Australia, day 7 & 8: Atherton Tableland to Cairns

Day 7  

We first stopped in Mareeba for grocery shopping at Coles and cup of coffee at ☞ Coffee Works. The cafe has small museum devoted to coffee which looked worth visiting, but we did not have enough time to do so. We started driving towards Yungaburra, paid visit to giant Curtain Fig tree in Curtain Fig NP and spent couple of hours looking for platypus in Peterson Creek along Wildlife & Botanical Walking Track (recommended).  We could not see any for a while, but then several appeared in different parts of the stream. It was great fun to spot and watch them between dives.

Platypus watching at Peterson Creek

We stopped only briefly in Yungaburra town and continued to Crater Lakes NP, to walk around Lake Echam with refreshing swim at the end, and to  visit  Lake Barrine and check out giant Kauri Pines standing by the lake. We arrived at ☞ Genazzano Campground at dusk.

Day 8

We had half a day to find tree kangaroos. Malanda Falls were disappointing, but we went for nice short walk in Malanda Falls Conservation Park. Tree kangaroos live there, but they are dispersed and hard to find (no reports of recent sighting). We were advised to go to ☞ Nerada Tea Plantation where restoration area is very small and kangaroos have only small number of trees to hang on to. In short time we were drinking local tea and going in and out of the tea room to check on two tree kangaroos on one of the big trees. Nobody could tell us how many kangaroos live in the area (a dozen?), but another visitor apparently spotted one or two more jumping earlier between trees. We brought black with Australian lemon myrtle tee to Chicago. We quickly aborted visit to Millaa Millaa Falls, as we had to return our campervan before 4 pm – return process at Apollo Cairns was fast and efficient. We already dropped off our stuff at our hostel (☞ Dreamtime Travellers Rest). We spent the rest of the afternoon at quite impressive Cairns Botanic Gardens, located across Captain Cook Hwy from Apollo rental near the airport (we just walked over). Bus 131 connects the gardens with Cairns Central, with our hostel just a short walk away.

Driving our Mercedes-Benz Vito-based campervan was easier than anticipated, despite larger size. We made 506 km. Driving on the left side of the road was also not a problem, Australian open roads are wide and with flat hardened shoulders most of the time (not like Scotland). Drivers are quite careful.