Today we decided to do a bit of a driving tour of the various waterfalls in the area. The day started with a fantastic fresh breakfast, including a home-grown tropical fruit salad. Soooo good!
Our first stop was Mungalli Falls, which is an outdoor education center. Unfortunately it was closed today. We walked to the mini waterfalls when we saw something move in the river… I assumed a snake or a large fish, so we watched patiently for a while. We were about to give up when I noticed some tell-tale bubbles and sure enough a few seconds later a Platypus emerged! You can tell the difference a real camera makes in these images… Guess which were taken on my iPhone 😉
I had never seen one in the wild, so I was super psyched by this. We must have watched him for 30 minutes before we decided to get out of the sun and head back to the car. We drove a bit further and stopped at a range of waterfalls on the Waterfall Circuit, one of which had a chicken walk across the entrance… Because, why not?
Eventually we stopped at the famous Curtain Fig in Yungaburra. It really is an impressive tree! There is no way to take a photo which does it justice.
After relaxing in the shade of this ancient giant, we drove over to Coffee world, which was a scenic drive and included a hay-truck. Oh, this is a place for a Simon. Simon loves coffee.
The first stop was a coffee tasting center, where we could taste a large variety of coffees. Amusingly, I didn’t much enjoy any of them. They also had spirits, which I tried:
After the tasting we walked off the coffee rush in the coffee museum, which was really cute. When it comes down to it, the centerpiece is a crazy collection of coffee machines from the various centuries from around the world. It’s like the collection of an eccentric coffee-machine fanatic, amusingly assorted and with an extensive audio guide. If you want to learn about brewing coffee and coffee history (for example, why do some countries have big cups of coffee, while others have smaller ones?), it’s worth a visit. There are even some sections which might keep the kids entertained for a few minutes while you browse… providing they haven’t sampled the coffee 😉
We stopped at one more waterfall on the way back and noticed that my brother had apparently been here? We also found another cool bug. Thanks for pointing him out Niko!
Then we raced back, because tonight we really wanted to go and check out the glow-worms at our Airbnb. As it was dusk, we stopped at a place where there was a small chance to spot tree kangaroos. We walked for 20 minutes, but only saw some wallabies and turtles.
We couldn’t wait too long, because we needed to be back before sunset. We made it back just in time and drove our hired car, which was an SUV since our Airlie exchange, down the steep incline and waited for the sun to completely set. When it did, the whole area exploded in little lights – glow worms were everywhere. It really was amazing. We attempted to capture it on go pros and cameras, but with very limited success.
An hour later we headed back up to our Airbnb. We drove through the paddock, around the very steep corner and up the very steep and narrow track up…. and got stuck. F*#k! I stopped quickly to make sure we didn’t get completely bogged.
It’s the middle of the night and we really don’t want to wake our host to tow us out. I got out and snuck around the car to take a look – there was a patch of mud we were stuck in, but the ground a few meters before and after looked solid enough. So I threw it into reverse and managed to use gravity to get unstuck and back onto solid ground… Reversing slowly as far as I could before the bend, I raced up the hill to get past the mud. Manja was not impressed, but it worked, and it was (mostly) safe. A little stressed but happy we arrived at our accommodation a few moments later, only to find the most amazing glowing bug on the flyscreen. After a short photo-shooting session I decided to setup a moonrise camera to capture the full moon tonight while we dropped into bed.
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