Author: Joel

Realising that I had erred in my itinerary calculations, I was forced to backtrack about 150km to reach a place I had made reservations for 2 nights at because it was supposed to be one of the top places to visit in Queensland. When I eventually found the place, I found it not really that special by world standards (where rain and rivers are normal). It was somewhat novel to have a freshwater stream year-round that was deep enough for swimming – which is somewhat unusual in desert Australia. I had a few swims but decided not to hang around for more than one night. I was the only camper there!

The area seems to be the heart of Australia’s banana-growing region. There are also plenty of sugar cane fields with the small gauged sugar train cars/rails crossing the road every so often (much like you find in Fiji) and quite an abundance of guava plantations. It is also a region that often finds itself in the path of big South Pacific cyclones. On a few occasions in the past 6 years, cyclones have more or less wiped out the banana crop for the country, which resulted in months and months of very high prices before the crops could be replanted and bananas replaced.

I popped into Innisfail to check out the tiny town. It is funny how you never seem to know how big a town will be. Towns are often much bigger or smaller than you expect. I often measure them by the number of traffic lights. This one had none. Very small but well presented with lush green tropical gardens and art deco (?) architecture. Politician Bob Katter’s office took precedence at the main intersection. Had a nice breakfast there, but have come to the conclusion that nobody in northern Queensland really knows how to make a proper flat white coffee.

Nice sunny day for a change! It seems as though either the heat or wet weather has been following me around since the start of this trip! Perhaps things are starting to change.

Before leaving Bramston Beach, I got up early to take a nice little 17km mountain bike ride through the town parks and down through the end of the National Park campsites 4WD track. Didn’t spot any campers, but did come across a temporary sign at the end stating a crocodile was recently sighted in the area. Decided it was best to peddle out of there asap! Ashame about the crocs, but I guess they were there first. The campsites were the most unique I’ve come across on this trip, and privately isolated, all next to gorgeous beaches. All nestled within beautiful dense rainforest and sandwiched between a gorgeous beach and a meandering back river.

Russell River National Park MTB Tour

Today’s Drive

Headed northward for a few hours to hit my next planned campsite. The only problem was that I had a hard time finding where it was! Most national parks have signs along the highway telling you where they are, but Russell River National Park did not and was also split up into different sections. Fortunately, I wasn’t too far south of Cairns and had excellent phone coverage, so I was able to look up specific instructions for getting to the campsite on my iPad. The campsites looked very cool and were well secluded from one another, but I was a bit put off by the crocodile warnings they had posted.

No one else seemed to be camping there, so I headed back into the local town of Bramston Beach, QLD and checked into their little caravan park on the beach. It included hot showers, minimal people and mosquitoes, and a place to swim that was protected by a net to keep box jellyfish and crocs out. Sounded good to me. The lifeguard said I would have been fine in the national park as long as I didn’t try sleeping on the actual beach. Oh well! I hope to mountain bike through the national park and all the camps tomorrow morning.

Today’s Drive

Had a stab at Townsville-style mountain biking in the morning. They have quite an extensive network of single-track routes, but they are quite gruelling and hilly – much like Perth’s Goat Farm. They had a green route that went up and up and up, but then it just ended with no return to the parking lot, so I was forced to take more difficult blue and black routes down to the bottom.

Douglas Mountain Townsville Single Track

After heading north a little while to get to my next camping spot, it started to pour like I hadn’t seen since… The last time I was in the tropics. I had a nice swim in the rain at a great swimming hole next to my campsite, but decided to take a bit of a cruise in my car up to Ingham to get out of the rain and away from the very persistent mosquitoes.

Hike to cool off

The first few days I spent on the east coast had me a little concerned. After enduring weeks of temperatures hovering around the 100F mark, I was now being drenched in constant downpours – although in much cooler temperatures. I camped at a few spots on my way north to Cooktown, including Paluma Range National Park, but the rain got a bit tiring, and the mosquitoes were extra intense. I did manage to get a few little hikes in to check out some waterfalls and swim in a swimming hole.

Paluma Range National Park Waterfall Hike

Today’s Drive

Rolled into my first coastal town, Townsville, in the morning. Maybe about the size of Darwin (not too big)? It was POURING rain when I got there, but none of the locals seemed to care about carrying umbrellas. I visited their aquarium for a little while before heading to my very first actual pre-booked Queensland national park campsite. I have been skipping all the others due to heat, isolation, or simply finding better spots so far – but I think I will try sticking to my itinerary now for at least the next few weeks due to the Christmas / New Year’s holiday madness you usually find in Australia. A bit disappointing, my campsite was located right next to a large suburban house, it poured rain the whole time I was there, and the mosquitoes were vicious.

Today’s Drive

Spent a night at a caravan park outside of Charters Towers, which was basic but cheap, with very eager-to-please staff. Found this huge 10 cm (4-inch) cicada bug on my tent in the morning.

The drive from Porcupine Gorge to Charters Towers

Porcupine Gorge + White Mountains National Park: Porcupine was gorgeous (sorry, Ithaca) and a nice place to camp. I couldn’t book the campsite in advance, but fortunately, there were plenty of spaces available. Only 2 other couples camping.

Like Carnarvan Gorge, Porcupine Gorge seemed to have its own micro-climate of lush green tropics, even though the surrounding landscape was brown. It’s an odd name for a national park in Australia that has no porcupines (just echidnas). The name came from European explorers who were referring to the native spiky grass (Triodia) found in the area. The camping was on the ridge at the top, but there was a 1km trail I hiked down to visit the gorge floor first thing in the morning (while it was cool).

Afterwards, I headed for White Mountains National Park to re-evaluate whether I wanted to camp in the hot, dry, isolated (snake-infested?) place and decided to just mountain bike the 10 km 4WD track in there instead. Racked up 25km round trip (including a little side exploring in the forest), which felt good for a change from driving all the time.

Exploring Porcupine Gorge National Park

White Mountains National Park Mountain Biking

The drives from Canarvon Gorge to Porcupine Gorge National Park investigating isolated campgrounds along the way.

Stumbled across one of the best, most spectacular places I have seen in Australia so far: Carnarvon Gorge. And to think I wasn’t even planning to visit the place. They only had official park service camping available after a 10km hike in, so I had anticipated giving it a miss. But seeing how most camp sites I have been to have been far less crowded than expected, I decided to call Takarakka Bush Resort, a private campground within the boundaries of the national park that I had read about, to see if they might have room for me and my tent – and they did.

The drive into the park was really quite spectacular, starting with a pretty ordinary, dull brown flat drive (it had been pretty average since I left Wilcannia, NSW), then a noticeable greening of the landscape, and finally a full-blown, rich green forest sitting in a micro-climate with spectacular drops into deep gorges. I did a few short walks on the first day, including one into a nice, cool rock pool for a swim that evening, before doing another short hike up to see some cool old Aboriginal cave paintings. On the second day, I did a bit of hiking up into the beautiful gorge. It was an extremely beautiful place. I would definitely say it’s one of the top things to see in Australia!

A few hikes around the area

The drive from Charleville to Carnarvon Gorge

When you travel around from town to town, they rarely seem to be what you expect when you get there. They are usually much bigger or smaller than you expected. Often, towns with little information available about them seem to be pretty cool places to hang out for a bit of wilderness recuperation. On the other hand, towns that seem to get the most hype in Lonely Planet often seem way overrated, a bit run-down, and past their prime (with boarded-up shops, etc.).

One such town was Charleville, QLD. Charleville had numerous boarded-up shops and not much to see in the area. It was also extremely hot and very difficult to cool off in. There was nowhere to escape the heat – no real shade, boiling hot water coming out of pipes, and even a hot swimming pool.

Charleville did have a good astronomy show on at their local observatory, which was pretty modern compared to the rest of the town. They treated us to a nighttime show featuring telescope views of the bands on Jupiter and some of its moons, distant gaseous galaxies forming, the moon up close, and other stellar stuff. Very cool show and the best I have seen in a while.

One funny thing about Charleville is that it seemed as though no one had ever seen a bike being transported on the roof of a car before. My bike seemed to attract endless fascination from the locals there. Very odd considering every other town I’ve come through didn’t really seem to care.

Today’s Drive