Atherton

Years and years ago I visited Queensland for a 2 week Contiki tour, and one of my favourite places was the Atherton Tablelands. Revisiting it now, albeit in the dry season, I remember why. It is a simply beautiful area.

Last night we stayed in the town of Ravenshoe in a free camp area with a large number of other people. Our neighbours included a family of four from Busselton and an older couple from Denmark which we all found to be quite bizarre! We packed up the van early and left it at the campsite. We drove just the Pathfinder north up to Atherton.

Our first stop was at the Hippipamee National Park.

 

This photo shows a crater that was formed millions of years ago. Volcanic activity caused gases to rise to the Earth’s surface, where they expanded and caused rock to explode forming a large crater. The pale green “water” at the crater’s base is actually a thick layer of duckweed. Lots of creatures live under this.

Further along were more waterfalls. These were much calmer than other falls we have recently seen, but still demonstrated how powerful water can be when the rocks beneath slope a certain way. There were a number of other people exploring the area.

After a good walk we left the National Park for Atherton’s town centre. Here we spent several hours in the excellent “Crystal Caves”. A man has been collecting gems for over 40 years and has made the collection open to the public. We could touch and photograph virtually everything which made it a fantastic place to take the kids.

In the main cave (it is amazing what you can create with foam, fabric, spraypaint and glue!) samples are stuck and numbered within and we all enjoyed searching for the next sample and finding out what it was and where it was from. As well as the thousands of gems and other rocks in the cave there is an excellent gift shop where we were able to see further examples.

A new exhibit is the ‘Magic Spheres’ which we weren’t able to photograph. These rock spheres were set up like a solar system of planets and lit up using ultraviolet light which meant the fluorescent minerals hidden in “normal” rock was illuminated. It looked incredible!!

I would recommend this place to anyone visiting Atherton as it gives such a good opportunity to see some of the miracles of our planet.

See www.crystalcaves.com.au for further details.

 

Max, Harry and Trevor walked to see the incredible ‘Curtain Fig Tree’. We have seen examples of the Strangler Fig at work many times on this trip but this tree was something else. The Strangler Fig seed is carried onto the top leaves of a rainforest tree host where it uses the light to germinate. The roots grow furiously downward and eventually take over the host tree. In this example, the host tree has died and the Fig has completely taken over.

The last stop on this busy day was to the ‘Windy Hill Wind Farm’. We always look out for wind turbines, but this time we were able to see them up close. They are really incredible structures!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We got back to Ravenshoe in the afternoon and found the local ‘Foodworks’ to pick up some groceries. I noticed a big jump in prices, and I expect this will only get worse as we get further west to more isolated communities.

As we drove to ‘Forty Mile Scrub’ where we were able to free camp we noticed a big difference in the landscape. Lush rainforests were soon replaced with sparse, sandy bush and we saw heaps of termite mounds. We expect we’ll see many more of these!