The Aetherton Tablelands
We wrapped up our Australian adventures with a dip into the Atherton Tablelands, an inland area in FNQ defined by ancient volcanic craters, freshwater lakes and waterfalls. We had originally planned to stay an extra three nights in a tiny funky camping lodge deep in the Daintree, but lucked into some very sage advice from Koel that summertime in the rainforest can be a hot, humid, bug laden affair and that we might enjoy ourselves more in the Tablelands… We had never heard of Atherton before and are not sure we would have stumbled upon it without insider knowledge. It felt a bit like visiting the best parts of the Mid-West in the 1950’s, sweet and wholesome but with wallabies and platypus. The town we stayed in, Yungaburra, is one of the oldest in Australia and remains virtually unchanged since 1910 when most of it was built. It was brilliant. Each town we visited was shockingly wholesome, and perfectly preserved, with tiny winding roads that don’t allow you to go anywhere in a hurry. Around every corner there was a delicious ice cream parlor, a family dairy farm selling milk and cheese (overall the ice cream and milk were awesome, cheese might not be Australia’s thing ;), or a wonderful old pub where we could escape the humidity with a cold beer. After several days…errr, maybe a week…without any formal homeschooling, we took advantage of the quiet to spend mornings catching up on school before venturing out in the afternoon to the surrounding lakes and waterfalls.
We explored Lack Eacham, an ancient volcanic crater filled with crystal clear water and home to a resident freshwater crocodile (who supposedly is quite timid and not dangerous 🤷♀️). Ahh Australia. Another afternoon we embarked on the “Waterfall Circuit”, a collection of beautiful waterfalls that you could walk right up to and jump in for a swim. Each waterfall was as spectacular as the last, with clear water tumbling over the lava rocks and wild electric blue Ulysses butterflies flitting around. Unfortunately, our afternoon timeline had us aligned with the rainstorms, but seeing as it was warm and tropical and we were wet anyway, we dove right in, swimming and exploring in the pouring rain. Huxley’s crystal obsession guided us to the Crystal Caves, a collection of over 600 crystals from the private collection of a wonderfully eccentric man named René, who built an awesomely-bizarre 300 square meter man-made “cave” from egg cartons, canvas and painted Styrofoam to house them all. After fully taking in the collection and the cave, both pretty darn remarkable, the boys cracked open their own 44-million-year-old geodes. Needless to say, Huxley was in heaven. We visited the Curtain and Cathedral Fig trees, two of the largest strangler figs in the world–both mind-blowing in scale. A strangler fig is a climbing fig tree that starts as a seed dropped at the top of another tree by a bird or bat. It then proceeds to grow downward, enveloping the host tree and ‘strangling’ it until it has entirely taken over. The canopy of the Cathedral fig tree is the size of 2 Olympic swimming pools and the foliage weights around 1000kg, about the size a small car. It was awe inspiring. Every day we paid a visit to Shaylee’s Strawberries, a sweet, very mid-western strawberry farm where, in the right season, you can pick your own strawberries and in all other seasons you can gorge on their absurdly good strawberry gelato and other treats. The women working came to know us by name and laughed at the frequency and enthusiasm of our visits. Finally, on our way out of town and back to the airport in Cairns we found the best natural ‘water slide’ at Josephine Falls, a beautiful canyon of waterfalls and swimming holes with a smooth, sloping, 30-foot-long slab of rock that was the absolute perfect slide. I think the boys must have done 10,000 laps. There were two 20-year-old local aboriginal guys who obviously spent a fair bit of time at the slide as well, as they could ‘surf’ down it standing-up sliding on their feet, and the boys fell instantly in love. The four of them played like a pack of wolf puppies for hours until the bottom of Huxley’s surf trunks literally disintegrated, and we realized it was probably time to hit the road….We had an airport hotel to find and a 4 am wakeup call the next day to catch our flights to New Zealand. It felt sad after the month of adventures behind us to leave this amazing country and it may take a while to unwind our daily mantra of ‘remember everything can kill you’ but we feel so grateful for the adventures we've had in the wild, wonderful world that is Australia!
Random Recs
There doesn’t seem to be much luxury lodging in the Tablelands but we loved the sweet little Blue Summit Hideaway in Yungaburra. You can walk across the street to the platypus viewing platform!
A swim with the resident fresh water croc at Lake Eacham
A visit to both Cathedral and Curtin Fig
Josephine Falls for sliding and swimming
A visit to the wonderful wacky Crystal Caves
Shaylees Strawberries for gelato or to pick your own strawberries in the right season
Mungalii Dairy for the BEST fresh milk and yogurt
Any and every pub you find tucked into the funky little towns throughout the area.