Australia The East Bit Days 16 and 17 Mount Surprise to Innisfail and Innisfail Qld 21 and 22 July 2016

Day 16 21 July 2016  Mount Surprise to Innisfail Qld  252km

We set out around 8am, the day looked promising, with only a little rain forecast. We drove through Mount Garnet and then onto the top of the Atherton Tablelands (well the bit we were driving through anyway) at Millaa Millaa.   It was around here that the rain/mist/foggy conditions started.

I probably should mention here a little bit of fun we had with the English Language travelling this way. I had researched the road going down to Innisfail pretty well I thought, until a woman at the Info Centre in Normanton told me that the road down to the coast that I planned to take was very windy, full of switch-backs, a couple of 100 by her description. I looked on Google Maps and couldn’t see any really windy bits anywhere. Yesterday I decided to double check the route. I got onto a Grey Nomad site and there were various descriptions of the road from being a breeze to very windy. I still didn’t get it. So we set out and as we approached, or just on the other side of, Millaa Millaa it all started to make sense. We started to see a “Wind” farm. Yes huge turbines on sticks!! So windy (wine’dy) became windy (win-dy)!!! Go figure. To add to it all there were 2 alternate routes, the Tourist Route – which had warning signs that it wasn’t suitable for caravans (probably too windy!) and the route suggested for B-Doubles, (just windy is my guess).

So we joined the trucking route 🙂 and took it very slowly down the hill in the very wet conditions.

The rest of the trip was a dream and we arrived in the caravan park around 11:30am only to find that the owner had gone to Cairns to get her pacemaker fixed (not something you can put off) and they couldn’t find our booking! We eventually talked our way onto a nice site and then went into Innisfail for a look around.

There  are quite a few roadside stalls around selling mainly local fruit (bananas, papaya, pineapples, etc) and some vegetables.

We took a run out to Flying Fish Point for lunch. Everywhere you drive here you pass through either sugar cane fields or banana plantations, with a papaya grove thrown in for good measure. It’s all very lush and green. We ate lunch at a café across the road from the water/beach.  A great  place to sit and relax and take in the view.

Innisfail is a pretty town, it was totally rebuilt in the early 1930’s after a cyclone levelled the city and as a consequence has a large number of Art Deco buildings in it. And most of them are very well kept, from many public buildings, an amazing water tower and many family homes. Add to that the quintessential “Queenslanders” and you have a very unique town on a river.

Day 17 22 July 2016 Innisfail Qld

Today we got away around 9:30 and headed SW to go and see a few sights. Our first destination was Paronella Park. A Castle built by a Spaniard with a dream, back in the 1930’s.  The original build consisted of a castle, complete with Ballroom, tennis courts, bridges, picnic areas and its own hydroelectric power station.  In the late 1930’s it was one of very few places in Queensland with both power and running water! Unfortunately, a series of floods, cyclones, a fire, the jungle setting and concrete cancer have all contributed to the decline of the building over the years. It was abandoned for almost 10 years before the current owners bought it in 1993 and began the restoration. Most of the original building are still in a very bad state of repair and probably should be torn down. But it is very much worth seeing. The tour you get when you visit is very interesting and the whole feel of the place is “special”. I had serious doubts about visiting it, but so many people had said we MUST go. I am glad we did.

From there we drove to Etty Bay. We had been told that it was the place to go to see wild Cassowaries. We had lunch at the café across from the beach and then took a stroll along the beach. Unfortunately, there were no Cassowaries in the beach area. We had been told that they are always there and that if you stood quietly, they would come right up to you, within meters of you!! We did see a Cassowary on the side of the road as we drove out, so all was not lost.

We then went into town to an “Olde Worlde” Deli, well a Deli that had its own tourist flyer!! We managed to get served by the owner, a delightful old Italian man. He was a real character and revelled in showing us some of his cheeses and meats, with a few tasting along the way. We bought some cheese and salami for tea tonight, too good not to!

Later in the afternoon, I wet a line in the river next to the caravan park, well 15m from our van! No fish, not even a bite, but it was very relaxing.

Tomorrow we are going to explore the Atherton Tablelands. Starting with the Yungaburra Markets. It should be lots of fun.  🙂