After 8 days at Sapphire without sunshine we were more than excited when the sun pushed aside the clouds and dried us out again. We had a dry-out-day at Sapphire and did a bit of research into the state of the roads along our intended route. We found that the roads from Muttaburra to Hughenden that we wanted to travel were now closed because of the rain, so it was back to the original plan of heading through Clermont and on to Charters Towers. There was still some debate about whether of not we would be able to cross Theresa Creek and even get to Clermont, but decided to give it a shot. The next day we packed up, said our goodbyes to Kathy's parents and hit the road. It was great to be travelling again, the sun was shining, the road was quiet and everything was right in the world. We managed to cross the causeway at Theresa Creek with about 60cm of water flowing over it. That was before we fell into the hole in the causeway half way across, which momentarily had water splash over the bonnet and caused a quickening of the heartbeat!! Once again, the Pajero chugged along without a problem and the camper trailer followed. We arrived in Clermont to find that the road to Charters Towers was flooded at Belyando Crossing. Locals told us that the water from the Belyando River comes down from the hills slowly, and that the crossing may be flooded for one day, or two weeks.... Rather than wait for an undetermined amount of time, we decided to take a detour through Mackay. Why not? We haven't seen that part of the country either. So we drove to Mackay, and back into cloudy skies. With the threat of rain we had a one night stop at Seaforth in the campground right on the beach. It would be a nice place to stay in good weather, but as the theme for this trip seems to be "go to the east coast for rain and crap weather" we made use of the weather forecast predictions and took off further north. We found a free camp just north of Mackay at a place called Boulder Creek. It was not easy to find, but with the vague directions we have come to accept from the Camps 6 book and the help of a local woman in nearby Calen, we found the campground. The campgound itself is only a patch of grass next to a sugar cane field, but it is right on one of the prettiest creeks we have ever come across. The creek has palms and ferns growing in it and all around, the rocks and plants look as it they had been arranged by a landscape gardner in a rich estate somewhere. Really worth the effort of finding it. We stayed there for two nights, just relaxing by the river, doing b***** all. It rained also.... well, we were not far from the coast, so what do you expect...? There is not much to do at Boulder Creek apart from relax, so after two nights we headed for Charters Towers, driving north to just before Townsville and turning off for Woodstock, then on to Charters Towers. The drive through to Woodstock was nowhere near as hilly as we expected, the road meanders through the hills along a sealed country road and is quite scenic. After a short stop on the highway at some roadworks while we waited for the road crew to move a truck off the road that had broken down in the middle of the roadwork site, we arrived at Charters Towers early in the afternoon.

There is a limited option of places to camp around CT (as the locals call it, apparently) and they all involve a caravan park. We stayed at the cheapest park in town, which was surprisingly good apart from the noise from the trucks driving through town not far from the park. It's pretty quiet out that way of a night, so the road noise travels easily. Not far from Charters Towers, on the Burdekin River, is a huge flood level indicator that records the level the river has flooded to over the years. The photo of Kathy standing next to it gives you an idea of the amount of water covering the land during some of the floods, but the amazing thing is that she is standing at bridge level, and the bridge is 13 meters from the riverbed!! Thats a lot of water!

Our intentions of visiting Charters Towers were to go to a few local attractions we had read about. CT has one of the few drive-in theatres remaining in Australia (so we wanted to re-live our youth and go to the drive-in), there are cattle sales at the cattle yards every Wednesday, and there is a station there that breeds the Texas Longhorn cattle, one of which holds the record for the longest horns in the world. Unfortunately.... the drive-in was shut due to the ground being a bog-hole due to recent rain, the cattle sales were postponed a week because of it being difficult to transport cattle due to flooded roads, and the Longhorn place was closed until May because of, you guessed it, the wet weather. Bloody rain still stops us from doing things even when it's gone and we are standing in sunshine! That's life in the country I suppose.... We stayed in Charters Towers a few days anyway and had a good look around. There are quite a few old buildings in town and we found out that CT played a large part in Australia's wartime efforts during WW2. On the hill overlooking town there are numerous bunkers still standing, these were used for munitions safes and held ridiculous amounts of bombs, shells, mines and small arms ammunition. The local area also has a number of old USAAF and RAAF airstrips, most of which are now on private land and only a plaque indicates their existance.

From Charters Towers we drove north again toward Mt Surprise. We intended to drive to Einasleigh and take a dirt road to Mt Surprise, but, once again, the road was closed due to flood damage. This was no big deal as the alternate route was the same distance, but was all on the highway, we just wanted to get some dirt under the tyres for a change. We stayed in Mt Surprise at a small campground in the middle of town. Not that the town is big enough to have a middle, we walked around the whole town in 10 minutes. The bloke that runs the campground, basically it's his backyard, claims on his sign to have "the best snake show in the world". I asked him about his show but he does not do them any more, just too lazy to pull the sign down I suppose... He was a nice enough guy though, he brought his Black Headed Python out to our camper for Kathy and I to play with. We talked about snakes for ages, while he let "Clancy" wander around on the grass in the camping area. It was interesting to see the effect a large snake had on the birdlife. The Apostle Birds were in their usual social group, squarking away at the snake and swooping it, not too close though! They seemed to be able to call other bird breeds to assist them in warding off the snake. Within a few minutes there were the Apostle Birds, a few Blue Faced Honey Eaters, a couple of Magpies, a couple of Crows and even a Galah, all sitting up in the nearby tree yelling abuse at the snake. All the birds sat in the same tree and took it in turns swooping the snake. It was interesting to see such a combined effort amongst different species that would normally squabble over a place in the tree for themselves. Of course, Clancy didn't have any interest in the birds and just ignored them. We stayed three nights at Mt Surprise, went fishing in the nearby river and caught a few Sooty Grunters for the freezer, which we had the other night and didn't taste too bad.

After Mt Surprise we drove via the Undara Lava Tubes toward the Atherton Tablelands. We didn't go into the lava tubes because we thought the $48 each for the compulsory tour was a bit steep, and it wasn't a "must see" for us. Instead we went for a walk around the rim of the Kalkani volcanic crater. It was interesting and worth the walk, but not as scenic as we had expected. Good excersise though. From there it was a relatively uneventful drive up onto the Tablelands. We stopped at Millstream Falls for a look, which are apparently the widest single-drop falls in Australia. We stayed in a caravan park in Millaa Millaa for the night and went to Millaa Millaa falls the next morning. These falls are well worth seeing. The falls are picture-perfect and are surrounded by tropical plants, just beautiful. The breeze was blowing the spray from the falls directly onto us, which actually added to the effect of the place when photographing it, although the camera gear was getting a soaking!

From there we took another detour, back down to the coast to visit Paronella Park, south of Innisfail. Paronella Park was built in the 30's by a Spanish bloke, Jose Paronella, to fulfill a dream he had of building a traditional Spanish castle complete with gardens. The place has a lot of history in it, Jose's story is facinating and the park itself has been through cyclones, fires and floods. The buildings are basically ruins now, but it is well worth the visit to explore what is as close to ancient European ruins as you'll get in Australia. We stayed there two nights in the caravan park next door (one night is free with the entry into Paronella Park), and then headed back up the Gillies Range Road to Atherton. This road is very windy, steep and very scenic. We pulled into Atherton by early afternoon and set up in yet another caravan park, no free camping here and the campgrounds at the nearby lakes are booked solid for Easter.

We are still in Atherton and have been exploring the nearby area, visiting the lakes, the awesome, huge Curtain Fig Tree and the even more impressive Cathedral Fig Tree. Atherton is a nice enough town, but just a town after all. It gets cold here overnight though, down to 18 degrees! We think we have become quite climatised to the warm weather, we are sleeping with two doonas on!! On Wednesday we will go back down the hill through Mareeba, Kuranda and onto the coast again at Cairns or a bit further north. Yeah, the coast again.... but it hasn't rained on the coast now for a week or so, and everyone is saying the wet season is now over, but we'll see if we can change that by camping near the water again...