Japan 2012: Back Home...

Friday, 16 November 2012

It seemed one moment I was pondering whether sleep was actually possible and the next I was having my arm gently shaken with inquiries about coffee and breakfast.

Three-thirty in the morning when you're passing over New Guinea mightn't be the optimal time for breakfast, but when it's on offer and you're not sure about the arrangements that were going to come into play later you tend to accept, and once you have, it's over to the iPad for a bit of a read.

What I should have done was reach for the iPod and a soothing soundtrack as well and some of what followed might have been averted.

As it was, I didn't, remaining blissfully unaware of the fact that I was sitting on the item in question and the little package holding the earbuds had wedged itself into the crack between the seat and its upright brother.

I'm not sure why I didn't go for that, possibly because deep down I knew I wouldn't have long before the Seat-belts sign came up along with the request to turn off the electronic devices, but as far as I was concerned the iPod was safely stowed in Madam's hand luggage (the Little Red Travelling bag) rather than my backpack, which was lurking overhead in the locker.

It was when we stood up to disembark that a question regarding the location of the device brought a No, and a subsequent investigation revealed where it was. I don't know why I didn't check for the ear buds as well, but there you go. I'm not sure how much of what followed could have been avoided if I had, but there you go.

We'd disembarked and were heading towards Immigration when the penny dropped, and since we weren't allowed to head back I had to wait for the cabin crew to finish doing their thing after a message was passed back. As it turned out the search was successful, but I didn't realize that was the case until they'd walked past and I doubled back to the checkpoint where I found the item in question. In any case, that got us to Immigration where I discovered that incoming couples with one Australian passport holder could go through the same checkpoint, which would have been handy, and would have delivered us to the head of the Customs queue if the iPod incident hadn't occurred.

I was fairly flustered by the whole string of events to date, and when the bloke from Customs scrutinized the relevant slips and asked whether we were carrying foodstuffs, I reflexively answered that we weren't, when I should have said I wasn't. Madam, of course, was, and pointed out that she did, and we were motioned over to the having your bags inspected queue.

Again, I don't know what difference it would have made, because when filling out the Customs slip I ticked the box about having been out in the countryside over the preceding week, which we had been. Madam hadn't, so regardless of my answer about the foodstuffs we might have ended up in the queue anyway.

Without the earbud bit, of course, we would have been at the top of the queue, so when the phone rang and the Ukulele Lady asked whether we were through Immigration, the response was that we were in a queue and weren't sure how long we'd be there because there were a few people in front of us and no one seemed to be in a hurry.

Eventually, however, we got the all clear and made our way to the front of the building, where a lengthy wait ensued. Under other circumstances, when the call came we'd have been just about through the reentry process and would probably have been told the Ukulele Lady would be right over.


Still, it was early in the morning, so when Ukulele Lady and Sushi Chef Husband arrived in two cars and offered to show us the quickest way out of town there wasn't a great deal of traffic about, and we made our way onto the Bruce Highway without too much difficulty.

And here's where the little things started to add up.

The first issue involved the sunglasses that are de rigeur when driving in bright sunlight. They were in Madam's luggage, and we needed to pull over somewhere so they could be retrieved. That took place in a rest area on the banks of the Mulgrave, where we could also have had a toilet break, but, as in so many other instances through the course of the morning the penny refused to drop.

As we neared Innisfail two things were obvious.

First, we needed something more substantial than croissants and coffee for breakfast. Fine. On the other side of Innisfail there's a rather good bakery at Mourilyan where the pies are excellent.

Second, it was obvious that Madam needed to take a break and catch up on some sleep. She's remarked on the difference between Economy and Business the night before while we'd been waiting for dinner, remarking that she'd probably already be asleep if we were sitting further back. Of course, had we been sitting further back we wouldn't have had the three-thirty wake up call.

Still, we made it to the Bakery, and when an inquiry about rest areas nearby proved unsuccessful I asked about Etty Bay, which produced an answer along the lines of yes, you could go there. Lovely spot.

And it was. Unfortunately it's a lovely spot without toilet facilities, so once we'd demolished breakfast there was an issue that needed to be addressed.We needed sleep, but someone needed the facilities, and until that came the sleep bit wasn't going to happen.

What did come, however, was a cassowary, something that produced a bit of an adrenaline rush while the attempt to obtain photographic evidence was made.

We'd been told Etty Bay was a pretty sure bet when it came to cassowary sightings on the Cooktown trip earlier in the year, and here, in the course of a twenty-minute stay, was the verification.

In any case we were heading back towards the Highway shortly thereafter, and the Sugar Museum at Mourilyan delivered the comfort stop, so we headed off in search of rest areas.

There aren't any between Mourilyan and Tully, but I figured we'd be able to turn off there and find a shady spot. One possibly exists, but it wasn't anywhere we looked.


Back onto the highway…

There was, however, a rest area midway between Tully and Cardwell, and an hour's stop there was a significant battery recharger.

After that, we passed through Cardwell, where extensive post-Yasi roadwork nudged stopping into the too hard basket, and over the Cardwell Range, where we ran through the massive realignment of the highway very smoothly and on to Ingham.

By this point I was thinking we'd be making our way home rest area by rest area, but Madam wasn't needing a break at Francis Creek, so we continued on. By the time we'd reached Rollingstone she reckoned she did, but local knowledge from Hughesy's teenage years meant I could point us to Bluewater, where the shady spot was found and a good hour's break ensued.

We could, I guess, have passed through Townsville, stopping to pick up a resupply of cat tucker at The Domain, but opted instead to turn off at Shaw's Road and take the Ring Road, which immediately became the default option when a stop in Townsville on the way to or from points further north wasn't required.

From there, two and a bit hours got us safely to Bowen, where we weren't too concerned by the presence of two out of three furry felines since the other was fond of nearby drains and would probably be back around supper time.

That theory was shot down in flames shortly thereafter when the neighbour with whom we share the cat quotient and had been feeding them while we were away arrived to let us know that TeeTee was missing, had been for close to a fortnight, and had apparently (aural evidence only, nothing physical) been involved in a disagreement with a wandering dog.

And, after an interval of more than a month there's no sign of him, so we presume the worst…

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...