We're really in the Wet Tropics

It had to happen. After nearly five weeks of the dry, dusty Outback, as soon as we reached the Wet Tropics, it started to rain. It was amazing how in the course of just one day, the landscape changed so much, with bigger trees, no more open plains, and much closer settlement.

We've left behind these rocky bushland scenes.

Gone were the angular anthills of the Forsayth area. Now they were great bulbous affairs that looked like baby elephants grazing among the cattle on the sides of the road. On our way to Ravenshoe, the highest town in Queensland at 900+metres, we stopped at Innot Hot Springs.

The spring that bubbles into the creek is so hot in fact that when I paddled into the creek for a moment I lost feeling in my feet, then yelped and hightailed it out. Of course, I had gone in just where the spring enters from the other side, but further down, as the water cools to a pleasant warmth, young people were digging holes in the sand and sitting there with their feet in the warm water, enjoying the odd bottle of beer. That’s hedonism!



Millstream Falls near Ravenshoe.

Ravenshoe was misty when we settled into the caravan park by the creek (tall trees, turtles and platypus) but by this morning it was quite drizzly, whether heavy fog or low cloud, it was hard to tell.

It cleared a little as we drove north towards Atherton . . . the first ‘big’ town we’d seen in weeks, so we did all the necessary stuff, getting prescriptions filled, mailing birthday cards to grandsons and buying a truckload of groceries.

We are installed at the Lake Tinaroo Caravan Park, on the shores of said lake, but it has been drizzling ever since we arrived so we filled in the time this afternoon getting the washing done and dried and cooking a superb dinner of pork medallions centred with garlic butter.

We have our Cape York route all planned but are now watching this weather, which is bringing lots of rain to Cairns and the coastal areas and we are waiting to see if it moves into the peninsula, as the majority of our route is on dirt roads.

The next time we’ll have internet access will probably be at Weipa, in about 4-5 days . . . that’s if we get away tomorrow, which we may not.

It’s all vague – because we can be.