Queensland Part 1

After so many trips to the airport theses past weeks taking everyone else up and back from holidays it was finally our turn to actually get on a plane! Janelle had 2 weeks holiday in her busy year so she came away with us for a break from everything. We took a late flight to Brisbane arriving at 5.30am. After a few hours lying around the airport  we got our connecting flight to Cairns. It was nice flying up the Queensland coast ans especially seeing parts of the Barrier Reef from the air...

We picked up our nice purple hire car from the airport and drove into Cairns. We had a look around and a bit of lunch before checking into our accomodation. Cairns is much smaller than I imagined and just like a big country town. We were staying only 15mins walk from the center and would you believe right opposite the Masonic Lodge Hall! I can't escape them wherever I go!!...

Getaway on Grafton - pink towels on balcony our unit

Masonic Lodge Hall

View from our balcony - side of Lodge Hall

After a couple of hours rest we walked into town. There is a great boardwalk all the way along the foreshore and as the beach is not suitable for swimming there is a massive lagoon pool built for everyone to use freely...

And pretty light on the trees...

 The next morning we packed up some lunch and headed off on a road trip down the Bruce Highway. It was interesting seeing the masses of sugar cane and banana plantations...

We stopped at a little town called Babinda which has an average rain fall of 4630ml. We got chatting to a lovely lady in her 90's in the information center and she started showing us pictures on her camera of. all her craft work she does. Her name was Nellmore and she was quite a character. We continued on to Innisfail and got a bit lost there as it was raining but no visit is complete without some bananas from the banana growing capital of Australia...

  

We drove past a sugar cane processing plant - it was quite amazing to wind down the windows and smell the such a sweet smell from what looks like any industrial building. It would probably become quite sickly after a while...

By lunchtime we arrived at Paronella Park. This is a beautiful park set up by a Spanish man for his family many years ago. The gardens and some of the old ruins had a lot of damage from the cyclones that came through the area a few years ago but they have all regrown beautifully. We did a walking tour and as there has been so much rain lately everything was covered in moss which made it even prettier...

Just for you Rodney

 We got to see one of the brilliant blue Queensland butterflies...

LOVE these straight trees...

  We drove on into the Atherton Tablelands and more sugar plantations...

It was quite overcast and foggy as we had climbed high in the mountains...

Peter was feeling the need for scones and jam and cream so we called in to Mungalli Creek Bio-dynamic Dairy...

With the driver satisfied we moved on to some more waterfalls in some beautiful dense rainforest...

Elinjaa Falls

Millaa Millaa Falls

With time against us and so much to see we drove through lots of little towns and into Atherton for a quick look. We just made it to The Peanut Place and ate lots of samples before they closed...

Next we went to see the Curtain Fig...

 A quick look at Lake Tinaroo at dusk..

 Then we had the extremely long winding drive back in to Cairns - often only able to do 30km/h as it was so windy. After a very busy day we headed to the night markets and had Chinese buffet...