From Atherton we headed straight to Mareeba the coffee capital of Australia. We did a tour of a coffee and chocolate place where we had the chance to sample 30 odd different coffee's and a few different chocolates. We then drove to the Palmer river roadhouse and pub for probably the best steak sandwich i have had. As soon as we arrived at Cooktown and setup the camper we started working on who was taking us fishing :-). As it turned out the first one we rang had ...

While we were at Atherton we visited the gem shop, where we went down a fake underground cave and saw all the gems and rock from around the world inc the huge one in the pic, the princess of Uraguay. The girls got to crack open their very own geode (a rock with gems inside) and they felt pretty special being the first person ever to see whats inside. After the gem shop we went to a little town called Youngaburra where we went to see if we could see some Platypus,...

After leaving Karumba we headed to a little place called Mount Surprise. its a little town of only 61 people with a really nice caravan park. from here we did a tour of the Undara lava tubes and did some gem fossicking. The lava tubes were pretty amazing with some really nice colors and a lot bigger than we expected. basically when the volcano erupted the lava followed the river beds and the outside formed a crust with the lava still flowing inside, because the l...

Today was the big day.......... this morning pop and i had a fishing charter booked to go catch a barra. The reports wern't in our favour for barra as the water was a little cold but the odd big barra were still being caught and they had been catching heaps of blue salmon. The boat was leaving at 6.50am so the plan was to get up at 6.15am and go. I woke up at 6am to hear the wind blowing, that wasnt a concern as it normally drops off as the sun rises. i got up (a...

We have been sitting here in Mount Isa enjoying the sunshine (30 odd degrees) and relaxing for the last couple of days. Mt Isa is a nicer town than i expected, even though the mine is right in town its not as dirty/dusty as i expected. We did an underground mine tour this morning and that was great. Tomorrow we start the trek further nth stopping at Bourke and Wills roadhouse and then onto Karumba for a crack at catching a barra :-)