Day Two Townsville - Tolga
It wasn't quite sparrow fart when I emerged from the spare room to start tapping out the travelogue, but the scent would still have been in the air.
Our host emerged shortly after the word count had passed four hundred, so there was a considerable backlog to catch up on when we pulled into the Atherton Tablelands Motor Inn around five that afternoon, but with breakfast despatched we were on the road around eight-thirty-five, which wasn't too bad for a day where the driving quotient was around four hundred kilometres when you took a couple of planned sidetracks into account.
Anyone who has done the Townsville to Ingham drive knows there isn't much of interest for the first half, given the fact that you're still in the dry tropics. While the rainfall might be a little more generous than it is in the Bowen to Giru stretch, and Townsville's inexorable outward sprawl will eventually transform everything up to Bluewater (at least) into the regular major city arterial road landscape, it's still not a very interesting drive.
Once you've cruised past Rollingstone and the Paluma turnoff, of course, things start to green up, and we cruised into Ingham intent on taking a break and grabbing a new battery for the torch. That proved slightly more difficult than anticipated since someone had decided to relocate or conceal the supermarket I seem to recall lurking on the left as you dogleg out of Lannercost Street.
No drama, however, since a diversion into a what looked like a pretty close to brand new IGA did the trick.
Back on the road, I was anticipating delays on the Cardwell Range, where there's a complete reconfiguration in progress, but we sailed up and over the crest without delay and the existence of a roadworks depot ensured we kept on going until we passed Port Hinchinbrook and debated whether to stop in Cardwell.
There has been plenty of publicity about the locals doing it tough since the devastation wrought by Cyclone Yasi, but the beachfront seemed to have recovered fairly well, and having breakfasted, given the fact that it was too early for lunch, the to stop or not to stop question came down to the need to fuel up or the necessity of a toilet break. Neither applied, so it was on to Tully, where we'd refuelled last time, and they'd probably need the money too. Lunch in Cardwell on the return leg, on the other hand, looks a strong possibility.
The run down from the top of the range had provided frequent reminders of Yasi's presence fifteen months or so ago, and while a lot can happen in a year and a bit there's still a long way to go before the rainforest along the way is back to its full verdant glory.
The clearest reminder ran along the ridge lines as we headed north out of Tully. At ground level, looking across the flats towards the mountains while you can see the effect on individual trees there's enough depth there to disguise things, at least to a degree.
For most of the way down from the range the ridge line had been out of sight, and from Kennedy to around Euramo it's far enough away so you can't quite make it out, but heading out of Tully the ridges were close enough to see the gaps between individual trees rather than the continuous green line that runs along there normally.
The Golfer and I passed through the same area four months after Larry did his thing across the same section of coast and with another eleven months or so for the vegetation to recover things weren't quite so stark, but a full recovery is still going to take a while.
Mad Mick had spoken glowingly about a pie shop along the way, somewhere you turned off the highway to the left that Madam thought might have a name starting with W. Under the after-effects of the previous night's indulgence I wasn't quite sure about these things, but Silkwood, from some fuddled memory or other, might offer some prospect as far as a gobble and go lunch was concerned. A turn off the highway to the left revealed a sprawling settlement with nary an option on the main drag and not much, as far as I could see, on the side streets. There was allegedly a business centre somewhere, but it didn't seem to be on the main drag.
Back on the Bruce Highway we headed towards Innisfail, stopping in Mourilyan on the principle that continuing on in search of places on the left that start with W might well see us turning off to the Mamu Rainforest Canopy Walk before we'd managed to find lunch.
A sign on the highway advised of a bakery in Mourilyan, and regardless of Mad Mick's endorsement of place starting with W's comestibles if they're better than what the Mourilyan Bakery turns out they must be pretty damn fine.
Madam's spinach and ricotta pasty hit the spot nicely and my gourmet mushroom pie was arguably the best pie I'd eaten since Rutherglen at the end of 2006. There mightn't have been a plethora of pies in the meantime, but this one was very good and wasn't far short of the Rutherglen beef and burgundy number. I could easily have gone anotherie, but Madam's mind was set on the Mamu Rainforest Canopy Walk and she was driving so...
I'd conveniently forgotten that the turnoff onto the Palmerston Highway is north of Innisfail, which was just as well since stopping there for lunch would have involved more than getting out of the car. Mamu beckoned and it was just after one-fifteen when we turned off the Palmerston and pulled into the relatively deserted car park.
Now, you might think four vehicles in a substantial car park suggests a venue that isn't highly favoured, and you may well look at the $20 admission and think that's a contributory factor, but once you're in it's fairly obvious that the twenty isn't an unreasonable impost. But more of that anon.
If you're looking for an actual overview, you can find one here, and while the walk through the rainforest is pretty standard it's the specially constructed viewing structures that set the Mamu RCW apart from the standard rainforest experience.
That's obvious from the time you read one of the plaques on The Cantilever, preferably after you've been all the way out to get the view over the curve of the South Johnstone River overlooked by The Cantilever. Once you've been out, taken your photos and taken in the green panorama is the time to read the screed that explains that movement \you felt underfoot stems from the fact that the viewing platform isn't held up by vertical posts, but is supported by a cantilever arrangement with its foundations in the adjacent hillside.
Less disturbance to the forest floor that way, compris?
It's also at this point that you appreciate the location of the whole thing. You're on the upper slopes of the escarpment that runs down to the South Johnstone, with the walking track running along an old timber trail. The steepness of the slope down to the river means you don't have to go out too far to get to a point where you’re effectively right out there in the treetops, and The Walkway gives you more panoramic vistas over the river valley on one side and a chance to get reasonably up close and personal with the bits of the trees you can't get to from the ground unless you're a tree kangaroo.
And if you're still inclined to quibble about the twenty bucks, take yourself out for a three hundred and fifty metre walk, preferably in a straight line where you can see the starting point. Take a gander back to where you started and there’s the length of The Walkway. There are round viewing platforms at not quite regular intervals, and the structure follows the contours, so you're not talking a straight line (nature rarely does straight lines, and on the rare occasions when she does, it's not likely to be in a rainforest in a cyclone prone area.
Once you've negotiated The Walkway it's back into the forest until you reach The Tower, which takes you up, should you choose to do so, to points where you've got a bird's eye view rather than a treetop vista.
Reading the screeds at the base of The Tower (at least that's where I think it was, I was waiting for Madam to finish up yonder) I learned the RCW was built in the wake of Cyclone Larry, and there was plenty of evidence of Yasi in the area. Still, rainforests grow, and the area will recover to its full former glory. It couldn't have been too far short of it, given a location just on the lee side of the ridge.
Our ramblings were frequently disturbed by the presence of half of the Year Eight cohort from an Innisfail College, clipboards in hand and under the supervision of one of the RCW rangers, who sympathised with a couple of ex-teachers while maintaining a supervisory eye on proceedings.
Back in the car, once we'd reached the top of the Palmerston we were off on the waterfall circuit, taking the looping trail that delivers you to the Mungalli Falls rapids, and continuing on, to the Mungalli Biodynamic Dairy.
By this time it was nearing three-thirty, so a couple of ice creams (Belgian chocolate and rum and raisin respectively) was enough to keep us going along the actual Waterfall Circuit a bit further along the Palmerston.
I have vague memories if these three waterfalls from deep in the dim distant past on a teenage visit to the area with my parents. While those recollections include remarks about not being Zillie, they don't include legging it along a steep downwards trail to the Elinjaa Falls.
My recollections of these matters seems to involve getting out of the car and walking across a patch of sward to swimming holes, so I'm probably getting things mixed up with other waterfalls in neighbouring areas. Forty-five years or thereabouts ten to muddy the detail in these matters.
The view from the bottom of Elinjaa Falls was fairly spectacular, though things were decidedly slippery underfoot.
\Zillie Falls involved a short stroll through the rainforest and a view from the top as the waters plunged into the depths below, while Millaa Millaa Falls had the swimming hole and a large group of people who seemed to be celebrating some form of strange aquatic ritual.
By this time thoughts were firmly on the night's billet, and we pointed the chariot towards Tolga, arriving at the Atherton Tablelands Motor Inn just after five.
It hadn't been a long day in terms of the driving, four or five hours out of eight and a half isn't that excessive, IMHO, but the non-driving time was largely taken up with a fairly brisk walk through rainforest canopies and up and down access tracks to waterfalls, so when Madam ventured the opinion she wouldn't mind eating here, I wasn't about to demur.
Here delivered a fish and chips for Madam and a rib fillet and roast veggies for Your Humble Correspondent, both of which did what they needed to do, filling a space that needed filling without hitting any great heights or plumbing any significant depths. Good home cooked tucker that you mightn't write home about but you won't be belittling either.
One slight niggle, however. I was expecting rib fillet to come in a fairly substantial chunk rather than a couple of sliced, but what I sampled was pretty close to the rib fillet sliced thin for barbecue purposes that I'd known as cube roll back in the days when I was organising the lunchtime catering associated with school cricket carnivals.
From there, after an hour or so tapping out the travelogue it was a case of early to bed in anticipation of...