Remarkably I was able to book the campsite over the phone at about 5.45pm. The woman answered the phone "Queensland government" (can you imagine anyone answering at that time in the UK?) and proceeded to deal with my request without needing to put me through to anyone else, taking my payment and taking emergency contact details from me in case we went missing whilst in the bush. This and the fast approaching darkness started to make us nervous, not helped by the raging fires we saw on the mountainsides as we drove towards our campsite. I was sure these were planned bushfires designed to create a firebreak in the event of an unplanned bushfire, but Oliver was less sure. We had to drive through rivers to get to the campsite too which in the dark was a lot scarier than it ought to have been. We felt better when we got there to find several other vans and a noticeboard explaining about the planned fires. We ate and played monopoly (again) but we were in bed for 9pm only to be disturbed by a knock on the van. It was the census man trying to track down all Australian citizens on census night. We told him we were from the UK on holiday and he moved on. What a job!
The next morning we were woken early by scrub turkeys and went for a walk up to the falls, clambering over large boulders looking for the long neck turtles we were promised by the noticeboards. It was very much like being in an Indiana Jones movie and Oliver posed accordingly. We heard loads of rustling in the bushes and caught sight of a number of lizards but no turtles. Angus also spotted a wierd looking thing hanging from a rock which turned out to be a dead spider. We did not go too close.
We were on the road again by mid morning off to Mission beach for our last stop before Cairns.