July 21-29 Croydon to the coast

The next town eastwards from Croydon is Georgetown. Georgetown is also famous for gold mining, however nuggets of gold rather than deep reefs. So we stopped at an old mine site (Cumberland Mine) about 20km out of Georgetown and I tried a little prospecting in a dry creek bed. No luck with any gold, but there were lots of pretty rocks. The camp site was good too, with a large dam adjacent. We met up with some folks from Ballarat who we had met at Croydon the previous day. John, a fellow gold prospector, and I went out on the next morning in search of some near-by gold fields with our detectors. Unfortuately, nothing to report.

Our camp site at the old Cumberland Mine, 20km west of Georgetown.
Our friends from Ballarat are in the foreground. A random Tasmanian couple pulled up in a motorhome and for some unknown reason tried to park as close as they could to us. There are some odd people out there...

The water supply for the old mine came from the dam next to it

We moved on through the next towns, Georgetown and Mount Surprise and on to Ravenshoe. We found a nice camp site at Ravenshoe in a park by a river. The change in the climate and vegetation is very significant once you start getting into the Great Dividing Range. Ravenshoe is actually the highest town in Queensland. We didn't know that until the next day. Too late, the temperature dropped overnight to only 1 degree! We weren't prepared for that.

Our camp site by the river

The river looked just beautiful in the late afternoon

Next morning, the river water was warm and steaming compared to the 1 degree air temperature

Next stop was Mareeba. The Rodeo Ground doubles as a caravan park. Good and cheap at $15/night for a powered site. We decided to stay a week and use Mareeba as our base for trips around the region.

The first couple of days we took it easy as I was suffering from a deadly bout of influenza virus - well a bit of a head cold and a sore throat. I blame the change in weather that we had experienced over the past few days. It has been interesting to watch the huge motorhomes, busses and fifth wheeler trailers come into the park. Mareeba is host to a "Christmas in July" event for motorhomes. They appear to gather here at the Rodeo Ground prior to moving onto another park where there is no power, nor toilets. We've had about 150 of them in here and there are 200-300 expected at the event.

Lots and lots of big fat caravans and motorhomes

More vans and motorhomes in the back paddock. And that's us in the foreground.
We think we got the best site in the whole ground.

The base of the rodeo grandstand in the foreground, with our car and van in the background

The colourful rodeo stalls

Princess rides the bull

Princess looks for her escape from the bull

Many kangaroos come out at dusk amongst the caravans for their daily feed

From Mareeba it is an hour drive to Cairns, with Kuranda on the way. We spent a day in Cairns and another in Kuranda.

The swimming pools of the Cairns foreshore

The Cairns boardwalk

Lookout views around Kuranda

View of the Barron River near Kuranda

We also went on a day trip to Herberton, an historic tin mining town about an hour south in the hills.

Entrance to Herbeton historic villiage

Some of the old buildings in Herbeton

Spacious and luxurious compared to our caravan

We loved the tea rooms with the silver-ware mounted on the wall

Waiting for our toasted sandwiches