ATHERTON TABLELANDS

Sunday, October 4, 2015

ATHERTON TABLELANDS

I woke up early and finally had Telstra activate my phone.  I called the Volkswagon garage but could not raise anybody.  Britz, on the other hand, said that my old van was being taken out of service and that they had dispatched a driver from Cairns with a new van early this morning. They would give him my number and he would call me.  Within minutes he called and said he would arrive at  9 am. We drove together to the garage and made the transfer of all our possessions to the new van.  One hour later we were on the road in our "new" van headed inland away from the coast toward the Great Dividing Range which runs along the eastern half of Australia.  The Atherton Tablelands is a plateau in this mountain range which although tropical is elevated enough to allow dairy farming.  Being of volcanic origin it is also quite fertile.
Our destination and campsite was the Malanda Falls Caravan Park.  The park is situated next to a protected remnant of rain forest and Malanda Falls.  It is all reputed to have platypus and the rare Lumholtz Tree Kangaroos.  When I arrived the host told me I would be lucky to see either one but at the nearby tea company he could almost guarantee seeing tree kangaroos.  His final bit of advice was to watch out for the kookaburras if I planned on using the barbie at brekky (translation: They will probably grab your breakfast food before you can put it on the grill).  Sure enough, as soon as I pulled in and opened the back of the van a kookaburra flew in to check things out.

As soon as we set up camp I headed into the rainforest but had little photography success.  The falls themselves were underwhelming and as the host inferred, kangaroos and platypus were no where to be seen.  Edie went shopping in town and reported Aussie Pizza (shrimp and pineapple) was being served at the Malanda Hotel.  That sounded good and as we walked back to camp it was 5:30 pm and already getting dark.