Author: marionvermazen

Duke and I are on a 4 week vacation in Australia. We are discovering that internet access is usually fairly expensive. So even though I have written several blog posts is has been difficult to get them posted. The internet carrier at this hotel charges by the minute and by the megabyte uplaoded so there may not be many pictures in this post.I'll add more later when we have better internet.

We left Undara National Park on Tuesday morning and drove south again. The road was sometimes very good and sometimes only one paved lane. We went through miles and miles of bush with no towns and we saw very few cars.  I’m really glad we took this route. It was really interesting. We saw lots of road trains – semi trucks with 3 trailers that are as much as 55 meters long. We stopped to stretch at every settlement / petrol station along the road and got to Charters Towers mid afternoon.

Charters Towers was founded as a gold mining town and has a lot of beautiful old buildings including a stock exchange. We drove up to Tower Hill Lookout and watched the sunset. They had a movie about the history of the area and picnic tables. When a family came up to eat their fish and chips we got to see some rock wallabies that came out for some of the chips. A rock wallaby isn’t much bigger than a squirrel.

 We saw the ruins of a tall brick chimney that was part of the gold processing plant. Apparently during World War II the Americans asked the Australians to demolish the chimney because it could have been a navigation aid for the Japanese if they invaded. The chimney was also a hazard for airplanes and there was a large American air base nearby.

During the afternoon we walked down Gill Street and did some shopping.  Duke got a new Australian hat. Everyone is so friendly. When we exchanged some money the teller at the bank commiserated with us about the strong U.S. dollar and told us she just placed an order with Sheplers the American western store for jeans because the week US dollar makes it really cheap to order the jeans from the U.S. The lady in the phone store helped us figure out how to recharge our cell phone since it was the first time we had done it. She was also able to translate when we said add minutes to our phone. In Australian that is – recharge our mobile.

On Wednesday we drove from Charters Towers to Carnarvon Gorge National Park (about 441miles). It was a fairly long day but we did make several short stops. We just missed hitting a couple of kangaroos. Thank goodness!

 In Emerald we stopped to see the world’s largest Van Gogh Sunflowers painting and stopped at the bottle shop to buy wine and at the grocery store to get some food for dinner.

We stayed in very nice tent cabins at Takarakka Bush Resort just outside Carnarvan Gorge National Park and had a great dinner of smoked oysters, cheese, and crackers, wine and for desert Cadburys chocolate. We ate our dinner sitting on the veranda of our cabin. We even got to watch a spider building his web near our table.

Monday morning we drove a back road south from Yungaburra and stopped at a few waterfalls. We saw an interesting bird with a red head which we were later told is a bush turkey, somewhat of a pest.

We stopped for lunch in Ravenshoe. At the local bakery we bought lunch, a sausage roll and a lamington. They are both Australian foods that brought back memories of the tuck shop of my school in Brisbane.

We visited the local museum and had a great talk with the volunteer. It was interesting to hear about the local opposition to when the local rain forest was made a world heritage site. It meant all the locals who worked in the logging industry lost their jobs.  We also stopped at the grocery store and bought some snack foods. Duke insisted on buying a jar of vegemite.

The volunteer in the information office in Ravenshoe encouraged us to continue to follow the interior route which runs from Cairns to Sydney instead of cutting over to the coast road which he said rarely is actually on the coast. From the interior route we can cut over to the coast when we get west of Brisbane. We need to be near Brisbane Friday night for my reunion on Saturday. After we left Ravenshoe we almost immediately left the rain forest behind and were in dry land covered in with eucalyptus. 

We stopped for the night at Undara National Park where we stayed at a place called The Undara Experience. We saw our first kangaroo as we pulled in. Undara Experience has all sorts of accommodations and we chose the tent cabins and used our sleeping bags. 

You can't drive in the park on our own. You have to go on a guided tour. We went on the sunset wildlife tour. The guide drove about 20 of us out through the bush to a high point to watch the sunset. Along the way we saw many different kinds of kangaroos.

When we got to the end of the road we climbed to the top of a hill and the guide opened champagne and set out the fruit, cheese and crackers to share. We could see miles and miles of uninterrupted bush – trees and grassland with some mountains on the horizon. We watched a stunning sunset. It was a magical moment. The guide said that this is what Australia is all about.

After the sunset we drove over to the opening of one of the lava tubes. These lava tubes run for miles and are massive. We watched the bats flying out and even saw a snake in a tree over the opening trying to catch the bats as they flew out. Our guide said that Undara  just became a park in the 1990s.

When we got back from the tour we had a very good dinner in the open air restaurant at Undara and then went on a flashlight walking tour with another guide. They have had quite a bit of rain lately and the cicadas were very loud. (kind of like loud grasshoppers). He pointed out several of them on the trees coming out of their shells and drying out their wings.

Apparently they live for years underground and come out after rains. They live for only a few days, mate and then die. Our guide pointed out several other insects, and birds and a snake.

Sleeping outside is really nice. The weather was perfect and it is great to wake up to all the birds making lots of noise. Before we left we watched a pair of kangaroos and a joey for a long time. They were only about 20 feet from us!

We ate our pineapple for breakfast before we hit the road.