Woke up around 9am today - had some scrambled eggs on toast for breakie before departing towards Atherton tablelands. This isn't the normal route people take whilst driving south but reading other travellers blogs, they say the scenery up this way is pretty spectacular! They weren't wrong!
First town we hit was Gordonvale, about 20km from Cairns.
We then proceeded to drive up a mountain (only word I can give it but with nicer roads) to Heales lookout - we read later the particular road had 280 twist and turns! Enough to make any man vomit!
We were so high up at one stage our ears started to pop!
We had a quick stop in Atherton (nothing going on plus we already seen the tablelands en route to here).
Our next destination was Millaa Millaa where we planned to stop for juice as we were running low. We decided to skip Millaa Millaa look-out which had great views (apparently) as mist/cloud came in (up really high still!) so any look out would have been of no benefit to us!
We stopped in Millaa Millaa for petrol but Millaa bloody Millaa wasn't there! Well, it was but I'd say the town closed in 1984 and hadn't reopened yet!
Panic stations set in, we were about 70km from next town and just over empty on petrol gauge. We decided to chance next town but luckily about 5km out of town, a house (yes, a house, which had an old microwave for a postbox!) advertised petrol..there is a God and God came in the shape of a little old lady with a crutch (don't think she needed it for walking but for defence as she didn't have a clue who we were!). We filled up there, and before we knew it, we were back on road! Praise the Lord!!
Seeing as we now had a full tank, we decided to do the waterfall circuit, a tourist drive about 15km looped, which a series of 3 waterfalls. We drove to, visited and took pictures of all 3 (Ellinjaa, Zillie and Millaa Millaa falls) before heading towards Mission Beach!
The last falls Millaa Millaa had a few folk swimming there, given the day, the were quite brave!
We pulled over en route to Inisfail at a lookout called Crawfords lookout. Very cool place overlooking a river valley, there was the option to walk to bottom also (about 2km)...maybe on our next trip ;-)
In Inisfail, (again, jut a drive through town, not much going on) we had a stop at MCD's for a late lunch and free wifi as we were aiming to stay in hotel tomorrow night for 2 year anno and needed to do a bit of research :-)
On drive to Mission beach, lots of signs to watch for a bird called Cassowary which only about 1000 now remain in Queensland. Cool looking things but we didn't any!
Arrived at Mission Beach caravan site, paid 17$ for site, which was excellent seeing as we were looking at the ocean when we pulled up! Defo worth it! The beach itself was amazing, perfectly manicured and reminded me a lot of Bali beaches.
We walked the beach and strolled through the town - dead quite but dead nice!
Made boiled spuds with last nights bolognese which filled us up nicely!
Going to enjoy sleeping to sound of waves tonight. Ken