Day 30 – Atherton Tablelands – 1 month on the road.Aug 20, 2009
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Millaa Millaa falls
Evan milking a cow - Kind of
My first milkshake
This morning we remembered why we remembered Atherton. It was the first place we saw undercover lawn bowling greens. Yep, picture a bowling green then stick a huge roof over the top with some whopper lights attached and you have the general picture.
I am yet to work out if this is to prevent the grass from dying off due to the extreme heat or whether it is to prevent the same happening to the participants.
Today we spent the day driving around the Atherton tablelands. As we are now about 8-900m above sea level the weather is completely different. It was actually cool this morning (cooler than Sydney in fact) and we got some rain. When I say some, the car still needs a good wash.….and it will be waiting for a while!!!! Legally and ethically can you wash cars while on holidays? I think not (and if you disagree I am suddenly not receiving any e-mails)
We started at Millaa Millaa falls (see pic), headed to the Malanda Dairy Centre so Ev could see “how Milk was made”, actually more specifically bottled. The tour came with a free milkshake so he was in heaven. Aaron finally got his own milkshake as I have been getting sick of losing too much of mine through sharing. Sharing may be a great concept to teach kids….but it has limits.
In our travels we went past the Curtain Fig tree. This may be hard to picture but here goes. In short the fig tree seed lodges in an upper branch of another tree (the host). Somehow it starts to grow and the roots head to the ground. At some point the host tree collapses but doesn’t fall all the way to the ground it gets stuck on a third tree. The Fig roots now continue to grow down and form a curtain.
The end result is a fig tree growing 20 meters in the air with its roots still reaching the ground. Bizarre.
After lunch back at the van and a quick nap…not the boys – Me….we headed to the Gallo Cheese and chocolate factory. Here we saw cows being milked and played with the animals in the petting zoo. Evan even got to play with some of the animals once dad got out of the way. Last stop was Lake Barrine, part of the Crater Lakes National park. Absolutely stunning. We had Devonshire tea on the balcony, (La dee Da).
To wear Ev out, we sent him off to chase Bush turkeys.
Two new big things today. A Big fish and a Big frog. As far as I can tell neither are on any official list of big things and with good reason. They are not really that big.
Something that has been troubling me, Cassowary warning signs. Everywhere you go in NQ or FNQ (see I’m a local now I can use the abbreviations) you see warning signs to be careful driving, as cassowaries are in the area. Road kill is the major cause of Cassowaries dying off. Today we even saw one sign that stated “recent cassowary crossing”. It did not state if it had been successful or not.
Now this is all well and good except as I understand it the best estimate is that there are as few as 1400 Cassowaries still living in the wild. Maybe 1399 if today’s crossing was unsuccessful. If this is correct so far we have seen at least 10 signs for every living cassowary.
