful alternative tropical shot drinks cafe, or t-shirt and thong markets. 

No longer. Now, Cairns looks quite the international playground, but hardly the place to park a motorhome. And with absolutely zero chance of booking a casual campsite (as, we are duly informed, they are booked out weeks in advance, and at extortionate prices that can be charged when things are in such high demand) we move on. Without even finding a parking space to have a quick look around. So be it. 

Still the crowds are with us as we head yet further north. We find the last tight squeeze of a tiny caravan spot in Mossman in late afternoon. Unpowered. There is not another available place between Cairns and Mossman. Late arrivals anywhere enroute simply have to continue further on, or camp illegally, when they become too tired to drive. 

The camping traffic has us gobsmacked. Standard campsites are bursting at the seams, stretched beyond their capabilities with the demands of the travelling public. Grey nomads from the southern states are out in force, seeking the sun in their caravans, motorhomes or tent-trailers. Many are even sleeping in vehicles, converted for camping. International tourists in hire vans make up the balance of the throng. There is hardly a pull out that is not chockers with camping vehicles: and many sites look a bit like gypsy camps with urgent washing pegged between trees in an attempt to get wet things dry. 

Some communities encourage transit travellers and set up RV parks in public spaces, arguing the visitors contribute to the town in other ways: shopping, eating out, and so forth. And the supportive ones often provide parking spaces with toilets, dump points and water, making the most of it. Others put up barring signs: wanting no part of any of it. 

But the reality is, with the grey nomads and international tourist numbers continually increasing there are more people demanding camping or parking spaces than there are legitimate spaces available in Australia. And something has to be done, Australia-wide, to solve this problem, and soon. The problem is not going to go away. The travelling numbers are only going to continue to increase.

Dozens upon dozens of campers at the RV camp at Mt Molloy 

 

This is why many come

Dreamers all

We’ve camped in some beautiful spots enroute: Saunders Beach out of Townsville, a long stretch of isolated beach that just goes on and on; Hull Heads out of Tully, with the ocean on one side and a creek on the other, and unbelievable sunsets. Etty Bay is another, tucked in the back of Innisfail, a pretty sandy bay that has a shady beach not often found, walks to and along rocks, and skydiving for the more adventurous. Cassowaries venture on to the beach when it is quiet. 

We found these sites just a few kilometres along a quiet road and voila! you come upon this amazing waterfront with amenities that allow overnight parking, sometimes even for free in the case of Saunders Beach, and they are among some of the finest sites along the coast. In many parts of the world you cannot even access seafront property like these, let alone sleep just inches from slapping waves as we have been doing, so this has been a rare treat for us. 

Mind you, there is a sting in the tail, as always. There are so many campers in this part of the world, at this time of the year, that finding a space anywhere makes you feel like the tiniest sardine in the camping tin. Caravaners and motor-homers seem to occupy most of the road space too. Much of the traffic revolves around camping, and much of it is grey nomads. When you chat with folk it usually ends up being about which sites ahead are full, or have been full for weeks, and which sites you need to access before breakfast if you really need to camp in that spot. 

Tonight we’re inland, in another scenic spot surrounded by lush tropical vegetation, albeit this time dripping with raindrops, not seafoam. We’re able to camp only one night only here as it is so popular: Paronella Park, a tourist spot made famous by a Spaniard, Jose Paronella, who came to Australia looking for work in 1911. He became a cane cutter, saving his earnings, to make a better life for himself and the girl he left behind. Unfortunately, when he went back to Catalonia to claim his betrothed she had married another. Luckily her sister, Marguerita, was single and happy to step in and fill the gap. 

Jose and Marguerita married and eventually settled in North Queensland where Jose set about looking for property to buy. He bought a waterfall with several acres of land surrounding it, and there he built his dream. A castle, the promotion goes. But it was never big enough to be a castle. It was more a like an amusement park, or a pleasure garden, featuring a swimming pool, pavilion cafe and changing rooms, with a little house on the side for his wife and growing family. None of the structures are bigger than two up, two down, and even the cottage is teeny. 

Jose and his labourers built everything using cane rails bought cheaply to use as the metal framework. This he had covered in thick mud stucco using materials from his land. Everything was adorned in Spanish style with ornamental balustrades around each structure, and when it was all complete he advertised, inviting the public to use the swimming facilities beneath the waterfall. Many had never seen anything like it. They came to ogle, but stayed to play: walking the tropical plant filled pathway, swimming beneath the waterfall, consuming vast quantitates of ice cream, afternoon teas and cool drinks from Marguerita’s cafeteria, keeping the family coffers reimbursed sufficiently to support Jose’s grand ideas. 

He soon installed electricity, using the power of his waterfalls, well before anyone else in the region had it. And thinking to attract the night life he bought a giant ‘disco’ ball to hang from the ceiling of the largest room that doubled as a Cinema room on the weekends, but could be turned into a wedding venue if needed. The current promotors call it, grandly, ‘the ballroom’. The disco ball revolved, shooting pink and blue light into a room with blue velvet curtains and gold decorative trimming. Very unusual. But the good times did not last. Floods from the river, cyclones from the sea, fire and other disasters befell Joe’s pleasure gardens and in a few short years the buildings gradually fell into ruin as roofs burned down, timbers crashed through walls, and tropical rot took its toll turning the iron cane rails and the matted render into terminal cancer rot. Jose died young from stomach cancer: thin and worn. The family eventually sold out and moved on. The jungle re-established its roots and reclaimed the ruins — for decades. 

New owners, however, bought the rusting hulk of Jose’s pleasure gardens in the 1990s. They propped up what remained of the buildings with jacks, pruned the gardens, trained tour guides in a spiel about Jose and his family, and illuminated the ruins and waterfalls at night, giving it a romantic glow, offering the gardens up as a visit to Jose’s castle: his dream since childhood when grandma told him exotic tales of Spanish nobles and their castles. Even the moss that is decaying it looks romantic. 

Even today the touring public is lapping it up. It is currently listed as the #1 must visit place in Queensland. and the day we were there it felt as if half the touring public in the state were there with us, as buses keep rolling in, and the Jose’s tale was on constant offer well into the night.

That we are seeing nothing more than a couple of ruined and decayed old buildings and the tropical garden surrounding them for a very expensive entrance fee matters not. We seem happy to pay for the fairytale. Even if it is a bit like Monet’s garden in Giverny in France: nothing like it was when Monet used to paint there, but that doesn’t seem to matter. He did paint there. And we still have the urge to be in that space. No matter what it costs. Hundreds upon hundreds of us. Daily.

Etty Bay -- a paradise

Marguerita & Jose Paronella

 

Paronella waterfall

Paronella Park 

Cancer rot.  Acro props hold up the remnants of the building.

Balustrade covered in moss

A mosaic making history

Ingham and Tully appear much as they ever did: quiet, unprepossessing, home-spun and humble still. Not really moving terribly quickly with the times. Given the Italian influence in these parts we had expected the world’s best coffee. Sadly, that has not been our experience. Even when served by an Italian deli master in a darkened little shop where the appetising smells of salami, cheese and olives the size of enormous green plums wafted as they do all over Italy, our coffee tastes little better than unappetising coloured water. 

The further north we go the less we anticipate finding good coffee. Instead, we’re rating our experiences closer to the 'worst ever end of the coffee spectrum' and keep wondering how all the European backpackers here for the cane and banana picking are managing without a decent daily hit. A small but excellent coffee chain would surely make a fortune in this little corner of the world. 

One lovely feature about Ingham when we were there was an art project being conducted by one of the local artists who, along with volunteers from the community, was building wonderful Gaudiesque town murals from chipped coloured tiles and filling many of the public spaces with the history of the place as told on these murals. 

The art design is transferred from a computer onto giant rectangles of silicone mesh backing; then a thick lashing of glue is applied to the mesh. Chopped and chipped tiles, donated by the community, are laid out onto the prepared design in gorgeous colour combinations, then it is grouted to glue it all together. Anyone can help: tourists, townsfok and visitors from abroad as it is such a well planned activity and so carefully designed that you only need the shortest bit of training before being able to contribute to something that should last decades, and well beyond. 

The stunning murals are then fitted vertically on to the wall spaces set aside for them. Each piece will eventually have its story attached, pointing out the more intricate details of the work. 

This is an admirable artistic endeavour, inspiring terrific community spirit. It is such a great model, too, for other small towns to follow and use as a catalyst for town improvement, civic pride, or, simply, just for fun.

An earlier work in town by the same artist

Cane fire.
See the cane toads and the children playing
under the 'black rain' of ash.

Such detail to organise

Men at work

Machines at work

The tale of cane growing in the north

Under the blazing sun

Lunchtime in the canefields

Then time for play

Maggie is her name

We were so close to Magnetic Island and the ferry so convenient, we ending up hopping aboard as walkers, leaving our motorhome in a carpark for the night, taking a wee trip across and around the island. How lovely that turned out to be.

Our Bed and Breakfast host collected us from the ferry and gave us an unexpected guided tour of the island’s more remote highlights, and had Bec busy feeding rock wallabies in secluded headlands, then hunting down sleeping koalas in tall eucalyptus trees. 

Our home for the night, lit with fairy lights, was surrounded by a shady tropical jungle, that the owners had planted from scratch when they retired here from Mt Isa, the cool so inviting to so many different birds it was like living in a leafy atrium: we recognised cockatoos, lorikeets, and the nighttime squeal of the curlews. 

Our hosts offered us the use of one of their cars for our stay, so we were able to hunt down the island’s only museum and its first school which is now heritage listed, both brilliantly organised and maintained by a busy band of willing and informative volunteers.

We tracked down an exhibition by the local nature photographer and fell in love with her jumping frog stuck on a fern image which enticed us so much we are now sorry we didn’t buy it. Next time. 

And we completely fell in love with the colours of the island. Some places in the world somehow reflect light in such a way that colour appears brighter, bluer, sharper: like, Santorini, parts of Provence, and Magnetic Island. Everything seems to glow blue on blue, gilded, really inviting photographs, so we spent much of our time moving from one beautiful bay to another until late evening trying to capture it all. 

The morning before we caught our ferry back we discovered a magical Butterfly forest walk where every tree had almost as many butterflies on it as leaves: all variations on the Monarch. Just beautiful. 

"Maggie" one of the locals affectionately calls his island when he loves her, he told us. And "that bloody rock" when he doesn't. For us, she was Maggie.

Our lovely space 

Snack time for the rock wallabies

Inquisitive birdlife

The colours of the island

We did a butterfly forest walk

Magnetic Island's first school

Beachside

Spun with silk and steel

We took a quick trip into Townsville to have some points cleaned or plugs reseated on the motorhome, that took no time at all, thankfully, but were amazed at the changes to Townsville since last  we visited. 

When we used to come here for work we think we remember that Townsville had a smaller population than Toowoomba. Now it has half again, and is still growing rapidly, with new wide road developments, well-kept parks and gardens,  and an extraordinary number of shopping centres to service the expanding population.  

The waterfront, the Strand, stretches for kilometres from the very heart of town and is beautifully laid out with gardens, paths and kiosks: a super place to dawdle, drive, or simply stop and have a coffee while admiring the views and the activity. We took a trip across town to the Riverway development, which is a similar set up, but along the river bank further west. Here, not far along the river walkway is a very long infinity swimming pool, open to all, equipped with lifeguards, while all around are gorgeous old gums shading picnic tables fronting the water. It is all very relaxing, and conducive to chatting with the locals, who were out in goodly numbers in the late afternoon sun, enjoying it all. 

Our favourite thing to do in Townsville this trip, though, was our visit to the Perc Tucker Gallery for the Wow! exhibition that is currently on tour from New Zealand. This  enthralled us. It is an extraordinary collection of wearable art, designed mainly by New Zealanders, tho’ other countries were involved this year.

Clothes, costumes and accessories made out of anything from steel mesh, stamped automobile pieces, EVA foam, to wool fibres and crushed silk have all been artistically displayed.  Each piece was as exotic as it was fantastical.

The wearable art creations were accompanied by an audio-visual theatrical presentation of actors wearing the costumes in a sweeping music and movement spectacle that all became part of the exhibition.  

 Such a great afternoon’s entertainment: one we were not expecting, which made it even more enjoyable.

Along the Strand in Townsville

From the Riverway

Infinity pool with gums 

Made from auto metals

Wool and silk creation 

Mesh

Body art in vinyl

Cinderella in wood