Clermont to Atherton

Continuing from last episode…..

Theresa Creek dam was a beautiful spot. Lots of caravans and motor homes camped out there too! We just took a picnic lunch out and sat in our chairs not far from the dam watching motor boats, skiers, and fishermen coming and going. One of the later came in with a huge barramundi! Now we know we are in the right area!!!

After having the springs fixed on the caravan, we then headed off towards Charters Towers. We gave Belyando Crossing a miss except for stopping for a hamburger for lunch….and boy were they great hamburgers! The van park we stayed in at Charters was a Top Tourist park and we had a nice site under the trees. Lovely shade but made the van very dark most of the time. Charters is a fascinating place, and so much history based around gold. Did you know they have one of the only regional stock exchanges in Australia at one time? The building is truly magnificent and has other uses now such as gift shops, coffee shops etc. See the photo! We visited the “Venus” Battery which was a community battery for the miners. The Battery could do up to 7 different consignments at any one time. It has been kept virtually intact and has a fascinating holographic presentation that brings back the original owner and designer of it! Very clever. So much gold came out of this area. One load of 2586 tons yielded over 7000 grams of gold, equal today of about 3.2 million dollars. Not a bad day’s takings eh!

We also drove out to Burdekin dam for a look around and picnic lunch, very pretty place. Full also of barramundi we were told.

Lovely historic buildings in the town such as what was a very elite “Gentlemen Only” club, The World Theatre, Bank of NSW, hospital and ambulance station. All lovely ornate buildings and would have been so ahead of their time 100 years ago. We went up to the Towers lookout for the “Ghosts of Gold” presentation and also found a lovely group of Allied Rock Wallabies. Double whammy!

Whilst at Charters we heard about a place called Fletchers Creek, about 38kms north on the Gregory Developmental road which was the way we were heading anyway. So we thought we would check it out. If it was OK we would stop overnight if not keep going towards Greenvale. Well it was the most delightful spot right on a crystal clear running creek. There were caravans, tents and motor homes camped along it on both sides of the road. Just as we arrived a couple were leaving so gave us there spot. 5 metres from the creek, stacks of bird life and total tranquility! So we ended up staying 2 nights. Had the egrets, kookaburras, eagles and honey eaters all around us. We were quite sad to leave actually but leave we did and drove straight through to Undara Lava Tubes.

This is a lovely bush setting but not really cheap! We booked in for a ½ day tour of the Lava tubes the following day and a Sunset tour for the following evening. There are also walks you can undertake yourself so we grabbed the info on all of these to sit down and work out what we wanted to do. Again heaps of birds around and eastern gray kangaroos and some wallabies. They also have free campfire entertainment each night so we availed ourselves of this treat as well. The first night a ranger gave a talk on Toxic plants and animals. Quite interesting. The next night another ranger bought out his guitar and entertained us.

The lava tubes were amazing. This is the only one in the world of this magnitude, some of them running for 160 kms. Formed some 190,000 years ago through volcanic activity. Something like 164 volcanoes in the area but most of the tubes were formed from the Undara volcano that oozed its lava slowly down its sides filling up the lower lying areas. Although the surface cooled, the lava underneath continues to flow and when the eruption stopped the lava gradually flowed out of the tubes leaving hollow tunnels beneath the ground.

One evening on returning to the van Walter spotted something that at first glance neither of us knew what it was. But after looking up our trusty mammal identification book we found we had 2 Rufus bettongs outside our door. The cutest little things with pink noses and tiny pink pointed ears.

From Undara we traveled about 90kms to a tiny place known as Innot Hot Springs. Again sitting on the artesian basin the van park has 6 artesian pools all differing temperatures. The hottest being 45-48 degrees C. We found we definitely needed to jump into the “cool” pool after this one!

Last night we went into the only other place in town, the pub of course, for dinner. But what an amazing experience that this turned out to be! Who should be running this pub, was a guy called Larry McLean. Larry (those Muswellbrook folk may remember) was the half of the “Larry & Flav” team who ran Blackhill restaurant! Larry employed me there as a waitress (2nd job) when I first came to Muswellbrook 33 years ago. Neither of us could get over it, we were both so surprised! We agreed to both take a lottery ticket and call it Déjà vu! Needless to say we had a great night there and great dinner too.

We are now in Atherton. What a beautiful area that is. As soon as we climbed out of the valley the vegetation went Bright green! Truly rainforest even had purple swamp hens and Brush turkeys on the road instead of crows and apostle birds! Looking to explore the area over the next few days. We are here for 4 days before heading the 15kms to WAlkamin where we stay for a week and then store the van there whilst we head to Cape York on our 12 day 4WD tour. Should be truly great.

Hope all are well,

Love to you all the Happy Travellers
Rob & Walter