Sept 22, 2025 Parks-Part 1
We ventured into the rainforest today, at the Ma:Mu Tropical Skywalk. The rainforest canopy walkway is in the traditional country of the Ma:Mu Aboriginal people and is part of the ‘Wet Tropics’ of northeast Queensland.
The walkway overlooks a gorge of the North Johnstone River which gives a rare viewpoint over the rainforest.
We discovered that it’s not only snakes and spiders that can harm you in Australia, but plants can poison you in many ways as well!
The ‘lawyer vine’ is also dangerous, hanging vines have sharp thorns that can tear your clothes and skin! We walked through the forest, careful not to touch any plants or have them touch us!! The red ‘apple’ might be the fruit of the poison laurel, but something eats it!
A surprise bonus of our early arrival to the rainforest was sighting of a cassowary, a large flightless bird with an impressive horny growth on its colorful head and a bright red wattle hanging from its neck, casually walking by on the path!
After our introduction to the rainforest at the Skywalk we stopped along the road to hike a short distance to a waterfall. This being the ‘wet tropics’ there are trails to several waterfalls in the area.
Tchupala Falls is a 30 min. hike from the road, and a million years into the past!
Sept 21, 2025 A Queenslander
Our residence for the next 3 days in Wangan, Queensland, 5km west of the town of Innisfail, is a true Queenslander! We have the upstairs 2 bedroom, one bath apartment with tall ceilings, gleaming wood floors, large frosted-glass windows and french doors to the big veranda and to the bedrooms.
The outside doesn’t look too impressive. The veranda is protected with plastic shade curtains, also to keep the tropical torrential rain out!
The interior is light and bright, the floors polished and the furnishings sparse and comfortable. We never even turned the TV on! The view out the kitchen window looked across the road to a sugar cane field past the palm trees.
Posted on September 27th, 2025 at 10:22 pm |
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Sept 20, 2025 Crack Off
Our last sunrise on the beach in Yeppoon. Today is a travel day, heading further north. We bade goodbye to the chairs in the shade of a Norfolk pine overlooking the dunes where we watched gorgeous turquoise and orange colored rainbow bee-eater birds swooping to catch bugs on the wing!
The birds were colorful jewels, swooping and diving, then roosting together on a twig! (Not my pics!)
We stopped in the tiny town of Koumala for a break and coffees at the hotel. An iconic fixture of most small towns we’ve been through. Most have a restaurant/bar and some still provide accomodations. There were quite a few patrons because a Crack-Off Competition was in progress in the community park! A whip-cracking contest, apparently something that’s popular in the Outback at cattle stations!
The competition we watched was small potatoes, just a regional Crack-Off. click HERE and HERE for videos of championship shows!
Sept 19, 2025 Vernal Equinox?
According to Weather Underground today is the Vernal Equinox in Yeppoon, Queensland, Australia! Although officially it’s September 23 according to Google.
To make use of the 12 hour sunshine we went the 200 yards to the beach to watch the sunrise and dip our toes in the Pacific Ocean. Robert fully submerged!
After returning from our hike we scootered to the esplanade along the beach in town and relaxed on the loungers!
Sept 18, 2025 Wreck Point Lookout
Our day started with a morning walk on the beach, along with others, including their dogs!
The big adventure for the day was a scooter ride along the waterfront and up on a bluff to Wreck Point Lookout, a 3.5 mile one way trip.
From the Lookout we could see a sailing class in Cooee bay on one side, and Lammermoor Beach stretching along the other side.
We got back with just a little juice left on the scooters!
