Crossing the Savannah …

Ever since Burketown, we had been travelling the Savanah Way a ‘road’ (AKA dirt track in some places) which stretches almost 4000 Ks from Cairns to Broome.  The vista changed a little as we went further east, but along its route it is predominantly tropical savannah grasslands with a huge variety of tall grasses, savannah trees including the Cooktown iron bark which is supposed to be rather toxic but is resistant to termites. Termites! They populate the area in vast expanses of mounds of varying shapes and height - some bulbous mounds up to 2 m, others the magnetic NS aligned shards 3m or more. Interestingly the magnet termites exist only in Australia and one species (there are 2) exist only on Cape York and where they exist off the Cape they build rounded mounds. Amazing eh? All to do with heat and not being able to go underground during the wet – perhaps! The colour of these amazing structures depends on the soil from pale grey, through brown and red – well of course!

Where the Savanna Way comes up against the great eastern dividing range, there are astonishing caves and lava tubes.  With Lindsay on board we simply couldn’t not go there to peak his fascination with all things volcanic.  So we stopped in at Undara - it is a place you should google!  It has some of the longest lava tubes in the world. The people who manage the areas offer a range of tours and we joined a small party.  We were treated to an amazing commentary, dabbled in a little geology of the local rocks, explored a couple of lava tubes including a walk through one which had collapsed. Undara is a national park set in the savannah. Tall bottle trees (not boabs) and massive fig trees exist in scraps of remnant tropical rainforest hugging the passage of the lava tubes which extend for a hundred or more miles. Small bats live in the tubes, but not much else.  Aborigines once camped at the mouth of the tubes but there is no evidence that they ventured in – pitch black inside so that’s not surprising.  We walked in to a couple ~4-500 metres and learned about rock formation, saw how they monitored for any movement in the walls of the tubes and lots of interesting things.   The trees growing on the ground above the tubes have sent roots into the tubes and they will eventually cause cracks to open up too far to support the rock ceiling. We walked for a couple of hours and much of that was going down or coming up stairs – the tubes are underground, der!  The tourist park which runs the tours is built mainly of old wooden railway carriages.  Looks terrific and the atmosphere was  exciting as they were setting up for a weekend Country Rock and Blues festival due to start that night.  What a magic setting! From the tubes we took our selves off to see the Kalcani crater – remnants of one of the many extinct volcanoes in the region. Like the intrepid/nutty explorers we are, we walked to the rim of the crater – only 600 metres but uphill and in the heat of midday – madness! Next day after venturing into and out of the bowels of the earth and to one of the summits, not surprisingly we suffered stiff and sore leg muscles and twinges in knee, ankle and hip joints - but it was really worth it.

Up and onto the Atherton Tablelands we put up camp Atherton. This time it was lovely – last time it had rained the whole time.  The caravan park is on the side of a hill and we camped looking out over the mountains and so. We stayed a few nights to explore the area, soak up mountain views, enjoy glorious sunsets and on the Saturday travelled a little way north to Mareeba to join in ANZAC day commemoration.  We sat in the RSL surrounded by the locals and loads of servicemen and women, current and ex, and watched the commemoration at Canberra on a wall sized TV screen. Playing on another screen were snippets of war films and marches in other cities – quite an emotional experience as Grandfather Percy Hill was at Gallipoli and I was wishing I had brought the medal I have of his to wear. 

Being to true birdies that we are, a trip to Jularta to visit Kingfisher Park was a must.  We spend hours in this world renowned bird watchers spot, wandering amongst ginormous trees, through a tiny orchard of orange, chestnut, almond and other exotic trees we couldn’t identify. And sat by a stream to watch and listened to a veritable symphony of little birds – finches, honey eaters, monarchs, silver eyes, kingfishers, fan tails and other species darting about bathing, catching insects and doing other bird things. It was really delightful. And not to miss any local feathered creatures, we did a boat-float on a huge manmade lake at the Mareeba Wetlands on the way north to Cooktown the following day. The lake was created by collecting water left over from the surrounding irrigation systems and is now home to fish and insects, water plants and many bird species.

Venturing into Capt Cook territory ……..

Cooktown was an interesting stopover for me.  I had seen lots of early paintings and etchings of the area when Europeans first landed there and it looked just the same - if you ignored the buildings!  Fabulous views from Grassy Hill. After brekkie at Finch beach and a stroll through one of the oldest botanical gardens in Australia, we packed up and pointed ‘the Beast’ towards the Peninsula Development Road (PDA) on our quest to reach the tip 800 odd Ks north. First stop Coen.  The road was in pretty good condition and we were impressed with the big road trains – they seem to take it slow and easy and slow when approaching oncoming vehicles and through creek and river dips unlike some of the 4WDs we have passed roaring down the road not slowing at all and creating dust clouds which hang in the air and reducing visibility to almost zero so that you have to stop to let it settle for fear of running into any oncoming traffic. Scheezzz!   

Finally we were heading to ‘The Tip’ – Pajinka.