Day Nine: Yungaburra - Bowen

Monday, 21 May 2012

Coming to the end of something like this there’s always a temptation to say something along the lines of and then we went home. Back in your primary school days (or mine, in any case) you wrote until you’d produced something around the required length and then you wrapped things up as quickly as possible.

As the word count on this little effort creeps up towards fifteen thousand you might think that’s what I’m doing here, but there were two factors that encouraged a speedy conclusion to the current narrative.

The first came about five minutes before we headed out of Townsville on the way north. And when’re you coming back? was, more or less, the Golfer’s question, and our reply (Next Monday) produced the news that he was flying to Melbourne that day and the motel was, therefore, not accepting bookings.

Fine. Delivers us home a day earlier, doesn’t it? No problem.

It also meant the last day’s leg was extended from around four and a half to about seven hours - not a major problem if you leave early (say around eight) and take a couple of stops along the way.

The second hadn’t quite kicked in when Madam drew my attention to a platypus viewing platform not far from the cottage.

That was just after six-fifteen and within the quarter hour we were heading off through light drizzle to check it out. It was the kind of weather that would have any self-respecting monotreme snuggled in his or her burrow chuckling at the thought that there might be the odd human out there who’d be silly enough to venture out in weather like that expecting to sight an ornithorhynchus anatinus in swimming mode.

Back in the cottage I used the free WiFi to check the weather radar, noting that the 128km loop had a patch of cloud more or less on top of us, and a switch to the 256km version suggested that any rain activity between Cairns and Townsville was confined to the central Tablelands.

It was still drizzling as we set about stowing the possessions in the chariot, and we set off just after eight in the confident expectation that the weather would be clearing before we were too far down the track.

As it was, the drizzle turned to steady rain with the occasional downpour that you might have expected to move the mud we’d managed to acquire crossing two kilometres of dirt road between The Lion’s Den and the highway.

Lion’s Den mud, however, has rather more stickability than the common or garden variety.

The result was that we were driving through rain almost all the way to Cardwell, and we pulled over for brunch the view towards the Range suggested we weren’t out of the woods yet as far as the precipitation was concerned.

Under the original schedule we might have pulled over at Wangan (the place whose name starts with W that boasts the best pie shop in the north, according to Mad Mick), diverted to Etty Bay (where the friendly ranger girl from the Rainforest Canopy Walkway reckoned we were certain to sight a cassowary or two) and paused en route wherever there was a prospect of an interesting photographic capture.

That would’ve probably have got us into Townsville around three or four, with a spot of shopping while we gave The Golfer time to finish his round on the course.

As it turned out we were pulling into the shops at The Domain almost right on one o’clock, and were heading south again by two-thirty having stocked up on bulk cat food, hand towels and waterbottles and made the now regulation diversion to Angelina’s Deli at The Precinct in Fairfield Waters...

And that’s, more or less, the end of the story, as the word count nudges its way towards fifteen thousand. The published version will, of course, probably be considerably longer.

Day Eight: Cedar Park - Yungaburra

Sunday, 20 May 2012

The promise of a continental breakfast had us heading back out onto the balcony the following morning, and I was in the middle of contemplating which of the array of spreads I'd be adding to the two slices of bread in the toaster, whether two croissants would be deemed excessive and whether I'd be needing cereal when Madam arrived with news that made further considerations academic.

She'd grabbed a glass of orange juice for herself and an apple juice for me and had just placed them on a corner table with a pleasant outlook over the surrounding forest when a cheese platter appeared. Samples of half a dozen cheeses along with slices of ham and salami made further consideration of breakfast accompaniments unnecessary, and we worked our way through what was on offer without quite managing to get to the Camembert.

Madam's not big on Emmenthal, but heavily into Gruyere, so there was a disproportionate allocation of those two, but we managed to share the rest nicely, filling up most of the vacant space and chatting with co-host Markus Ryf, who seemed to have taken on the front of house duties while we were there.

From there it was a matter of packing the goods and chattels and ferrying them back to the car, a wander through the grounds and off to Kuranda, where we were due to catch up with another of Madam's Japanese blog friends and her husband.

There have been encounters with a number of these people, Adelaide Lady, Adelaide Baker Girl, and Townsville Vet Photographer (Hughesy's not good with names at the best of times), all of them interesting people in their own right and the latest couple we're no exception. Husband Sami had apparently spent eight years riding a bicycle around the world, visiting Ayers Rock and crossing the Sahara before settling in Cairns and opening one of the city's first Japanese restaurants.

I'm not sure the proprietors of the cafe where we sat chatting for the next couple of hours were over impressed by the lack of orders coming from the table, but we didn't seem to be keeping other paying customers away, so there you go.

From Kuranda we retraced our route back to Mareeba and Tolga, stopping at a farm-based fruit and veg operation (though I noted the bundles of garlic bulbs were marked Product of China) and The Peanut Place, where Madam collected some of the raw product and I went for a packet of the Chilli and lime version.

After refuelling in Atherton we took a sidetrack to Lake Tinaroo, looped back past a flock of white cockatoos feasting on something in what seemed to be a recently ploughed field, sidetracked to revisit the Curtain Fig Tree and arrived on the doorstep at Allumbah Pocket Cottages just before four.

Unpack the car, take a wander through downtown Yungaburra and back to the cottage to avail ourselves of the free WiFi available was the order of the day before dressing for dinner (more precisely, dressing for the anticipated temperature outside as night fell) and wandering off to Nick's Swiss Italian Restaurant for dinner, which came in the form of bruschetta and a rather superb Osso Buco.

There had been some debate about the main course (Madam had been inclined towards the barramundi until I pointed out this would complicate the wine factor) but there were no complaints when the meals arrived, particularly when it came to the bone marrow factor.

From there, with a bottle of Coriole Sangiovese under the belt, it was a case of back to the cottage for a spa, and off to bed a little after the regular eight-fifteen to eight-thirty.

Day Seven: Cooktown - Cedar Park

Saturday, 19 May 2012

With the travelogue up to date by seven in the morning there wasn't much to get in the way of an early departure from Milkwood Lodge, and it was just after eight when the laden chariot set off down the driveway, headed back into town, where Madam had decided the bakery was a logical source for a minimum wait breakfast, while Hughesy had his suspicions about the prospects at the Cooktown Markets.

Given the size of the community and the fact that the tourist season didn't seem to have kicked in I suspected the Markets would be a sort of community get together, not that I would have ventured such an opinion as we sat outside the bakery devouring breakfast. There mightn't be much of interest at the markets, but it was an excuse for another lap of the main street, and a five minute stop there would keep the driver happy.

As it turned out, the turnout was long on local fruit and veg and a few other food-related items, with not much else, certainly nothing in the ancient and decrepit loads of paperbacks and non-legitimate cassettes and videotapes certain operators in Bowen seemed to whack out on display every week.

Cooktown may be a long way from the rest of Australia but at least they seem to appreciate the days of the cassette player and the VCR are long gone.

Back on the road heading south the weather was gradually clearing as we made our way past yesterday's destinations. By this stage I'd established that the old road from Cooktown to the Palmer followed a different line to today's Mulligan Highway, so I wasn't too concerned with trying to piece recollections together. I suspected there might be a turnoff to Butchers Hill somewhere along the way, but failed to spot it, if it actually existed.

After a brief halt at Lakeland Downs we were back on, or close to, the old road to the Palmer as we went up and over the Byerstown Range. Having halted at the lookout for a view back towards Cooktown (we'd been in a hurry to get to Laura on the way up, and, in any case, the lookout was a better fit for southbound motorists) where I'd been hoping for an aspect across the once-golden gullies of the Palmer, we headed back south, giving the Palmer Roadhouse a miss this time around and making another scenic stop at the Mt Bob lookout.

As the astute reader might surmise, there isn't a whole lot to occupy the mind on this section of highway, and the journey out always seems longer than the outwards leg, though there's no scientific reason why that should be so.

As a result it seemed like no time at all before we were pulling over near Mount Carbine to check whether we had an issue with tyres. As it turned out the wind really was that strong, and we headed off, with the odd sideward glance to check for Lighthouse Mountain and a suitable spot for a photo once we had.

When that photo opportunity failed to happen, Madam's attention turned to Lake Mitchell, which looked rather impressive on both legs of the journey without any sign of a lookout or similar venue for photographic action.

That changed, more or less, when we made our way to the Mareeba Wetlands, though getting there involved around seven kilometres of could have been better dirt road. Eventually we made our way into the Visitors Centre, which was a fairly impressive turnout, offering the sort of basic lunch we were looking at, and pretty spectacular views over an extensive stretch of water that's home to a wide range of bird life that seemed, for some reason to be missing in action while we were there.

So there you have it. Finally, a venue where a photographer could click away to her heart's content and a total lack of subject matter apart from the odd scenic shot.

After a couple of Chilli chicken wraps for lunch we were off again, pointing the chariot towards Mareeba's Coffee Works, which was reputed to be the Disneyland of the coffee world. That was the Sydney Morning Herald's description, anyway.

Hughesy's would go more like an impressive array of locally made chocolate (and rather yummy) with a similar selection of coffee and a swag of artistic bric a brac, most of it bearing the sort of inspirational slogans you'd probably steer clear of with a forty foot barge pole.

Still, the chocolate was rather good, and I escaped with some dark Chilli and lime and black pepper that'll go down a treat on a chilly night, and a sample of filter coffee.

Next stop on the agenda was the Mt Uncle Distillery, where I figured there'd be something interesting.

There was, but they'd opted to close the regular tasting area and we found ourselves Ina corner of the cafe, sampling a very good (actually, seriously good) white rum, though had I seen the price tag before I decided to buy I might have had second thoughts. I'm not exactly a connoisseur of white rum, but even at $60 I thought it was reasonably good value.

With those stops out of the way it was time to head for the accommodation, which was supposed to be 26 km from the turnoff to Kuranda. We were around the 23k mark when we spotted a sign, which you might have thought was a warning that the turnoff was coming up, and have been looking for a sign on the left pointing you in the appropriate direction. If I hadn't spotted a Cedar Park Rainforest Resort logo beside a track leading off to the right we might have been looking for some time.

My prediction that we'd somehow chosen the lesser of two avenues of entry, made as a fairly rough dirt track twisted and turned through the scrub turned out to be totally erroneous. There's just one track in to Cedar Park, but when you get there the twists and turns are definitely worth it.

It's difficult, however, to decide how you're going to describe the place.

Quality accommodation is part of the package, with rooms that are much larger than you'd have a right to expect, especially for the price. There are, however, two slight drawbacks. The building was originally built in some configuration that needed to be subdivided, and the subdividing didn't deliver much in the way of soundproofing between adjoining rooms. We had what sounded like a gathering of old Teutonic speaking acquaintances next to us, and with a drink or two under their belts robust conversation went on well into the night.

Could have been a problem if I hadn't anaesthetised myself rather well.

And if you choose to go down that road and indulge yourself in a drink or three the configuration might not be stumbling drunk friendly. Our room came in three sections - a sitting room closest to the front door, the bedroom section with a double and two singles, fridge sink and so on, and the bathroom, with stone floors and more than a single step between each. Not, I think, the sort of place you'd want to be stumbling around in the dark in search of the toilet in the small hours.

But with those caveats, quality accommodation.

Then there are the grounds.

On the way in you'd probably be inclined to question the rainforest bit if you're coming in from the drier Mareeba side (and you're more or less out of the Kuranda rainforest when you hit the turn) but once you arrive at Cedar Park it's obvious, regardless of how things were when the founders found it, there's been a great deal of restoration done and the grounds are, in a word, quite magnificent. I know that's two, but you get my drift.

But the clincher comes with dinner.

The owners are a trio of chefs with impressive credentials and the menu is small but offers an impressive array of immaculately cooked dishes. They cheat a bit, but all's fair when it comes to immaculately cooked meals.

I don't know whether you'd define a request for your order by five when dinner starts at six-thirty as cheating, and, frankly, I don't care if it is if the arrangement is going to deliver the same tender meat falling off the bone lamb shank I had. If you've tried cooking lamb shanks you'd know they need a long slow cook, which isn't possible without pre-cooking if you're going strictly a la carte, and if you're headed down that road you're also headed for sorry sir we've run out or what the hell do we do with the leftovers territory.

No, ask me to order early and deliver something as good as this and you won't be getting any arguments from me.

We started the meal with a cob of rustic bread and two dips, a rather tasty exercise that put us in the mood, and Madam had the entrecôte with wild mushroom sauce. I thought I'd asked for herb butter but Madam wasn't objecting.

We washed the mains down with a Coonawarra Cabernet from Angoves that was definitely Coonawarra and definitely Cabernet. Not, perhaps, a label you tend to associate with the district, but everything Coonawarra Cabernet should be. Once again, no complaints.

And no complaints about the mud cake or lemon and rose sorbet we had for dessert. Although neither of us really needed either, both plates went back almost spotless.

Getting to sleep wasn't, as previously indicated, an easy exercise, but early to bed and late to rise delivers the required number of hours, so who's complaining?

Day Five - Cooktown

Thursday, 17 May 2012

With a fair idea of the lie of the land, we'd decided Thursday was the in town day, largely due to the guided tour of the Botanical Gardens that runs from ten o'clock each Thursday.

I was half inclined to go on that myself, but experience suggested the tour would be followed by extensive photographic action, and I wanted to get in and have a look at the Historical Society Museum as well...

There was also a load of washing to do dealt with some time during the day, so the eventual plan of attack involved breakfast at the kiosk on the wharf, a quick trip out to Finch's Bay, calling in to the Botanic Gardens along the way to verify the starting time for the botanical tour, drop Hughesy at the Historical Society and head back to the wharf for fish and chips for lunch.

Remarks about lengthy photographic sessions might seem flippant, but I'm currently sitting in the Historical Society tapping this section of the travelogue at 11:33 with no sign of the lift to lunch.

Breakfast looking out over the water was very pleasant, something that'll definitely be repeated, maybe not tomorrow or before we head off on Saturday morning, but then again you never know.

Finch's Bay was apparently a popular swimming spot way back when, not that you'd know it from the road that gets you there. The bitumen stops right after the Gardens and the track meanders through the scrub, delivering you to a broad sandy beach with rainforest running right down to the waterline from the outliers of Mount Cook on the right and from the slopes of Grassy Hill on the left.

I was back in town outside the Historical Society by a quarter to ten, and a careful walk around the displays revealed a wealth of detail that filled in gaps in the memory and added fresh detail that'll come in useful if and when I decide to have another go at the frontier violence that followed the settlement of Cooktown.

I could have taken extensive notes, but opted, in the end, for hard copies of a couple of the Society's publications (Cooktown through the Years, Peninsula Pub Crawl and The Rail to Nowhere) that'll do a far more thorough job than an hour's hasty scribbling could possibly deliver.

The bloke looking after the door, Jim and the women who were working away inside delivered very welcome news regarding the fate of the Cooktown newspapers I'd perused back in the mid- to late-seventies which I assumed would have fallen to pieces long ago.

I was reading them in the old Bellevue Hotel, across the road from the Queensland Parliament and once home to the rural representatives in the state legislature. The building had been demolished in controversial circumstances during the Bjelke-Petersen era, and I had a sneaking suspicion those runs of the Cooktown Courier and the Cooktown Herald might have ended up in the rubble.

Fortunately, however, they seem to have survived and have even been microfilmed. there are apparently plans to digitise the microfilm at the National Library in Canberra, though one doubts a couple of files of Cooktown newspapers are very high on the pecking order.

As far as the Historical Society Museum is concerned, at $5 admission it's cheaper than the James Cook, and being relatively light on for Jimmy Content (and quite rightly so, if there's only so much display material relating to the Endeavour you'd expect to find it in a central location) it's able to go into a fair bit more detail about individuals and families.

If you're interested in the history, in other words, do the James Cook first, decide whether you want further information, and if you're even slightly inclined to tick that box head straight for the Historical Society. It really is very good.  

From the Historical Society Museum the next items on the agenda were an appointment with a washing machine and a tumble drier and lunch. Both of those seemed best tackled in the vicinity of the Fisherman's Wharf, and after depositing the laundry in a machine and depositing four $1 coins in its innards we set off for Gilld and Guttd for a round of fish and chips consumed at a table overlooking the river mouth with views across to Cape Bedford.

Fish and chips, in most cases, is fish and chips and provided things have been done right nothing more needs to be said. I've had some pretty good examples of the combination over the years with the best (Swains in Gladstone - highly recommended) being quite sublime and while what we found here wasn't quite up there it was an example of what you get when things are done right.

From there the laundry went into the dryer, Hughesy set out in search of the elusive Commonwealth Bank auto teller and a query in the Post Office revealed that the EFTPOS machine there was as close as I was going to get.

Two runs through the spin drier had got the laundry to the point where a light airing would finish the job, so it was a case of back to base with a walk from the Botanic Gardens pencilled in for the late afternoon, followed by a jaunt up to the windswept summit of Grassy Hill.

The spell back at base allowed me to catch up on the travelogue, to the point where, more than half way through the trip I'm right up to date with the day to day detail and I had the time to peruse the publications I'd picked up at the Historical Society and followed that with a spot of quiet R&R instead.

That didn't last too long, in any case, and it was just after three-thirty when we headed back towards the Botanical Gardens and the walking track to Finch Bay. It's part of the Scenic Rim Walking Trail, and we'd looked at adding assorted other sections to the schedule, but given the up hill and down dale nature of the track we'd probably have been rearranging the plans pretty smartly if we'd included the Finch Bay to Cherry Tree Bay and Cherry Tree Bay to Grassy Hill tracks in the plans. Maybe if we hadn't spent those hours clambering over the top out near Laura...

As it was, about half way along the Finch Bay track there was an unanimous we'll be heading back to the Botanic Gardens along the road, since we knew that route was almost totally flat.

Don't get me wrong. It wasn't a case of being anti-exercise. I like walking, but at this point in time I'd prefer to walk the climbing-induced aches out of the leg muscles along a relatively flat surface.

That was not, however, going to be possible if I wanted to get all the way to the top of Grassy Hill. Madam had been up there the previous afternoon, and hadn't revealed too much detail about the top, except to remark that the view was spectacular and that the conditions up there were windy.

We'd already received comments about wind from friends and acquaintances, and when someone from Blowin’ Bowen tells you a place is windy, you better believe it's windy, boys and girls.

Now we could probably have ignored the signs that advised the road loop was for buses and disabled people only and driven further up, but we're law-abiding citizens and we walked from the car park to the summit.

We didn't have much else pencilled in between Grassy Hill and dinner at the Bowls Club and I could probably have stayed up there, meditating on matters historical and the ways of this wicked world until Madam had finished capturing (photographers, in case you didn't know, don't merely take photos, they capture images) the sunset if it wasn't for the wind.

Back in the car we headed back down, pausing for a bit at the second car park and lookout, where the views were almost as spectacular but didn't give you the full three-sixty, and headed down to the shores of the Endeavour to fill in the time until we signed ourselves in at the Bowls Club for dinner.

Sunset turned out to be a bit more spectacular than Madam had expected, given the light conditions when we were atop Grassy Hill and it was around a quarter to six when I managed to prise her away from the setting sun and point us in the direction of dinner.

To the best of my recollection I've never eaten in a bowls club, and I doubt there's a bowls club in any town of a similar size that has an eatery with a menu to match this operation. Actually, there aren't too many restaurants that have a menu that would match what's on offer here.

The two-sided menu board covering the current specials would probably do for some eateries, and there's a full a la carte menu on the tables offering the usual categories with ample variety within each, and as I made my way up to the servers to order Madam's grilled wild barramundi I was still tossing up options.

There's a blackboard menu above the servers that didn't seem to be quite the same as the one on thee table, and another on the left hand side that had some of the specials listed outside plus a few I didn't recall seeing before.

Overwhelmed by choice, I ended up going for the Cajun Porterhouse with chips and salad, and got to do the swapsies bit with Madam (a portion of porterhouse for a bit of Barra) and can wholeheartedly recommend either. If the rest of the menu matches what we had that night (and the place is almost universally regarded as offering the best food in town), you'd probably be able to eat there three or four times a week for at least a month before you went into I've tried everything and it's time for a change mode.

Back at Milkwood Lodge I settled on the veranda for a glass or two of red and a listen to some Levon Helm while Madam clarified a few details about Sunday over the phone and it was another case of early to bed.

James Cook and the Endeavour River

Every Australian school kid from my generation knows the basics of the Captain Cook story, though we were always told the important bit was the discovery of Australia's east coast.

So let's start with that one.

The chief purpose of Cook's first voyage was observing the transit of Venus from Tahiti, and once he'd done that his orders were to have a look around the Pacific Ocean and see if he could lay eyes on the great southern continent that many highly rated geographers assumed must be there because the northern hemisphere was so land heavy and all they'd managed to find south of the equator was the southern part of Africa, a fair chunk of the Americas, and this stretch of New Holland the Dutch had run across that we now know as Western Australia, Arnhem Land, the western side of Cape York and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

There must be another substantial chunk of land down there. It was just that no one had so far managed to bump into it.

That explains the path Cook followed between leaving Tahiti and circumnavigating New Zealand. It was more a less a case of let's see if it's over here.

Abel Tasman had sailed along the western coast of New Zealand, and proved New Holland didn't stretch that far east, so Cook's next job was to show how far east New Zealand went. He did a figure of eight around the Shaky Isles, decided it obviously wasn't the Great South Land and headed for the continent we now know as Australia.

All of which explains why he was sailing along the east coast. He was doing what he would have done if he'd run across anything that hadn't been charted already. Head over to the Wikipedia entry for James Cook and you can see what he was up to, particularly on his second voyage (the green line on the map) which was his attempt to sink the assumptions about this Great Southern Land once and for all.

In any case, while he was being careful sailing along the north Queensland coast he wasn't being careful enough, struck coral off Cape Tribulation, and went within an inch of losing the whole kit and caboodle. He managed to get the Endeavour off the reef, fostered the hole in the hull with a spare sail and made for land, finding an ideal anchorage in what we now know as the Endeavour River.

Whether he had a copy of the sixteenth century maps that presumably report Portuguese discoveries and labels the area around Cape Tribulation as Coste Dangeureuse or been briefed about it is something that seems to have been left out of the standard accounts, and there’s a strange remark in his Journal:

this harbour will do excellently for our purposes, although it's not as large as I had been told.

Cook, of course, could have been given this information by the lookout in the crow’s nest or a boat crew.

The old Queensland Social Studies Book had a brief reference to difficulties with the locals, but the gist of the rest of the story was he patched up his ship, made it home and received great acclaim for discovering what he had labelled New South Wales.

The reality was that he'd observed the Transit of Venus (good job, well done), failed to find the Great South Land (well where it it, then?) and, most significantly for a voyage of that length, failed to lose a man through scurvy (that's vitamin C deficiency in case you haven't run across the term before).

For most of the European seagoing community, and particularly for the Royal Navy this was pretty big news. Far bigger news, in fact, than the charting of the eastern chunk of something we already knew was there.

Day Four - Lakeland Downs to Cooktown

Wednesday, 16 May 2012

After the previous day's exertions an easy stage was definitely the way to go, and we headed off from Lakeland just after eight, following a brief discussion about breakfast options. The nearest source of morning nutrition was the roadhouse at Lakeland, which involved a right hand turn and a short southward stretch past the Laura turnoff. The alternative was, of course, to head straight into Cooktown and do the brunch bit there.

The brunch bit there, predictably, won.

Travelling on the ground thirty-five plus years after my Cooktown Frontier conflict research I was interested to spot anything that more or less tied in with that generation-back reading, and it's not too surprising to learn there wasn't much of it around until we hit the rivers. We must have sailed past a turnoff to Kings Plains, since I subsequently spotted the name on the map but it wasn't until we hit the Normanby and the Annan that I found things that coincided with distant historical memory.

At this point, given the fact that the next bit of the narrative is more or less we got to Cooktown, had breakfast and a good look around, grabbed a spot of lunch and headed off to the accommodation and took a break until dinner time, it's probably time for Hughesy's Cooktown history lesson, which might differ from what readers are accustomed to seeing. predictable, since much of what actually interests me hasn't been written (much). So if you’re interested in the chain of events that brought Lieutenant Cook (he was promoted to Commander in August 1771 and made post or promoted to Captain in 1775) to the Endeavour River in June 1770 you'll find it in the following blog entry.

In the process of saving his ship, Cook had, however, found a rather handy anchorage that was subsequently visited by Philip Parker King and Allan Cunningham on HMS Mermaid in 1819 and 1820 and Captain Blackwood (HMS Fly) and Lieutenant Yule on the Bramble in 1843.

The anchorage came in handy again after James Venture Mulligan found gold in the Palmer River in 1873.

Gold had actually been found in the river by William Hann's expedition in 1872, but that seems to have been a Government sponsored general purpose get out and see what’s out there trip around the back locks rather than a serious quest for gold, which had already been found on the Etheridge, at Gilberton and at various other sites around the north.

The key issue here was whether it was payable gold, in sufficient quantities to allow the miner to make rations or cover the cost of his tucker. If you could make rations, the field might work. If you couldn't it wouldn't.

Making rations, of course, applied to European miners. The sums were different where the Chinese were concerned.

In any case, Hann reported gold, though not in payable quantities, and various experienced miners, including Mr Mulligan reckoned he was a grazier who probably wouldn't know payable gold if it came up and bit him in the leg, and set out to take a look for themselves.

Mulligan reached the Palmer on 29 June, struck payable gold on 12 August and was back in Georgetown, the centre of the Etheridge Goldfield, on 3 September with 102 ounces of gold (that's just under three kilograms in the new money, folks). Mulligan stayed on the Etheridge just long enough to report the find and collect fresh supplies. News of his discovery had a hundred men and three hundred horses heading out of the Etheridge with Mulligan in September 1873.

Do the sums yourself. At today's gold prices, three kilograms (let's keep things in round figures here) would be worth something in the order of one and a half million dollars.

The Queensland Government, in their constant quest for things that would create revenue, had commissioned an expedition with George Elphinstone Dalrymple in charge to sail north from Cardwell and investigate prospects along the coast between Rockingham Bay and the Endeavour.

Dalrymple had two small cutters, the Flying Fish and the Coquette, a party that was heavy on Native Mounted Police, and instructions to check out the countryside and link up with a party that would head down from the Palmer headed by his old mate Philip Sellheim.

Dalrymple and Sellheim went way back, at least as far back as the declaration of the Kennedy Pastoral district on 1 January 1861. Dalrymple had been appointed Lands Commissioner for the new district and held a little New Years party for selected friends to allow them to select prime real estate straight off the map, sight, more or less unseen (you'll find the actual details in Jean Farnfield's Frontiersman: a biography of George Elphinstone Dalrymple, assuming you can track down a copy).

In any case Dalrymple set off with his two cutters loaded with Native Police, took a good look at things along the way and ended up landing in the Endeavour River on 24 October 1873. The two vessels weren't large enough for the party to sleep on board, so once they'd reached the destination they started unpacking the following morning, preparing to settle in until Sellheim arrived on the scene and the Native Police contingent could head up to the Palmer.

They were in the middle of setting up camp the following morning when the masts of a ship appeared above the mangroves at the mouth of the river and shortly thereafter Dalrymple learned of a change of plan. The Government had changed its mind, told Sellheim to hold his horses, and chartered the steamer Leichhardt to carry newly appointed Goldfield Commissioner Howard St George, engineer Archibald Macmillan assorted officials and seventy-nine miners to the Endeavour and have them blaze a trail from the port to the goldfield rather than from field to port.

So, knowing the story, once we'd arrived in Cooktown, the obvious first item on the agenda was breakfast, and the most likely source was Charlotte Street, which conveniently runs past the points where Cook beached the Endeavour, Dalrymple set up his camp and the Macmillan party landed.

And the obvious thing to do after breakfast was to take a stroll along the main drag, scope out the town and see whether I could visualise the events of 25 October 1873.

Unsurprisingly, that's not as easy as the casual observer might think. The arrival of the Leichhardt sparked a remarkable boom, and there were at least four wharves constructed along the shore near the river mouth, which meant things like mangroves had to go, which they did. One would guess there was a certain amount of dredging and reshaping of the entrance, so the twenty-first century observer watching a fishing boat towing a string of dories coming back to port is quite possibly watching a vessel crossing water that wasn't there a hundred and forty years ago.

Still, if you couldn't quite visualise the masts coming over the mangroves, with your back to the town looking over the estuary you could imagine things from the point of view of a disembarking miner because it looks like not much has changed over on the north shore.

The stroll around the town took us along the northern side of Charlotte Street out as far as the jetty for the Pilot Launch and back along the south side, past plenty of vacant allotments.

We'd reached the original starting point just along from the Cooktown Cafe, and Madam was ready for a spell. Just quietly, she wasn't the only one, but our morning ramble had failed to reveal a Commonwealth Bank auto teller and the wallet was going to need a cash injection at some point so I went on a little further without locating what I was looking for.

I saw machines from other banks along the way, so the technology has certainly reached this far north. Obviously, in this era of rationalisation and bank super profits actual physical branches are few and far between, which explains why the Quinkan Centre has to go to Mareeba to do the banking, but you'd suspect each of the Big Four would have an outlet hereabouts, so I was hypothesising something tucked around the corner at the Post Office, or strategically located outside the supermarket.

If all else fails, of course, there's always ask a local.

That's precisely what we were doing when I met Madam in the Community Arts Centre, which was once the ticket office at the railway station, and again when we'd pointed the car at the Information Centre, where we planned to refine the schedule for the next two days.

We'd allocated a day to head out of town, with lunch at The Lion's Den and a chance for Madam to get in some rainforest photography, and a day devoted to the same around town, so it was a case of checking local knowledge against possibilities.

To the south we'd been told Quarantine Bay was worth a look, and we could possibly get a bit beyond Helenvale, though the area surrounding The Lion's Den would probably keep us busy. That's good. Hughesy's legs are still disinclined towards much more cross-country rambling.

Back in and around town there's Finch's Bay, a walking track to Cherry Tree Bay, the Botanic Gardens, Grassy Hill, the Cemetery and sunset over the water to occupy the photographer and the Historical Society Museum to occupy the ex-historian, so it's not as if we're going to run out of things to do.

From the Information Centre we were off to the Captain Cook Museum, located in the old convent with plenty of explanatory material, not just about Jimmy Cook but also covering, in impressive detail when you're looking at an overview, the broad sweep of the region's history.

How impressive? Well, how about the information that in the 1920s a Chinese family business farmed twenty thousand hectares out around Laura. Lying in the predawn dark the following morning I did a spot of calculation. Twenty thousand hectares at ten thousand meters a go equals two hundred million metres. That's two followed by eight zeroes. If five fours are twenty, you take the seven zeroes and split them four and three to give a notional strip of farmland five kilometres wide and forty kilometres long (or vice versa). The actual dimensions you’d be looking at wouldn't have made that kind of tidy rectangle, but it's a pretty impressive figure.

So, if you're looking for an excellent overview of the historical side of things, the James Cook Museum is definitely the way to go. I'm more interested in filling in the detail on my own version of the story, filling in the gaps in the memory, so Day Five has a visit to the other historical museum pencilled in to do that, because if there is a negative in the James Cook Museum (and I'll admit the possibility it's there but I managed to miss it) it's a lack of supporting material and references to add depth to the main narrative.

Summary: Strong on displays, short on supplementary material.

From the museum, however, with legs disinclined to further trekking, it was a choice between a light lunch and checking into the accommodation, and since it was just coming up to one o'clock, an hour ahead of standard check in time, lunch was the winner.

We weren't after anything substantial, so we headed over to Capers, which we'd passed on the morning stroll for coffee and nibbles (flour less chocolate slice this way, lemon tartlet for Madam) and then headed off to Milkwood Lodge, located a couple of kilometres out of town just off the main road.

Six pole houses in the rainforest delivers a quiet retreat, and it certainly looks like the way to go when you're looking at a couple of relaxing days away from the swing of things but close enough to get there if need be.

Questions about dining options produced a bid wrap for The Italian, a place I'd been inclined to miss on the basis of the and Thai tacked onto the end, suspecting an operation that was sort of neither fish or fowl, tackling two and not getting either of them right. How wrong I was! But more of that anon.

A power nap was enough to recharge the batteries and get me back onto the iPad to tap out the narrative, and I was pretty much out of the backlog when Madam decided she'd head up to Grassy Hill for a look and some photographic action. I could have gone, but we'd decided Thursday was in town and Friday was Lion's Den day, so I was keen to get the guts of the historical side of things tied up and finished by the time she returned.

We'd been advised to try Shadows of Mount Cook for dinner and since it was just down the road it seemed like an obvious first choice, but an investigatory phone call suggested they're not doing an open to the public dining bit any more, and brought another suggestion pointing us to The Italian, which is where we were pulling up around six-fifteen.

The wrap from Milkwood Lodge had a firm tick beside pasta Di Mare (assorted seafood, olive oil, garlic, fresh basil and a touch of Chilli) and a suggestion that we ask for it Wog style, something I would normally demur from doing, but I'm certainly glad I didn't.

It's BYO so we'd set off with a good bottle of SSB, which went down very nicely with one of the best Italian meals I've had in a long time, and since I've been eating Italian style for much of the past forty years...

Day Three Tolga - Lakeland

Tuesday, 15 May 2012

And this, folks is where the adventure begins.

As previously indicated, I'd been in touch with the Quinkan Cultural Centre to see what the go was as far as guided tours of rock art sites were concerned, and had been informed that the only one accessible at the moment was Split Rock but I should call back the day before we arrived in case there were any developments in the meantime.

Now, we should have made that call while we were down on the coast and in range of the Virgin Mobile network, but that detail had slipped by in the pursuit of pie shops in towns which might have names starting with W, and we were walking out of the Rainforest Canopy Walk when Madam asked whether I thought I should ring.

Well, it was fairly obvious that I should, but in the car park at Mamu there wasn't a signal, so we figured it'd be better if we waited till we were close to a slightly larger centre (Atherton, for example) but by the time we were there Mickey's big hand was getting awfully adjacent to the twelve with the little hand hovering just before five, so I reckoned it wasn't worth trying.

Better, I thought, to call from a pay phone somewhere en route in the morning. The Palmer River Roadhouse seemed like an obvious choice since it would be easy for people on the other end of the line to calculate a likely arrival time. More on that matter anon.

The first consideration on the day, however, was breakfast. Something at the motel or get on the road and grab something along the way? No brainier. We had the car packed after a good night's sleep and we were pulling out of the car park at the motel just before eight.

Any decent sized town is likely to have a bakery, and Tolga, according to the phone book, was no exception to the rule. About two blocks down from the motel was a cafe, and we turned into the side street to investigate and, in the process discovered the bakery lurking just behind the cafe.

Fine. Next question. Sit down in the cafe or grab something from the bakery? Anyone who assumes we were looking at whatever would get us to Laura ASAP was the go would be right on the money, and mini pizzas from the bakery did the job. The result was that we were out of Tolga by eight ten or thereabouts, with the next issue being the question of fuelling up. Mareeba seemed the logical choice, so I settled back for the brief sojourn through Walkamin, pointing out the distillery as a possible stop on the return journey.

Now, at this point, there are probably alert readers rolling their eyes at what may be seen as an obsession with alcohol-related venues, but I'd counter the eye-rolling with the observation that we'd end up going where the driver wants to go, so I mention possibilities without expecting too much in the way of eventualities in circumstances like this one.

Past Mareeba it was obvious were we're getting away from the high rainfall belt.

Actually it was obvious before we left Mareeba, but there were large irrigation channels streaming water from Lake Tinaroo to crops of bananas, mangoes, sugar cane and assorted other agricultural produce between Atherton and Mareeba, but they gradually receded into memory once we were well on the Mulligan Highway.

The run up through Mount Molly and Mount Carbine was uneventful enough, with a quick scan of the horizon as we sailed through each township in case there was a pay-phone in view, but given the relatively early hour I wasn't inclined to look too closely. The Palmer River Roadhouse was, as previously indicated, probably the best option.

Scanning the horizon for pay phones was, in addition, less absorbing than watching the terrain and visualising would-be miners, bullock wagons and teams of pack horses battling their way up hill and down dale en route to the various mining discoveries in the hinterland.

Those thoughts were largely prompted after I noted the road down to Mossman that branched off the Mulligan just after Mount Molloy. Madam informed me that at one point, very early in proceedings, before she'd decided to spend a couple of days on the Tablelands, she'd briefly harboured thoughts of using that road to get us back to Cairns.

I'm not sure whether the road actually follows the notorious track that required double teams of bullocks to get wagons over a particularly nasty pinch called, if I remember correctly, The Bump, in that understated way we have of describing significant obstacles.

In any case I seem to recall stories of a very steep descent, and I wasted no time in assuring her that if the subject had been broached I would have been suggesting a look at the alternatives.

Musings on nineteenth century diggers doing it tough in a landscape that brooded with what Fred Dagg once termed the stark hostility of the very land itself gave way to thoughts of an ancient landscape, brooding with, not quite malevolence, more a sense of indifference. It's the same feeling I had crossing the Nullarbor, a feeling the landscape knows you're there but has no concern whatsoever about another minor interruption. It was there long before you arrived and will be there millennia after you're gone.

Those feelings reached their peak when we stopped at Bob’s Lookout as the Mulligan weaved it's way around the end of the Desailly Range and after that the musings turned to the geology of the goldfields. There must have been reefs of gold in the ancient landscape (the original one millions of years back). Miners on the Palmer turned their attention to reefs once the alluvial started to run out, and I guessed those reefs were old, deep seated remnants of long gone veins of quartz-laden ore.

Gold, given its weight, won’t travel far when carried by water, so while the rest of long gone landscapes eroded, whatever gold reached the surface (and remember, this is all guesswork, Hughesy's geological knowledge doesn't extend much beyond the geomorphology component of Geography I in 1969 and the recent Time Traveller's Guide to Australia) wouldn't have gone far. Not in the first instance, anyway. But over the years the grains would have gradually been carried downwards, a little at a time, collecting behind whatever barrier impeded the flow of water, and creating the pockets of alluvial that gave rise to the label The River of Gold.

We broke the journey at the Palmer River Roadhouse, where the phone call established that, yes, there was a guide available, and that he was booked to do a tour of Split Rock with a party on a tour bus, and when he'd finished with them he'd look after us provided we could give him a lift back into Laura. The cost would be eighty dollars a head, not exactly cheap, but I figured it was better to have some idea what we were looking at and, presumably, he'd get us to places we wouldn't find ourselves.

The rest of the instructions were vaguer than some in the party would have liked.

Drive into the car park at Split Rock, I was told. If there's an Outback Spirit bus in the car park, he's up in the gallery with the tour. If you get there after the tour has gone I'll get him to wait at the kiosk.

Lack of clarification about driving conditions didn't please the driver, but I reckoned the bloke on the other end on the line probably knew what he was doing. If his guide was going to get back we needed to get there, so presumably there was nothing to prevent us from doing that.

From the Road House there's a rapid descent of the Byerstown range, Byerstown (long since gone) being the easternmost settlement on the Palmer and then we were in the wide river valley that takes you, first, to Lakeland Downs, and then, after a left hand turn, towards Laura.

There are huge swathes of broad acre farming around Lakeland, and the ranges are a relatively distant prospect on the left and right. Somewhere in there over on the left was the legendary Hells Gate, a narrow gap in the escarpment, three days' walk without water, a place so narrow that buckles on the saddles of passing teams of pack horses left scrape marks on the rock.

The ranges on either side narrowed as we neared Laura, and we started to spot formations just under the ridge line that certainly looked, to a novice's eyes, like the sort of place where you might find shelter during the wet season. Shortly thereafter a signpost pointed us towards the Split Rock car park, just off the bitumen highway.

So we were there, but there was no sign of a tour bus.

Proceeding according to instructions I wandered over to the kiosk, found it deserted, wandered back past a parked car that had no sign of any occupants, and headed back to the remaining vehicle, where a bloke in an Outdoor Education Centre T-shirt was in the process of negotiating a cup of coffee with the Missus.

I was still figuring out what to do and ascertaining this couple's intentions when, lo and behold, a tour bus and trailer pulled in of the highway and pulled up behind the previously noted unoccupied vehicle.

It was an obvious case of heading in that direction, and I arrived to find the bus disgorging its occupants while a nuggety Aboriginal bloke in faded blue shirt and denim jeans was looking in my direction.

Roy? Ian? And a handshake concluded the introductions, I quickly ascertained we were to tag along with the tour group, so I headed back to impart news, apply sunscreen, collect bottled water and get my stuff together. Roy, I noted, was carrying a water bottle, confirming my suspicions that I'd be needing two.

By the time we reached the tour group, the bus had totally disgorged its elderly occupants, and from a look at the gathering it was obvious we weren't going to be doing anything over strenuous.

As we set off we found ourselves at the end of what used to be termed, in English schoolboy stories, a crocodile, though given the issues associated with fitness and agility with this party, one was certainly hoping the saurians were thin on the ground up in these parts well away from the water.

The climb wasn't quite as straightforward as one might have presumed, and there were frequent stops that served the dual purpose of giving Roy a chance to talk about bush tucker or point out something of botanical interest and giving less agile members of the party a chance to catch up.

There were a couple of smaller galleries on the way up, faded by weather and partly obscured, as Roy explained, by dust from the previously unsealed road but arriving at the actual Split Rock gallery we found ourselves on a large wooden platform with seating on the outer rim.

There was plenty to see, with paintings superimposed over others, all fading under the influences of dust and weather, but all placed in the invidious position where trying to do anything approximating restoration would probably do more harm than good.

There was a lengthy pause there as Roy talked to whoever wanted to talk to him, and I waited until those conversations were breaking up before crossing to check whether we were supposed to be taking him back to Laura. From conversations along the way I gathered the tour bus had come up from Cooktown via Battle Camp, and would presumably be heading of to the Tablelands or Mossman, so our presence would save the driver going back to drop the guide in Laura.

The inquiry produced the news that, yes, we were to drop him back at base, and that once the tour party had left he'd take us over the top, though the top remained an undefined concept.

With the tour party heading back to their bus, we headed further up the slope to some smaller sites, passing a couple of itinerant sightseers on the way, and reached a one where the track was, well, not quite barred, but a sign indicated that unauthorised persons should not proceed beyond this point.

As we proceeded to ignore the instructions one assumed we were now authorised, and I learned that the sign was there because the trail hadn't been cleared or prepared after the end of the wet season.

This, from what I can gather, is the issue with the rest of the sites. Unlike Split Rock, they're only accessible by four wheel drive, and that means getting people out on the tracks to make sure the vehicles can get to where they're supposed to go. The sites are on the Split Rock side of the Laura River, so the first issue after the wet season has finished is to wait until the river goes down. Split Rock might be easily accessible from the sealed highway, but until they've finished the high level bridge it's inaccessible from Laura, and the tours had only resumed the previous week.

All that explained the fairly rough going as we made our way up the escarpment, across the plateau on the top, over to Turtle Rock, a spectacular lookout over the Palmer country, and back down through the Gugu Yalanji galleries, the last of which were quite spectacular, being nestled in a position that was more sheltered from dust, wind and water and relatively inaccessible. The National Parks and Wildlife Rangers had apparently been around the area fairly recently, but it seemed we were the first outsiders to visit this particular area this year.

From there we had a lengthy and occasionally hairy descent, joining the Split Rock track and making our way back to the car park just after three o'clock. Given the fact that we'd arrived there around eleven-fifteen (I was too busy scanning the horizon for tour buses to note precise times) and allowing for speed of travel considerations with the tour party, that amounted to a three hour guided walk which seemed pretty fair value at eighty dollars per head.

Heading back to Laura we turned off the bitumen onto a dirt detour just before the new and still unfinished bridge, with Roy explaining that it could be three or four months once the river rose above the old low level right down there In the river bed bridge, and for that time it was a case of flying in food supplies.

Those issues raised themselves again at the Quinkan Cultural Centre, where the bloke I'd spoken with over the phone elaborated on the new bridge and the likely benefits of year round access to Split Rock from the Laura side.

He also let slip the (well, to me, anyway) surprising news that until he'd taken over at the Centre, tours to the rock art galleries had been led by non-indigenous guides, something that I found quite incredible.

In any case, the really spectacular galleries, including Giant Horse, the one I really wanted to see, are only accessible through the Quinkan Centre, but I'd still suggest, assuming you're fit and interested, that you take the guided Split Rock tour (I'm assuming that's more or less what we got) rather than just lobbing in the car park and wandering up the hill to take a gander at the paintings.

In any case, if you are there and decide not to do anything extravagant you should definitely drop the suggested $5 per head in the honesty box at Split Rock and take a good look at the displays at the Quinkan Centre, where you can also make the donation. Depends on which way and how far you're going.

A more detailed account of this bit of the trip would have required the use of a notebook or voice recorder, and, to be quite honest, I was too busy keeping up with the walk to be stopping to scribble, and vocal records would have come with a good deal of puffing and panting.

Still, I have to say those three hours were one of the most memorable experiences I've had, and did a lot to clarify my thinking about long dormant historical research. Whether anything concrete comes out of that renewed interest remains to be seen (he said, tapping out his impressions in a motel room at Lakeland Downs the following morning).

From the Quinkan Centre it was off to the pub for a quick chilled article, then back to Lakeland Downs for the night. In retrospect it might have been possible to head all the way into Cooktown, but three hours clambering over the escarpment meant that by the time we'd checked in, had a short rest, and demolished a couple of seafood baskets we were both pushing up the Zs shortly after seven thirty.

Day Two Townsville - Tolga

Monday, 14 May 2012

It wasn't quite sparrow fart when I emerged from the spare room to start tapping out the travelogue, but the scent would still have been in the air.

Our host emerged shortly after the word count had passed four hundred, so there was a considerable backlog to catch up on when we pulled into the Atherton Tablelands Motor Inn around five that afternoon, but with breakfast despatched we were on the road around eight-thirty-five, which wasn't too bad for a day where the driving quotient was around four hundred kilometres when you took a couple of planned sidetracks into account.

Anyone who has done the Townsville to Ingham drive knows there isn't much of interest for the first half, given the fact that you're still in the dry tropics. While the rainfall might be a little more generous than it is in the Bowen to Giru stretch, and Townsville's inexorable outward sprawl will eventually transform everything up to Bluewater (at least) into the regular major city arterial road landscape, it's still not a very interesting drive.

Once you've cruised past Rollingstone and the Paluma turnoff, of course, things start to green up, and we cruised into Ingham intent on taking a break and grabbing a new battery for the torch. That proved slightly more difficult than anticipated since someone had decided to relocate or conceal the supermarket I seem to recall lurking on the left as you dogleg out of Lannercost Street.

No drama, however, since a diversion into a what looked like a pretty close to brand new IGA did the trick.

Back on the road, I was anticipating delays on the Cardwell Range, where there's a complete reconfiguration in progress, but we sailed up and over the crest without delay and the existence of a roadworks depot ensured we kept on going until we passed Port Hinchinbrook and debated whether to stop in Cardwell.

There has been plenty of publicity about the locals doing it tough since the devastation wrought by Cyclone Yasi, but the beachfront seemed to have recovered fairly well, and having breakfasted, given the fact that it was too early for lunch, the to stop or not to stop question came down to the need to fuel up or the necessity of a toilet break. Neither applied, so it was on to Tully, where we'd refuelled last time, and they'd probably need the money too. Lunch in Cardwell on the return leg, on the other hand, looks a strong possibility.

The run down from the top of the range had provided frequent reminders of Yasi's presence fifteen months or so ago, and while a lot can happen in a year and a bit there's still a long way to go before the rainforest along the way is back to its full verdant glory.

The clearest reminder ran along the ridge lines as we headed north out of Tully. At ground level, looking across the flats towards the mountains while you can see the effect on individual trees there's enough depth there to disguise things, at least to a degree.

For most of the way down from the range the ridge line had been out of sight, and from Kennedy to around Euramo it's far enough away so you can't quite make it out, but heading out of Tully the ridges were close enough to see the gaps between individual trees rather than the continuous green line that runs along there normally.

The Golfer and I passed through the same area four months after Larry did his thing across the same section of coast and with another eleven months or so for the vegetation to recover things weren't quite so stark, but a full recovery is still going to take a while.

Mad Mick had spoken glowingly about a pie shop along the way, somewhere you turned off the highway to the left that Madam thought might have a name starting with W. Under the after-effects of the previous night's indulgence I wasn't quite sure about these things, but Silkwood, from some fuddled memory or other, might offer some prospect as far as a gobble and go lunch was concerned. A turn off the highway to the left revealed a sprawling settlement with nary an option on the main drag and not much, as far as I could see, on the side streets. There was allegedly a business centre somewhere, but it didn't seem to be on the main drag.

Back on the Bruce Highway we headed towards Innisfail, stopping in Mourilyan on the principle that continuing on in search of places on the left that start with W might well see us turning off to the Mamu Rainforest Canopy Walk before we'd managed to find lunch.

A sign on the highway advised of a bakery in Mourilyan, and regardless of Mad Mick's endorsement of place starting with W's comestibles if they're better than what the Mourilyan Bakery turns out they must be pretty damn fine.

Madam's spinach and ricotta pasty hit the spot nicely and my gourmet mushroom pie was arguably the best pie I'd eaten since Rutherglen at the end of 2006. There mightn't have been a plethora of pies in the meantime, but this one was very good and wasn't far short of the Rutherglen beef and burgundy number. I could easily have gone anotherie, but Madam's mind was set on the Mamu Rainforest Canopy Walk and she was driving so...

I'd conveniently forgotten that the turnoff onto the Palmerston Highway is north of Innisfail, which was just as well since stopping there for lunch would have involved more than getting out of the car. Mamu beckoned and it was just after one-fifteen when we turned off the Palmerston and pulled into the relatively deserted car park.

Now, you might think four vehicles in a substantial car park suggests a venue that isn't highly favoured, and you may well look at the $20 admission and think that's a contributory factor, but once you're in it's fairly obvious that the twenty isn't an unreasonable impost. But more of that anon.

If you're looking for an actual overview, you can find one here, and while the walk through the rainforest is pretty standard it's the specially constructed viewing structures that set the Mamu RCW apart from the standard rainforest experience.


That's obvious from the time you read one of the plaques on The Cantilever, preferably after you've been all the way out to get the view over the curve of the South Johnstone River overlooked by The Cantilever. Once you've been out, taken your photos and taken in the green panorama is the time to read the screed that explains that movement \you felt underfoot stems from the fact that the viewing platform isn't held up by vertical posts, but is supported by a cantilever arrangement with its foundations in the adjacent hillside.

Less disturbance to the forest floor that way, compris?


It's also at this point that you appreciate the location of the whole thing. You're on the upper slopes of the escarpment that runs down to the South Johnstone, with the walking track running along an old timber trail. The steepness of the slope down to the river means you don't have to go out too far to get to a point where you’re effectively right out there in the treetops, and The Walkway gives you more panoramic vistas over the river valley on one side and a chance to get reasonably up close and personal with the bits of the trees you can't get to from the ground unless you're a tree kangaroo.


And if you're still inclined to quibble about the twenty bucks, take yourself out for a three hundred and fifty metre walk, preferably in a straight line where you can see the starting point. Take a gander back to where you started and there’s the length of The Walkway. There are round viewing platforms at not quite regular intervals, and the structure follows the contours, so you're not talking a straight line (nature rarely does straight lines, and on the rare occasions when she does, it's not likely to be in a rainforest in a cyclone prone area.


Once you've negotiated The Walkway it's back into the forest until you reach The Tower, which takes you up, should you choose to do so, to points where you've got a bird's eye view rather than a treetop vista.

Reading the screeds at the base of The Tower (at least that's where I think it was, I was waiting for Madam to finish up yonder) I learned the RCW was built in the wake of Cyclone Larry, and there was plenty of evidence of Yasi in the area. Still, rainforests grow, and the area will recover to its full former glory. It couldn't have been too far short of it, given a location just on the lee side of the ridge.

Our ramblings were frequently disturbed by the presence of half of the Year Eight cohort from an Innisfail College, clipboards in hand and under the supervision of one of the RCW rangers, who sympathised with a couple of ex-teachers while maintaining a supervisory eye on proceedings.


Back in the car, once we'd reached the top of the Palmerston we were off on the waterfall circuit, taking the looping trail that delivers you to the Mungalli Falls rapids, and continuing on, to the Mungalli Biodynamic Dairy. By this time it was nearing three-thirty, so a couple of ice creams (Belgian chocolate and rum and raisin respectively) was enough to keep us going along the actual Waterfall Circuit a bit further along the Palmerston.

I have vague memories if these three waterfalls from deep in the dim distant past on a teenage visit to the area with my parents. While those recollections include remarks about not being Zillie, they don't include legging it along a steep downwards trail to the Elinjaa Falls.

My recollections of these matters seems to involve getting out of the car and walking across a patch of sward to swimming holes, so I'm probably getting things mixed up with other waterfalls in neighbouring areas. Forty-five years or thereabouts ten to muddy the detail in these matters.



The view from the bottom of Elinjaa Falls was fairly spectacular, though things were decidedly slippery underfoot.


Zillie Falls involved a short stroll through the rainforest and a view from the top as the waters plunged into the depths below, while Millaa Millaa Falls had the swimming hole and a large group of people who seemed to be celebrating some form of strange aquatic ritual.


By this time thoughts were firmly on the night's billet, and we pointed the chariot towards Tolga, arriving at the Atherton Tablelands Motor Inn just after five.

It hadn't been a long day in terms of the driving, four or five hours out of eight and a half isn't that excessive, IMHO, but the non-driving time was largely taken up with a fairly brisk walk through rainforest canopies and up and down access tracks to waterfalls, so when Madam ventured the opinion she wouldn't mind eating here, I wasn't about to demur.

Here delivered a fish and chips for Madam and a rib fillet and roast veggies for Your Humble Correspondent, both of which did what they needed to do, filling a space that needed filling without hitting any great heights or plumbing any significant depths. Good home cooked tucker that you mightn't write home about but you won't be belittling either.

One slight niggle, however. I was expecting rib fillet to come in a fairly substantial chunk rather than a couple of sliced, but what I sampled was pretty close to the rib fillet sliced thin for barbecue purposes that I'd known as cube roll back in the days when I was organising the lunchtime catering associated with school cricket carnivals.

From there, after an hour or so tapping out the travelogue it was a case of early to bed in anticipation of...

Day One Bowen - Townsville

Sunday, 13 May 2012

Given a short leg and a golfer who wasn't likely to be back at base much before five (or so we thought, but reality, as it turned out was different to expectation) there wasn't much point in heading off much before two-thirty, and with the need to fuel up on the way out it turned out to be just after three when the laden vehicle backed out into Brisbane Street. 

Fifteen minutes later we were back, having forgotten the torch, which was probably going to be an important item somewhere along the line.

Grabbing the torch was straightforward, but the thing didn't work when I tried it, Madam thought we had a spare battery in the store room and reality, again, proved the opposite to expectation. As a result it was just on three-thirty when we found ourselves passing within sight of the Warbo Roost on the way out of town.

Five return trips to Townsville since late February meant we knew to expect road works, but there was only a brief delay just north of Bowen and the trip proved totally uneventful until a failure to remind the driver which set of lights to turn at had us heading along Abbot Street rather than the extension of Bowen Road. A left turn through Fairfield Waters got us back to where we were supposed to be, but necessitated a u-turn at the Endeavour Park Mervyn Crossman Drive roundabout.

It was just after six when we pulled up in front of The Golfer's Motel, to find a rather agitato host who was reportedly concerned about our failure to arrive. The golfing proceedings had apparently finished around four, and he'd hastened home rather than sampling an ale or three at the nineteenth. 

The presence of Mad Mick and his Highly Vocal Better Half on the premises might have had something to do with the agitato, since the HVBH has been known to comment adversely on anything within eyesight, and they'd been on the premises for two hours.

Our arrival gave her something else to discuss other than The Golfer's personal habits, taste in home decor, and assorted other matters.

Wide ranging discussions gave us a few pointers for the Tablelands leg of the trip and reminded me that an old school cricket acquaintance used to be the principal at Laura. 

The Golfer, as may have been mentioned before, is a better than average cook, and a rather toothsome roast lamb dish was washed down with a couple of bottles of decent red, and out came something in the qualitatswein line to finish off before we toddled off towards the cot.

Hughesy didn't take much rocking.

Cooktown 2012: The Prologue

Well, in the words of Neil Young's Tired Eyes, it wasn't supposed to go down that way, and the eyes had a bit, but not a whole lot to do with it.

We'd got back from the Canberra road trip almost exactly a year ago with a pencilled in touring itinerary that ran:

Randy Newman concert in Brisbane in July;

Three weeks in Japan in colored leaves time (October/November);

An excursion to Angkor Wat and Laos in February;

And possible side trips to New Caledonia and Cooktown before the end of the 2011-2012 financial year.

We managed the Randy Newman, but as a three-day fly down Thursday, fly back Saturday jaunt it wasn't a trip within the definition in the relevant legislation.

The wheels fell off shortly thereafter when The Supervisor was on the verge of booking the tickets to Japan. Advice from The Mother and The Sister that frequent aftershocks following the earthquake that took out Fukushima made it in advisable to subject hairy gaijin to the tremulous terroir, and while I wanted to get over there and spend a fortnight riding around on assorted shinkansen, I wasn't keen on the prospect of seismic activity.

A Skype call to Megumi, who we'd stayed with in 2008 and lived in the hinterland of the tsunami area came just after a minor quake that had induced mass panic on the east coast of the USA.

It sounds like it was a five (at least that's the figure I recall, reality may vary from recollection), Meg reportedly remarked. We get those every day.

Japan, in case the alert reader is wondering, has developed a different scale to measure earthquake intensity, one that reflects the apparent effect on humans rather than measuring the actual intensity of the seismic activity. Or something.

What it meant was that, despite a fairly low Richter reading, the quake in question was pretty scary (hence the mass panic), and on the basis of Meg's remark Hughesy was quite happy not to be heading in that direction.

Madam, on the other hand, being relatively tremor-experienced, was OK to go, and subsequently spent a fortnight over there, reporting no significant seismic seizures. She wad a nice spell catching up with old acquaintances and eating out. I had plans to do a bit of lunching out while she was away, but ended up herding cats through the daytime while major roadworks were carried out on Brisbane Street.

Plans that revolved around lunch at Food Freaks on Monday, Coyotes on Wednesday and somewhere else on Friday got pushed aside while I set about ensuring that small furry felines didn't intersect with heavy earthmoving machinery.

About two days after the wanderer returned from the Land of the Rising Sun we were off to see the ophthalmologist, who advised I needed cataract surgery and pencilled in an operation around the end of February. Fine, I thought, that'll coincide with the return from Cambodia.

The roadworks in Brisbane Street and the responsibilities associated with cat herding put the kibosh on that one. Having watched the snail-like progress of the roadworks on the upper end of Kennedy Street I should have known they wouldn't be finished before the wet set in, and we'd been making sure the furry felines were indoors during the day, which they wouldn't be if we weren't there.

So, as the astute reader may have guessed, Angkor Wat and the old royal capital of Laos remain on the get around to these in the future list.

Looking for an excuse to justify that situation, of course, the prospect of cataract surgery meant that if we put it off by twelve months or so I'd be able to see Angkor Wat, the Bayon and Angkor Thom properly, wouldn't I?

The cataract surgery, two eyes, three weeks' recuperation after each, an extra week between them to fit into the surgery schedule and another week tacked on the end to see the retinal specialist meant we weren't going anywhere before late April, and getting caught up in The Actor for Mayor in the local government elections pushed things back to mid-May, once the final results were posted on the 8th.

With a choice between New Caledonia and Cooktown, things became pretty clear pretty quickly. new Caledonia needed a bit of research, air fares on special (not totally essential, but The Supervisor's firmly in budget mode when scheduling flights on the basis of why fly there now when it's going to be cheaper then), and the fact that flying out of Brisbane meant at least one night either way in Brisbane. The el cheapo option would be to spend a couple of days in the unit at Southport meant Cooktown moved into firm favoritism.

I already knew a bit about the area, we had friends who'd been there recently, travel by car delivered a degree of flexibility that meant research wasn't quite so vital and a quick spot of calculation suggested a week and a bit would get us there and back with a couple of stops along the way. It'd also be long enough to start getting the furry felines used to the idea of lengthy absences while the neighbours keeps the food up to them.

The schedule wasn't that difficult to get together. Bowen to Cooktown via the inland route would involve a minimum of two days' drive, with an overnight stop on the Atherton Tablelands, an area Madam is keen to explore. Bowen to Atherton or Mareeba is doable in a day, but Townsville's two hundred kilometres closer and that's two more hours to have a look around along the way, so a phone call got us the spare rom at The Golfer's Motel and the rest fell into place fairly quickly.

Overnight in Townsville and Tolga, side trip to Laura to see the rock art, overnight at Lakeland Downs, back up to Laura if there's more to see, Cooktown that night and a couple more, back to the Tablelands for two nights and back off home.

A phone call to the Quinkan Centre at Laura revealed most of the galleries were still inaccessible after the wet which was not long finished up that way, so the back up to Laura isn't definite, and if it isn't that just gives us longer in Cooktown, doesn't it?