Something about the name Atherton Tablelands just sounds inviting.  We dragged ATGANI back up the range to Mareeba, stopped for coffee at the slightly amazing Coffee Business, a huge warehouse cum café which overflows with coffee (and tea) merchandise and lots of old coffee machines.  They were selling 20 different blends but we just had the “house” which was fine, and I had scones which they jammed and creamed-from-a-can for me (which wasn’t fine).  With scones, it’s definitely “by myself”. 👍

The grandly named Ravenshoe & Millbrook Country Club in the middle of the bush allows camping on the edge of their entirely adequate 9 hole country golf course for a very reasonable sum.  It filled the bill nicely for a few days while we looked around the area.  It’s also pretty smart for them – my business model predictor reckons they add $30-40K pa revenue for almost zero additional cost, which would make a huge difference to a club as small as this (cannot possibly have more than 50 members).  It was State of Origami night while we were there so they’d kept the bar open, but patrons were few – the drive home would have been perilous.  Naturally, maroons were victorious – oh happy day!

Millstream Falls (Big & Little) were pretty and easily walked to.  The Big falls allegedly have the widest single drop in Oz but the picture shows you that it’s another “best score by a left handed batsman on a wet Thursday in November” kind of record. 

Herberton has a wonderful “museum”, where they have transported any number of old buildings from all over and assembled an entire township circa 1880s.  In particular, the old Newell family home, Elderslie House, is a gracious and spacious home and really must have been the social epicentre at the time – they had a tennis court, for heaven’s sake.  As ever, gold was in at the beginning but the town didn’t die afterwards and the sort-of founders, John Newell and William Jack kept on trading (I think I called on a “Jack & Newell” store in Charters Towers in the early 70’s – can’t remember if they bought any soap).   There’s plenty of interesting “stuff”, a number of working demonstrations at various times (we’re coming to be quite expert at a bit of blacksmithing) and recreations of everything from the School house to the Newspaper publisher.  Naturally, there are old cars, several with choking motors running👍👍. I had scones here, again, and they were better (coffee was worse)👍.

My grandparents, then my parents, and now Chris & Sue have a beautiful painting of these tumbling Atherton hills with a tiny steam train chugging through, by an artist named William Bustard whose two claims to fame were stained glass windows and WWII RAAF camouflage.  In any event, the scenery as we drove through here in plenty of fog and mist (maybe that was last night?) was exactly as depicted in the painting.  Quite wonderfully, the steam train still runs, but as is the way of these things, manned by volunteers and only on some weekends – sadly, our timing was out. 

The bakery in Ravenshoe was as busy as a K-Mart and organised with rigidly ridiculous precision for a country town.  Completely Covid inspired and just as completely saved by their vanilla slice – with passionfruit icing.  I know – disappoints the purists but tasted great. 

I played 9 holes of golf badly (tautology: cf North Sydney played badly) on our accommodation course and we set off early for Undara.  We figured we could fit in an overnight stop there and a couple of tours if we were clever.  We were and it was brilliant!

Undara NP is famous for its lava tubes, only 190,000 years old, so in geological terms, quite recent.  Once, when all the stars aligned, this specific type of volcano erupted in this specific location, sending a slow but gigantic flow of lava down river courses; the lava cooled and solidified on the top; the lava below kept flowing and eventually emptied out and formed a tube.  Some of these tubes didn’t collapse and that’s what’s left.  Now they’re frequented by tourists (you have to be guided) and micro bats – over a quarter of a million of them in a “tube” when the season is right.  We stood in the mouth of one tube and saw zillions of them heading out for their night-time feed – we could feel their wing beats but they never touched us.

The “forced” guiding is because there’s a danger of CO² poisoning in the nether regions of the tubes and the indigenous stories, probably for that very reason, regard them as bad places (makes good sense).  It also controls and protects the tubes, so probably fair enough.

Every place of accommodation presents some amusement.  Here, at The Undara Experience, it was provided by the members of the “Fun over Fifty” coach tour.  I’ve worked out the business model – children who have reached the age of 50 want some fun, so they send their extant parents on a dangerous bus trip for a few weeks.  Where to?  Who cares?  Certainly, if we’d joined the group we would have lowered the average age

In any event, they were treated to a buffet dinner and we had overlooking seats.  For desert, there was a massive apple crumble. The first woman stepped up to the bain-marie and took, for herself alone, minimum five reasonable servings.  She then tipped at least half a litre of custard over her about-to-capsize plate and moved on happily. She’d set the scene, others followed, and before they were half way through, the custard was gone and the crumble was in danger.   A lot of Ricky Ponting tea-pot poses followed and the harassed but wonderful staff eventually sorted it out. Not so much under-catered as over-eaten.  Presumably their children are having fun!

A sensibly huge bush breakfast the next morning for at least 100 guests (incredibly well organised and cooked and served by just 2 “tourist visa” kids, one from France, one from Argentina), a brisk bushwalk to the Bluff overlooking our campsite, a quick pack-up and we were on our way.  All in all👍👍.  We were heading back to Hughenden to meet up with the Mays who were passing through from Sydney en route to Cape York Peninsular.  This was the only feasible meet-and-greet point! 

When previously in Hughenden, we’d bought a loaf of bread, a bottle of milk and headed straight for Porcupine Gorge, 60km away, neither passing GO nor collecting 200.  What an excellent strategy!

Dasher and Chris were travelling with their friends Hazel and Peter.  At the caravan park, Dasher roasted a chicken with aplomb and his barbecue, I cooked some borrowed veggies, H&P supplied lots of wine and therefore, the first night meal was a success.  The next day was Sunday, hot and still and dusty, so we walked around a bit to discover that what little was there was closed.  Even the Discovery Centre, part of the Dinosaur Trail was closed for renovation…and winter school holidays!  The Royal Hotel sold us dinner of some description with a VB or 3, and the general view was that the best thing in Hughenden was the road out.  

Anyway, we took it, headed west and stopped for an hour or two in Richmond.  The very antithesis of Hughenden.  Almost everything about the place looked and felt upbeat – wide streets with RV parking spots, plenty of shady trees, bougainvillea everywhere for colour and cheerful people. 

This is also part of the Dinosaur Trail and the exhibition at the (open!) Kronosaurus Korner museum was first class.  This area has lots of water-based fossil finds, due to the ancient inland sea but, just as importantly, the self-mulching black soil.  Every time it rains (OK, so not often), it’s like shaking a jar of mixed nuts – the big nuts rise to the surface and so do the big fossil bones – who knew?  They even had a sense of humour at the (clean!) public toilets. 

Further west, Mt Isa was too far in one run for us.  The only likely accommodation on the way, other than road-side gravel pits, was called Corella and the WikiCamps descriptions were, at best, “mixed”.  Weird more like it.  So, naturally, we decided to try it.  What could possibly go wrong?