We left Chillagoe, very impressed with the place. So much to do for such a small town. Spent a night in Atherton as we thought we should visit the Tablelands' namesake. Timely visit, being in a place with TV, as we got to watch the Wallabies beat New Zealand (finally) in the Bledisloe Cup at the local pub. Hoorah! God bless Stirling Mortlock. Checked out the historic Chinatown the next day - during the gold rush, and afterwards, there was a large Chinese popula...

After getting completely caffeinated in Mareeba, we hit the road out to an old mining town called Chillagoe, home to some rather spectacular limestone caves. Spent a couple of days out here touring the caves, learning about astronomy (the owner of the place we camped at had an observatory in the back yard, as you do), checking out the abandoned copper smelter, and chatting to an amazing old guy called Tom, who owns a rather impressive collection of old Fords. ...

Time for our Atherton Tablelands adventure - first stop Mareeba, the home of coffee in Australia. Did a fantastic tour of the Skybury coffee plantation, which took us through the coffee growing and harvesting process, up to the "green bean" stage. It is the largest plantation in Oz, oh my goodness the coffee was great! Had our free cup after the tour, then stayed for lunch and had another. Walked away with a new coffee plunger, some of their freshly-gr...

We were the first to get to Musgrave and as usual the last to leave, who's in a hurry anyway? Hit the road and found a reasonably easy drive back to Lakeland, there was 2 well worn and smoothed out tyre tracks pretty much all the way. There obviously wasn't as much rain south of Musgrave. The traffic northbound was quite heavy and we lost count of the cars flying past us, I guess the school holidays up here and peak season means it gets quite busy. We were both...

It has been raining quite a bit up here on the Cape, and consequently the roads have turned to absolute crap! Where once we were travelling at 90 km/h in 2WD, we are now having to drive at 30 km/h in low 4WD, picking our way through the bog, trying to find a semblance of a track. It has been a bit hair-raising, to say the least. Lee did his first fishtail in the Navvy yesterday, which resulted in us running onto the embankment. After that, he decided that it was...