With our top end adventure reaching the northernmost point we turned and began to drift southwards and directed the car toward Lake Tinaroo in the Atherton Tablelands. This was fabled as the place where you catch the worlds largest Barramundi and the boys were so excited that they almost had a little spew in the car on the way up the winding mountain track. We were well up for this part of the trip as our enthusiasm for fishing was renewed after meeting Nav and Lily at Cooktown. We'd even picked up two hand-lines that the boys pestered me to buy after seeing the aboriginal man haul up the "massive Barra" just the day before. I tried to explain that my skills in fishing were no way near to that bloke and he could probably catch a fish in his sleep, (as most of the time he was apparently asleep in the park near the wharf having a "rest" after a big night of "fishing")… The boys didn't understand when that was muttered to them by Nav and I wasn't in the mood to start explaining the issues that some Aboriginal people have with alcohol in this country as they'd probably begin calling me Daddy Noongar, such are the similarities they'd seen most Sunday mornings at our place. Rounding the bend to the large freshwater lake, we headed toward the caravan park. This is about the point where things started going a little pear shaped. As we got to the park we realised this wasn't the coolest place and even though it was quite full the clientele were locals from within a 50km radius and not the friendly "around Australia" travellers we were used to (excluding the Cairns experience). We entered the shop and were greeted by a lady who had a little less knowledge of Lake Tinaroo than Harry and was about as helpful as a mute giving directions to a blind man. She did manage to find a map of the park and draw a line with her 6 fingers to our spot and went back to her New Idea magazine article about some "Bachelor" which I see around everywhere but have no idea what it's about. We made our way to the campsite and found that our neighbour had parked his pig shooting van on our patch and only moved when we wound down the window and pointed about 5 times that it was our spot. When Steve eventually got up and moved his car I suddenly noticed that he had two girls aged about 8 and 10 in the back in a cage constructed on the tray. This was unnerving. Pitching our tent we tried not to make eye contact but eventually decided to be polite and struck up a conversation with him. Steve was from Belfast and ex-army and his partner Hayley was from Alice Springs and they lived about 50km away. The two girls in the cage were their children and apparently liked to play in there and when they came out they were quite nice and friendly to the boys. We shared some marshmallows around the fire that evening and they seemed nice enough, however after Steve's 3rd bottle of red wine and his increasingly rapid mood swings from shrill excitement about world politics to long melancholy periods of silence we decided to go to be bed and locked the tent…from the inside. When we got up they were gone, which was great, and we all had a late Fathers day breakfast of eggs and bacon and just hung around listening to the soft mutterings of the boys pestering us to go fishing. This was our moment. We strode up to the shop and said. "We would like to hire a boat to go on the lake and catch the biggest Barramundi ever caught around here!!!". The extremely unhelpful geriatric who was now manning the counter asked me if I had a licence to drive a boat. "What do you mean a license to drive a boat? It's about 8 feet long, a motor that is less powerful than if I rowed it myself and it's a freshwater lake…" He told me with a little less expression than a person in a coma that I need a licence to drive a boat in Queensland if it is more powerful than 6hp. 6hp!!! I could fart and move the hire boat faster than the motor on the tinny we wanted to hire.!! He wasn't relenting so we had to accept our fate and asked him if there was a jetty or could we catch a Barramundi off the shore. "Probably not, you need a boat" he said. What a c*&k… We thanked him for his unhelpful advice and took the car around to one side of the lake where I watched the boys cast $6 of prawns into the water for no nibble and lost two lures snagged on the rocks. We would have lost more had I gone fishing as well, but apparently I needed a licence to fish in that lake yet the boys didn't??…. like seriously…do we look like people that would be able to actual reach a bag limit, let alone breach one? Totally dejected we returned back to pig shooters camp zero and had some dinner and went to bed at 8pm. Waking up I decided to do some admin by updating our budget and sort through some of the photos. Next to the office at the front of the park there was a very poor excuse for a coffee shop with about 10 sets of plastic tables and chairs arranged in no particular order and a menu that looked like it had been written by a 4 year old. I wandered in and thought it might be a nice place to sit and tap away on the laptop. All of a sudden, as I was about to choose a seat, a woman, whose face I could only describe as "extremely unfortunate" limped towards me and asked if I was going to order a coffee or just sit there with my computer. Shocked by her appearance and her unbelievable rude address to me, I replied in the negative about a coffee and I'd just like to sit here and type on my laptop if it wasn't too much bother. Before I'd even finished my sentence the "unfortunately faced woman" pointed her hand to a seat on the other side of cheap plastic lattice separating her sh&t coffee shop and the office veranda and said I have to sit there. Surveying her empty shop and her hideous face, I decided it was best I take her advice, as had I stayed I would have begun to quietly antagonise this poor woman about her manner, appearance and her lack of intelligence that there may have been tears. Admin done I wandered back to the campsite noting that her shop was still empty and she was staring at me like I had run over her pet.

Given that the park and lake were going to provide us with zero entertainment we got in the car and spent the next couple of days driving through the Atherton Tablelands. This place was very picturesque with rolling hills and sharp mountain ranges created from volcanoes many millions of years ago. The soil is extremely fertile so there was all sorts of farming done here and we stopped along the way to try various strawberries, dairies/ice creams, peanuts. In fact, we passed by a place called "The Peanut Place" which remarkably didn't have a single warning sign that told us there may be "peanuts in the products sold at this store". I just smiled thinking of all the poor souls who need a warning label to tell them what to do and the last thing they see before drifting into unconsciousness from anaphylaxis is a giant peanut staring down at them from the side of the road…. We saw a number of beautiful waterfalls and visited and learnt about the region, which was formed by tectonic plate movements about 230 million years ago and then covered with volcanoes. The eroded basalt from the magma those many years ago has formed the rich soil and created a number of craters that are now small freshwater lakes surrounded by pockets of rainforest. We had lunch by Lake Eachem, one of the crystal clear crater lakes and had a swim there during our tour around. It truly was a beautiful place. Somewhat cooler than the beach, it still had that rainforest feel in the air and there were loads of cassowary warning signs everywhere. It has only been used and populated by settlers for a little over 100 years, which is remarkable. During our travels we stopped by the "Crystal Caves" where we saw the worlds largest Geode This place is a random shop in a tiny town set up by a super passionate guy who has created this fake cave out the back that he has stacked with crystals and rocks. It was magnificent and as a tourist destination, such a "hidden gem"…boom boom… We headed off in the afternoon on our last day to Innot Springs, natural hot springs about 160km West of Lake Tinaroo (or Lake Tin-of-Poo as we were now calling it). The boys kept asking if it was going to be like the top notch 5 star spas they experienced in Germany from hot springs in the Black Forrest. Alas, despite our explanation that it probably wouldn't be, even we were surprised. A caravan park next to a dry creek with 3 dirty fiberglass pools and pipes hanging over the side spilling non filtered dirty boiling hot sulphur loaded water into the pools was what awaited us. The 8 other people who were there were all aged about 75 plus with varying ailments and skin problems, which they were more then happy to show or explain to us and how these "amazing" springs cured them. The only thing it did for us was make us smell like rotten eggs and gave me a large boil on the back of my leg……all for the pricey sum of $27 and the fuel to get there and back. I wouldn't recommend this place…

Leaving the tablelands behind the following morning, which we were thoroughly impressed by, we headed into Atherton for some admin for Fi then moved on to head out to a place called Mt Surprise which was back further west and into the Savannah Way, on the way to the Gulf of Carpentaria. We got to our campsite which was recommended and the chap who runs it, Russell, said through bloodshot eyes, that we could "park anywhere you bloody want, we've got loads of space….". The sign at the entrance said snake show, and since Bailey was now pestering us every 30 minutes about getting a snake as a pet when he gets back to Perth, the boys bounded out of the car and set onto Russell to ask when the next show was. Russell was a legend and treated the boys to a 2-hour show for us and about 4 other people in the park. He let the boys hold the snakes and they even pooed on Bailey twice and did a wee on Harry's thong/flip-flop. Russell laughed and coughed and wheezed so loud when that happened that he promised to make Bailey famous by calling him "the boy who got s*** on by a snake twice…" in all his future shows. Bailey was chuffed. After the show the boys were both super excited and so sleep was going to be a problem. Not only because of the fantastic snake show but the fact that we had parked under a massive mango tree that sounded during the night like a meeting place for pterodactyls. The constant thud of mangoes being eaten then discarded onto the ground soon changed to sounds of shrieks of animals fighting, being eaten and a massive flapping sound as a large flying creature kept swooping into the tree and attacking and extracting what we assumed where possums eating the mangos. This went on from about 9pm until 5am when out of nowhere hordes of lorikeets scared everything away with their screeching and tweeting and descended onto the tree in a constant cacophony of sound whilst munching away at the mangoes which weren't covered in blood and fur. Suffice to say the tour to Undarra lava tubes the next day was fractured by yawns and drooping eyelids but it was very very interesting and we learnt why they where formed and why they are the longest in the world. The shield volcano from 190,000 years ago erupting over an 18 month period and due to the slow velocity of the lava and the angle of the land was why these tubes where formed. They were spectacular but we did feel a bit cheated as the tour guide spent about 1/3 of the tour explaining how the owner was a clever businessman and was making a fortune from these. It made handing over the money to walk through some caves a bit less appealing…. We got back and Russell let the boys join in as his assistants to another show he was doing for a bus load of tourists and then let them watch as he fed a live rat to Nipper, the gigantic scrub python. The second night under the mango "death tree" wasn't so bad so we got up early and headed to Blencoe falls, which was back towards the coast and a single night stop for us before we make our way to Mission Beach. The track we travelled down, as recommended by Steve the Belfast soldier, is apparently one of Australia's best, and whilst the first part was a bit ho-hum the second section we drove down the following day was spectacular. The Kirrama Range Road it was called and for those that are into their 4WD'ing… Do it. It's well worth it. The night in-between was great and the Blencoe Falls, Australia's most spectacular at 90 metres high then a further 230 metres to the Herbert Gorge below, was a great sight. We even managed to catch a fish in the river using bread and some cheese and went for a swim in the creek near a smaller waterfall without being eaten by a crocodile, so a successful stay all around we think. The weather was coming in so we headed to Mission Beach and a bit of schoolwork, which we've been a little slack, and some maintenance and laundry, which Fi was beginning to obsess about, and I was happy to obsess with her….