Day 68-69 Bowen

We stopped for two nights in Bowen which was the first place of settlement in North Queensland.

We had a spot right on the beach at the Big 4 caravan park. It had a good pool. But there was a worm in it that we had to get out! There was a market next door where we had breakfast. We hired go-carts too.

We climbed the rocks at Horseshoe Bay. There was a lot of dead ends once we got to the top boulder and we thought we might never get down. Dad found a tunnel and we found a way through. The water was beautifully clear.

Days 63-67 Mission Beach - Paronella Park

From Mission Beach we went inland to Paronella Park. Paronella Park is a castle and garden which was built in the 1930's by a Spanish immigrant Jose Paronella.

From the late 1930's to the late 1970's Paronella Park was an old fashioned amusement park with a cinema and a ballroom. It was all powered by its own hydro electric power station. The Paronella family were the first in North Queensland to have power and the locals were very jealous of their hot showers!

The buildings include a castle and grand staircase and are very beautiful. We fed lots of fish, eels and turtles in the river below the waterfall. There is a resident crocodile but we didn't see it! There is an avenue of huge Kauri pines and a water fountain.

In 1979 there was a big fire and the Paronella family abandoned the property because of the damage caused, the fact that the main road was moved away and the cane cutting machines replaced all the resident cane workers. The current owners bought it in 1993 and have brought it back to life.

We saw the park in day light and then after dinner at the Mena Creek hotel we came back and the castle and gardens were all lit up. We walked down Lovers Lane to Teresa Falls, named after Jose Paronella's daughter and onto the old tennis courts to view the castle which originally was a cafe that served icecreams. There were hundreds of bats hanging in the trees and when it got dark they all left to feed on fruit for the night.

It was one of our most enjoyable days of the trip!

Day 63-67 Mission Beach (part 1)

We travelled to Mission Beach via the Atherton Tablelands. We stopped at a dairy farm where we saw lots of cows and other animals. We saw where they milk the cows and how they make cheese and chocolate. We also stopped off at a Millaa Millaa falls but Dad was the only one who was brave enough to go for a swim because it was so freezing.

At Mission Beach we stayed at Beachcomber Coconut Caravan Village which had a great pool, water slide, games room and playground. There were lots of wallabies near our site.

One morning we hired a boat and went out to some of the islands off Mission Beach. We visited Bedarra Island, Wheeler Island and Dunk Island. In the morning it was really calm and flat but in the afternoon it got a bit windy and rough. Mum had to bail out some water from the boat as there was some water getting in but we made it ok. Wheeler Island was beautiful and we found lots of Cowrie shells. Henry found the biggest. We saw the damage to all of the buildings on Dunk Island caused by Cyclone Yasi.

We went to Tully gorge and saw all the white water rafters starting their trip down the river. It looked like fun. We also saw lots of butterflies, including a blue one called Ulysses. At the end of the day we had a swim at Alligators nest, a swimming hole near Tully, where we met another family who were travelling around Australia.

We climbed a big mountain called Bicton Hill which had a great view of Mission Beach. We looked for Cassowaries but didn't see any, but Mum and Dad saw one at the side of the road on our last day. We were too busy watching a movie so we didn't see it.

Day 57-62 - Port Douglas

As a surprise, Dad booked us into Beaches at Port Douglas so we left the caravan at Innisfail checked in to our apartment.

Everyone was very excited about going to Shakes - our favourite ice cream shop. Henry has tried 12 different flavours. Will only has choc mint swirl and rarely cookies and cream. Liv has cookies and cream and mint about the same.

Dad dug a big hole and buried us in the sand. It was really fun and extremely sandy. It was hard to breath because there was sand piled on top of us. Will wanted to get out quickly and Henry got out last because he thought it was really fun.

The pool was good fun and it was really warm and the spa was extremely warm on the last day. We climbed on Dad's shoulders and jumped off really high.

We caught lots of crabs on the beach. We dug them up where the holes were and put them in a bucket. Unfortunately, a few didn't survive. One survived even though he was badly wounded, he was very brave, he only had four legs (he was supposed to have 8), one claw and one eye. One kind of crab was very vicious and tried to nip us. Crabs have yellow/orange blood. We let all of the crabs go when we finished with them.

Henry also found his friends Miles and Harry at the beach and went crab hunting with them at the rocks. Henry saw a really big dark green crab which was about one foot long. He also saw a big fish that looked like an eel.

Day 53-56 - The Overlander's Way

We left Katherine and everyone was feeling a bit tired and sick. Liv had a bad case of gastro and needed the bucket close by. Henry was coming down with a sore throat. It was a car full of unhappy campers.

We decided to cut straight for the East coast as quickly as possible. First night we stayed at the roadhouse in Renner Springs. Second day we drove to Mt Isa which was a long way - our biggest drive of the trip. It seemed like we were in the car for days. On the way to Mt Isa we had to stop on the road while some cattle were herded across a bridge. We saw the cattlemen driving the cattle on horses. Luckily we arrived in Mt Isa just before the caravan park closed. Mum was getting a bit worried.

We saw the big mine at Mt Isa but didn't have time to tour around. Dad said they mine copper, lead, zinc and silver. They have problems with lead dust from the mine.

The next day (Liv's birthday!) we drove to Hughenden and stopped off at Kronosaurus Korner in Richmond on the way. A long time ago the ocean covered big parts of inland Australia including where Richmond is today. Some of the local farmers have discovered lots of fossils of dinosaurs that lived in the ocean about 100 million years ago. The museum at Richmond has some of the best preserved fossils of these animals, called Pliosaurs, in the world. Kronosaurus was the biggest one - it grew up to about 10 metres long - and it ate other animals in the sea (it was a carnivore). We had special talking phones which told us facts about the dinosaurs and how they found the dinosaurs.

That night we celebrated Liv's birthday with a special dinner at the Royal hotel in Hughenden. Henry had dinosaur nuggets.

On the fourth day we drove to Townsville and stopped for lunch at Charters Towers. Charters Towers was famous for a gold rush in the late 19th century when an aboriginal boy called Jupiter discovered a nugget in a nearby creek. Charters Towers was nicknamed "the world" because people said there was no better place to live and you could get everything you wanted there. We walked around to look at some of the old buildings and visited the information centre where they showed us a video about the history of the town.

Day 50-52 - Victoria River and Katherine

We crossed the WA/NT border and stopped overnight at the hot and dusty Victoria River roadhouse on the way to Katherine. We went for a walk down to the river and over the bridge. Victoria river is the longest river in the Northern Territory.

At Katherine we went to the hot springs for a swim. The water was clear and warm (about 32 degrees). There were lots of aboriginal boys playing in the water. There were also some little waterfalls (which we used as slides) and the water was very deep in some places with sand and rocks on the bottom.

We also went for a cruise up Katherine gorge. There were lots of people in canoes paddling up the gorge. The guide showed us how high the water was in the floods of 1998 - very high! He also showed us the traps where they catch any saltwater crocodiles that come into the gorge during the wet season.

We had dinner one night at the Katherine Country Club where there was a jumping pillow.

On our our last day in Katherine we said goodbye to Granny and Poppy who were heading to Darwin. Will was very sad to see the Maui go! (This was the name of Granny and Poppy's motor home).

Day 48, 49 - Lake Argyle

Arrived at Lake Argyle after a short drive from Kununurra to 40 degree temperatures. A dip in the infinity pool overlooking the lake was definitely needed! Fantastic views.

Lake Argyle is a dam that was built in the early 1970s and flooded much of the old Argyle station. It is huge and has a volume of water equivalent to around 16 Sydney harbours. The water is used for irrigation downstream in the Ord river valley near Kununurra. When the lake flooded the old Argyle homestead was moved near the dam wall and made into a museum (which we visited).

We also saw the dam wall which is about 100m high and 300m wide. Pretty big but only small for a lake as huge as Lake Argyle.

The next day we went for a boat cruise on the lake with Granny and Poppy. It was amazing to see how big the lake is, in some parts it stretched over the horizon. In the middle of the lake we went for a swim off the boat and Poppy, Dad, Liv and Henry jumped off the roof of the boat. Henry and Liv jumped off the roof 6 times! Will jumped off the steps at the back of the boat.

They say the lake has about 30,000 freshwater crocodiles in it, but no saltwater crocodiles!

We also did some fish feeding (mostly catfish) and saw some wallaroos (called Euros) on one of the islands in the lake. They have tried to introduce Barramundi into the lake but they can't breed in the lake - all Barramundi are born male and many change to female during their lives but they can only do this in saltwater.

The Lake Argyle boat trip was unanimously voted the most fun experience of the holiday (so far)!

Day 43-47 - Kununurra

We spent 5 nights at Kununurra, a good base for exploring the east Kimberley. Good to stay in one place for a few days and relax. We enjoyed the "moonlight cinema" on the outdoor TV at the caravan.

The heatwave continued (36-38 degrees) and we spent a lot of time at the pool. As you can see above we had a nice site next to Lake Kununurra.

We did a day trip out to Emma gorge and El Questro station. This was a highlight with some very spectacular scenery. The walk to the gorge was difficult and we scrambled over rocks and boulders for nearly an hour, but it was worth it. At the end was a large pool with a raindrop waterfall and a hot spring coming out of the rock on one side. We went for a swim to cool off.

At El Questro station we stopped for lunch and splashed around the waterhole. Henry and Will found a box with some cane toads in it. The toads are a poisonous pest which have recently arrived in the Kimberley from Queensland and are a threat to some of the native animals like freshwater crocs and monitors that may try to eat them. Some people are trying to teach these animals not to eat the toads so that they can survive.

After lunch we followed a rough and steep 4wd track up to Saddleback Ridge for an amazing view. Dad was very excited, Mum was terrified.

Day 40-42 - Fitzroy Crossing and Bungle Bungles

We stayed overnight at Fitzroy Crossing on the way to the Bungle Bungles. Great big grassy sites and the Bombers had a fantastic (but meaningless) win over the Blues. Still, always good to beat the old enemy.

Bungle Bungles caravan park was pretty basic, all temporary buildings, but we were looking forward to the tour of the Bungle Bungles the next day.

At the start of the tour we were told that the road was in good condition and it would only take us 1 and a half hours to travel the 50km to the Bungle Bungles (instead of the normal 2 hours). The road was still terrible with corrugations most of the way.

The pictures above are of Cathedral Gorge and Echidna Chasm. These two gorges were cut deep into the sandstone by the streams of water in the wet season. The walls of the gorges rise up about 200-300 metres and Echidna Chasm is so narrow in some places that we needed to walk single file.

We also learnt that the Bungle Bungles are about 350 million years old and were originally formed when sediment from nearby older mountains was deposited in a deep trench in an inland sea. This is why the rock at the northern end of the Bungle Bungles is different from the rock at the southern end. The larger heavier pebbles were deposited first in the north and the finer sediments last in the south.

The beehive domes are only found in the south. The stripes are formed because the more porous rock layers retain moisture which allow Cyanobacteria (of stromatolite fame) to form a grey layer on the surface. The other rock layers are red as a result of the rusting of iron in the rock.