February 27 – Cairns to the Atherton Tablelands for 2 days

Before leaving Cairns today we ate at our nearby favorite cafe – Muddy’s – and Dirk had an excellent haircut!

The Atherton Tablelands are inland and high above Cairns and its neighboring sea towns. After getting away from town, windy, steep, narrow roads are needed to climb the mountains to reach the area. Once there you see beautiful farmland for miles, quaint villages and areas of rain forest that survived the making of the farms from the 1800s on.

After driving up the mountain road and continuing for a while Dirk spied a sign for Davis Creek and since we were tired of looking at the highway we turned down the narrow dirt road having no idea what we’d find.

When we got to the creek after about 20 minutes, there was a sign pointing uphill to “Davis waterfall”. It was a steep hill, and I was nervous but off we went. I was more than nervous the higher we got because it was my side of the car that was looking down 1000 feet or so. Of course it was worth it. Another large and beautiful waterfall.

Dirk had wanted to see a platypus in the wild and getting away from very hot and muggy Cairns inspired us to book Canopy Treehouses and Wildlife Sanctuary in the Tablelands for two nights. There are six cabins pitched surrounded by the rainforest on separate plots with a river behind each cabin – a river full of plate-size turtles and some platypus. Also in this rainforest: Cassowaries, parrots and many other unique birds, and a small version of a wallaby called ‘pademelon’. Oh – and wild turkeys and possums.

That night I was reading on the deck and all of a sudden an animal was next to me – an opossum – looking very much at home. He crawled on my lap! I decided it was time to go inside! Turns out she lives in the rafters of the treehouse.

We got up at about 6:15 to listen to the sounds of early morning in the rainforest and look for platypus in the river (but didn’t see any). There was quite an orchestra of sounds – so wonderful. Later Dirk pointed to a nearby branch and there was a colorfiul mostly red parrot next to the tree looking for a treat. We got food out to feed the parrot, but one of the turkeys kept trying to get to the seeds as we were chasing it away. (We did drop seeds below – but one turkey was stubborn.)

We had heard about an interesting cafe in the town of Millaa Millaa and headed there for lunch. The cafe is unique in that it carries women’s clothing and tons of gift or souvenir type items and makes good meals. Since it started pouring we had plenty of time to look around.

Looking for a stream that might have a platypus we got a bit lost for a while then regrouped at the cabin. Next stop was to Yungaburra, a small town that retains its older and well-tended look, where everyone we met was very friendly. The manager of the information center went out of her way to arrange for us to visit a caravan park on a nearby stream on private land known for having many platypus. We stayed a few hours until it was pretty dark and did see a small platypus (we think).

Prior to heading to the river we made a quite stop at the Curtain Fig tree in Yungaburra. Very cool, and there was another one on the private land near the river! It starts with a fig seed germinating on a live tree and then over time… The fig takes over.