Our Trip to the Atherton Tablelands

Another week another adventure, this time we rented a car for two days in the Atherton Tablelands (the mountainy area west of Cairns).  For Alex the drive alone made his day, he was at the helm of a manual car on a road with (literally) 287 hairpin turns.  I get motion sick so I was markedly less enthused about the journey but endured as I was excited to check out all the Tablelands had to offer. 

Coffee Works was our first stop.  We enjoyed a quick cup of coffee and bought three bags of delicious chocolate that we’d heard so much about (which Alex proceeded to eat en masse over the next 36 hours) and continued on our way.  Our next destination was the Curtain Fig Tree.  Yep, this was on our map as a hot spot and it was actually pretty cool.  Strangler figs start as a small vine on a larger tree then drop aerial roots and, over the course of years, eventually overtake the host tree and continue growing.  This particular tree is hundreds of years old and the product of the host tree falling over before the strangler fig had established its roots so it overtook the original tree and the tree it fell into.  As you can see from how small Alex is in the photo, it’s massive!

From there we headed to Lake Eachem, a lake in an old volcanic crater up in the mountains.  On our way, we stopped by Humpy Nut World (another map-listed hot spot that was in fact just a fruit stand) for a few photo ops.  Alex, hopped up on chocolate, clearly enjoyed himself here…

 

 

It was sunny and hot in Cairns when we left and we didn’t factor for the mountain weather and so we didn’t bring the right gear for a day outdoors in the Tablelands.  It started drizzling when we reached the lake so we hopped out quickly and snapped this beautiful panorama before jumping back in the car.  

By the time we reached the Cathedral Fig tree, it was full-on raining, I was shivering (despite changing into a long-sleeved shirt) and had lost interest.  But we had come this far so we trekked on and, for our efforts, we got to see an even bigger, more glorious tree.  This one was so huge we were able to walk in between some of its roots.

 

 

Afterwards, rather than get a hotel and tough out the cold, wet weather, we decided to go back to Cairns and resume our efforts the next day (I think Alex only agreed so he could speed up and down the windy road a couple of extra times).  It was a good choice; we enjoyed a nice dinner and set out the next morning refreshed and more appropriately dressed (though the drive was another rough start for me).   Day two was pretty awesome and it started with a cheese plate and ice cold glass of milk at the Mungalli Dairy.  Set in the middle of nowhere down a one-lane road, the view from the Dairy was gorgeous and we took it all in as sat out on deck next to the pink cow princess.  It was quirky but a delicious and reminded me of a weekend in the country at home.

Next stop: Milaa Milaa Falls and, amazingly, for the first time in Australia, we actually got to see a waterfall!  The waterfall was ‘made famous’ in a video by an English singer I had never heard of, Peter Andre, because he shot a video there in the early 90s and is a big tourist attraction.  It was really beautiful but too cold to get in the water so we just took in the scenery and watched a couple of guys swim out to the falls then continued on our way.

Mamu, a rainforest canopy walk on the side of a mountain, was up next and it proved to be a fun, scenic stop.   I wussed out at climbing up the 37m observation tower, halfway up my fear of heights overcame my desire to get any better views, but Alex went to the top and took this pretty photo. 

My favorite stop of the trip was Paronella Park.  It was the dream of a Spanish immigrant in the 1930s to build a Spanish castle amidst the beauty of rural Australia – and he did.  He worked for over a decade creating his wealth before returning to Europe to retrieve his fiancé, only to find out she had married in his absence.  Unfazed, he married her younger sister then came back to Australia and built his empire on a beautiful piece of property he purchased with a waterfall.  He was very entrepreneurial and used the waterfall to provide hydro electric power to his property, making it one of the only in the area with electricity at the time so on the weekends he turned their ballroom into a movie theatre.  He also bottled the water (after discovering it was very mineral rich), grew mushrooms for sale on the property and ran a successful sporting complex on the lower grounds.  But that was decades ago and after his death the property went to ruins.  In the early 90s, the park’s current owners rediscovered the almost lost park and revitalized it.  Today, it’s just a tourist attraction but it’s lush, full of beauty and awe-inspiring (and amazing that these buildings are over eighty years old!). 

 

 

 

Here is us in front of the waterfall at Paronella Park (Alex called my hair in this photo crazy but I don't think it's that bad - and not sure what he's talking about anyway because WHAT is he looking at?!  The tour guide took like five photos and I couldn't figure out why until I realized Alex is looking over his shoulder in ALL of them) and a huge eel in the water that swam up while we were feeding the fish.

 

 

Our last stop was Etty Bay, where we were told we’d be ‘guaranteed’ to see a cassowary in the wild.  Why would we want to see a huge, killer bird in nature, you ask?  Well WE didn’t, Alex did though so we found our way there just before sunset.  Sadly (or not so sadly, depending on who you ask), we didn’t see any cassowarys but we did get to see this awesome ‘Batman’ sunset and enjoy a nice walk on the beach before heading back to Cairns.