2010/09 Australia trip - Mareeba |
|||
Soon afterwards we were back on the main road, heading north again through savannah, trying to get some miles in. We made a short visit to a nature trail in Forty Mile Scrub park, mostly of interest to botanists I should think. Next was Mount Garnet, a tired looking mining town, and then we were up into the Atherton Tablelands, on a narrow road winding through thick tropical vegetation, feeling like we were driving down twisty tunnels. There were signs telling us to watch out for cassowaries and tree kangaroos on the road. We saw neither.
We were into completely different scenery again as we neared Mareeba: farms and fields of sweet corn, sugar, bananas, and macadamia nuts. We stopped for a little shopping, and camped at a rest area by the Barron River bridge on the road towards Kuranda. Another bettong came calling while I was cooking, but didn’t stay for a picture. It was warm outside with few bugs and little traffic, an ideal spot until a decrepit-looking character with a glassy distant stare decided to park next to us and play American religious country music at full volume. The station eventually shut down while he was unconscious.
Wednesday October 6th
Sleeping beauty next to us woke and found the religious channel again in the middle of our breakfast, but luckily he left soon after and we had some peace again. I saw him later in town, same glassy stare, and no recognition that I’d been part of the congregation.
Mareeba is the ideal town for setting off into the wilderness; it has supermarkets, hardware stores, and gas stations. It was the first place we’d visited that had a substantial population of aborigines. Outside the supermarket I noticed that we had water dripping from the water tank, not a good sign as you set off into dry country, so we looked for a place that could possibly do a repair. After four stops and referrals we found a guy who could fix stainless steel tanks but we’d have to take the tank out first. However, we’d noticed that the dripping was getting less at each place, and concluded that maybe the water was accumulating in a concave space on top of the tank from rain and from filling our kettle, and then dribbling out as we traveled, so we decided to do nothing and carry on. If you never hear from us again, we were wrong!
As well as a fill of food and wine, Mareeba provided Internet access, diesel fuel, and a refill of our gas cylinder. We also got very wet in a rain shower that came through, but it was so hot we dried off quickly.
We headed north from Mareeba through more dry savannah country, with lush green mountains off to our east. These are the mountains that tower over Cairns and Mossman and the Barrier Reef. We were now traveling on the Peninsula Developmental Road. It’s the major route into the Cape York Peninsula, but it’s just a narrow ribbon of development surrounded by largely untouched wilderness. From now on we would be dependent for supplies on roadhouses and a few tiny towns, not much more than bumps in the road.
We felt that this was a major milestone in our trip, so it seems to be a good point to end part one of this journal. Part two will cover our travels in the Cape York area.