Summer 2018 big trip - day 5

Wednesday 1st August

Paronella Park was created by José Paronella In the 1930s. He grew up in Catalonia, Spain, and dreamed of building his own castle. He sailed to Australia in 1913, spent 11 years there making money, returned to Catalonia and married the sister of his previous fianceé who had got tired of waiting for him to return, went back to Australia with her, and in 1929 they bought 13 acres of land next to a waterfall in northern Queensland. There they built his castle.

Well, it's not a real castle, but a building with some castle-like features such as turrets and decorative balconies, and there's a main one and a few smaller ones. What Paronella created was a pleasure park for the public, and North Queensland's first hydroelectric plant to power it. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, it was a very popular place. There was a theatre/ballroom, which showed movies every Saturday night and had Australia's first mirror ball; a little museum; tea rooms; extensive gardens with meandering pathways and thousands of plants, including an venue of Kauri pines; tennis courts; a picnic area next to the swimming pool (that is, the lake at the bottom of the waterfall); and the family's humble cottage.

Due to the ravages of time, fire, flood and cyclone, it stands mostly in ruins now, and has a certain charm to it, but it would be great to see it as it was then. The steep Grand Staircase, originally built to haul sand and gravel up from the waterside to the 'castle' to help make concrete, now has plaques on certain steps to mark the flood levels of certain years. The highest one was for the wet season of 1946, near the top of the 47 steps, an insane height. That flood destroyed some of the park, but they rebuilt and reopened six months later.

Paronella died in 1948, and his wife took over the running of the park. She died 19 years later, and their son took over, but he died just five years later, leaving his wife Val and their two children. Val sold the park in 1977, and it changed hands a few times until an Australian couple travelling the country with their two children in search of a new project discovered, fell in love with, and bought it. They made it what it is today, their attempt at continuing Paronella's dream, but with a focus on preservation rather than restoration. It is a very cool place, there's nowhere else like it, it's well worth a visit if you're ever in North Queensland.

Summer 2018 big trip - day 4

Tuesday 31st July

The Great Barrier Reef is a World Heritage Site that stretches for 1400 miles (or 2300km), is the largest coral reef system in the world (and so, in a way, the largest living thing on the planet), and lies off the coast of Queensland. Today we visited a very teeny part of it.

We drove to Port Douglas, north of Cairns, and had a very tasty lunch (I had softshell crab tacos) at a restaurant on the marina before catching the 1pm boat to the Low Isles on the Inner Reef for a half-day trip. After about half an hour a couple of small islands come into view, the larger one covered in trees (mangroves, which help keep the water clean) and the smaller one made of a white beach, trees, and a lighthouse. Very pretty.

The main boat anchored a little way off shore and we disembarked into a smaller boat which would serve as ferry to the island and glass-bottom-tour boat. The glass bottom boat tour was interesting, and the water was clear so we could see lots of different types of fish and corals. It's not as vibrantly coloured as the photoshopped pictures you see of the Great Barrier Reef, but there is some colour, and further out on the more untouched, unvisited parts of the outer reef the colours may be more pronounced. The boat skipper explained that if a coral reef is bleached by an increase in water temperature, that doesn't necessarily mean it's dead. There's a small window of time for it to recover - between six and ten weeks. So if, for example, in that window a storm or cyclone comes along and brings up some cold water from the deep, the too-warm-for-coral water will cool down a little and the coral can recover. If, however, the water temperature stays too warm for too long, the coral will die, and the entire ecosystem that depends on it will be affected. Which is why people are so concerned about global warming.

After the glass bottom boat tour we were given a tour of the island... basically we walked up the path to the middle of it. You can walk around the whole perimetre in about twenty minutes. There's a lighthouse with an osprey's nest on top, and a little house for the island's caretakers. The house is currently empty as they're looking for new ones; in the meantime the island is maintained by the tour boat staff and volunteers coming over from the mainland.

We spent the rest of the time snorkelling/swimming. I'd been here before on my previous visit with my grandparents in May/June 2012, during "stinger season", and we had to wear bright blue wetsuits that covered your whole body from ankle upwards, including your head, so that you were protected against jellyfish. They made one look ridiculous so thankfully this time we didn't have to wear those this time. We were given normal thigh-length wetsuits though, as protection against the sun.

After a couple of hours on the island we headed back to Port Douglas, where we arrived about 5pm and went for dinner at the same restaurant we had lunch at. I had papardelle with duck ragu, which was very tasty and filling. Then we drove the hour and a half back to my aunt's, pulling over for a few minutes at one point in the middle of nowhere to get out of the car and look up at the incredible display of stars. The sky was full of them, never seen so many, the Milky Way blazing across... I could have looked at that sky all night :)

Summer 2018 big trip - day 3

Monday 30th July

We started off the day doing the Waterfalls Circuit. There's a large route that goes all around the Tablelands but we just did a mini one of three relatively local falls: Millaa-Millaa, Zillie, and Ellinjaa.

Millaa-Millaa Falls

The countryside of this part of rural north Queensland is beautiful, and varied. Some areas are savannah-like, dry and grassy with eucalyptus trees; other areas are rainforest, or rainforest-covered mountains; some areas are farms or plantations of sugar cane or mangoes or any number of other tropical crops; some areas are dairy country, with sweeping vistas of green rolling hills of pastureland. We made a photostop at Crawfords Lookout, overlooking the North Johnstone River in Wooroonooran National Park. The lookout is basically a lay-by at the side of the road; there's a small gap in the trees and, if someone's in the passenger seat and looking to the left, they can get a quick glimpse of a stunning view. The lay-by is after that, after the passenger has gasped "Oh wow! Pull over!" You walk back to the viewpoint and look down over the rainforested valley below with the turquoise river roaring at the bottom.

Our next proper stop was the Ma:Mu Skywalk, a canopy walkway in the rainforest. It was about one and a half kilometres long and had a couple of towers that provided wonderful views over the valleys. There were information plaques all along it, telling you about the plants, the history of the area and the indigenous tribe who once lived there.

After lunch at a cafe with yet more very pretty views, we made a quick stop at another viewpoint, which I could have stayed at all day - the view was amazing, spread out below, a wide area all the way to the mountains. I reluctantly pulled myself away from gazing out in wonder so we could get to Lake Eacham before the sun set.

Lake Eacham is one of the two crater lakes on the Tablelands, formed from the craters of extinct volcanoes, and is a popular swimming and spending-time-outdoors spot. It wasn't quite warm enough for me to want to get in, but my aunt and sister did. I went in up to my knees. It was lovely there, the circular lake lined with rainforest and the water calm and clear. Then, it was back to the house for the evening.

Summer 2018 big trip - day 2

Sunday 29th July

After going to bed at 8pm the night before, I woke up at 7am to fog outside and peace and quiet. I actually decided to do a few minutes of exercise and some simple yoga stretches, which was nice. (I'd quite like to do that every morning, at home, but am forgetful, lazy and don't want to wake people up by jogging on the spot and doing starjumps on the second floor at 6:30am, so haven't made an effort to make it a habit.)

Mid-morning after everyone had woken up and breakfasted we went to Granite Gorge, which is what it says on the tin. It's a nature reserve with a couple of walking trails where you can see and feed wild rock wallabies. It quickly gets hot, walking up and down and over these bare granite rocks in the strong sun, but it's a cool place.

After that we drove to Coffee Works for lunch. It's a coffee producer, with a shop selling coffee beans and special blends and coffee liqueurs and other such stuff. You walk in to the most wonderful smell! I don't like coffee but do like the smell. There's also a chocolate shop and a cafe, where in typical Australian fashion it was all open but under cover, so it was nice and cool and airy. I had a spiced pulled lamb burger with sriracha mayo and salad. Yum! Messy though, haha. The cakes and gelato (macadamia and caramel!) looked great too but we were full up after the mains and still had the lemon squares to eat. We went for a look in the chocolate shop before leaving and I bought a bar of cranberry and pistachio milk chocolate.

We went to Golden Drop Mango Winery next. It's a warehouse on a huge, immaculately-kept mango plantation. It was Sunday so the winery wasn't in production mode, but we could go to the little tasting room and shop. We tasted dry, medium and sweet mango wines, sparkling mango wine, mango port, mango 'cello' (liqueur, like limoncello), and mandarin and dragonfruit cellos. All were nice, especially the mandarin cello, but I didn't buy any because I don't really drink so knew most of it would go to waste.

From there we went to visit my aunt's friends in a nearby town. They're lovely people, and are looking after three orphaned baby wallabies at the moment, so my sister and I got to bottle-feed a couple! The one my sister had was a bit more lively and sociable, but mine was very shy and didn't put her head out of the little sack at all. Apparently she was very comfortable though, as she hasn't really let anyone have her for that amount of time - she stayed on my lap in the sack for ages after finishing feeding. We'd brought the lemon bars with us and ate most of them there with my aunt's friends.

After that it was back to the house, relax, dinner and a slightly later but still early night.

Summer 2018 big trip - day 1

So after nearly a week in Australia with my mum and sister and stepdad, it's high time I wrote something on here about what I've been doing!

Saturday 28th July

After taking off from Heathrow around 10:30 on Thursday evening, and a few hours in Hong Kong airport, we landed in Cairns around 6:30am Saturday (10:30pm Friday UK time). Even though Hong Kong and Cairns are international airports, and the former is a large one, we were struck by how not-busy and quiet they felt, even though there were lots of people around, and the staff at Cairns were friendly. Go to Heathrow or Gatwick and you're hemmed in like sardines and greeted by staff who never smile.

We were met at the airport by my aunt Tracy and her husband Rob, who moved to Australia ten years ago, and they took us to Rise & Bake, a creperie on the outskirts of Cairns, for breakfast. I had a crepe with smoked ham, egg, cheese and garlic mushrooms - yum! It was then an hour and a half's drive up and over the mountains from Cairns back to their house near Lake Tinaroo on the Atherton Tablelands.

It's winter in this country but here in the tropical north it's still warmer than average UK summer temperatures - as we left the airport it was already in the low twenties and warm enough for a summer dress, before 8am. The Tablelands is covered in farms and plantations growing things like sugar cane, bananas, mangoes, avocados, peanuts, etc. It's the only place in the world that produces everything you need for a cuppa - tea, coffee, sugar and milk.

After a couple of hours relaxing at the house we went for a drive into Atherton, the nearest town, about fifteen minutes away, stopping at a viewpoint at Halloran's Hill on the way. We went into the tourist information centre, got some leaflets to look over, and just wandered up the main street and back. There were a couple of colonial-style buildings, and an old hotel on a corner looked like something out of an old Western film, and, as is typical across the whole country, the pavements outside the shops and other businesses on either side of the wide streets were all covered to provide shade from the strong sun. The majority of buildings are single-story, or two at the most, partly because there's so much land so one can build out instead of up, and because single-story buildings are less susceptible to cyclone damage.

On my first visit here with my grandparents in 2012, I was (to my enormous delight) given a recipe for "lemon butter squares" at one of the places we went to; my aunt had kept a copy of it and we made them after getting back from Atherton. Then we all just relaxed on the deck before dinner, which was a simple but fresh and yummy grilled chicken salad, eaten outside, before going to bed at 8pm. By that time I hadn't slept in 51 hours, so thankfully fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and woke up 11 hours later.