Atherton

After leaving Cooktown we headed to a free camp at Mount Molloy where we set up for two nights.  When we were doing our Cape York trip we didn't get as much school work done as we thought we might (as it’s a bit hard in the tent!) so we were a bit behind and needed to catch-up so we took the opportunity (while free camping) to have a school day and catch up on our school work,  which worked really well.

Catching up on School work in Mount Molloy

One of the locals watching us do our school

Sam kept himself entertained by playing cars in the dirt - one of his favourite games

Friday 14^th September we left Mount Molloy and drove to Rocky Creek War Memorial rest area which was about 14km out of Atherton.  We set up there for two nights with about 30 other free-campers.  This rest area was actually an army base and Hospital during World War II.  There were lots of photos and information about the site at the Memorial.  From here we went into Atherton and did a bit of shopping.  We also visited the Atherton lookout which has beautiful views over the tablelands.  On returning to our campsite we met another family who had set up near us, and our kids had a great time playing with their new friends Noah and Emma from Perth.  The next morning after the kids had had another good play with their friends we headed out to have a look around the area. Our first stop was Platypus park in Atherton, the kids had fun climbing all over an old train engine and playing on the playground and then we stood on the viewing platform at the creek to watch and wait in the hope that we might see a platypus, and we did.  We watched the platypus for quite a while as it fossicked along the edge.  Every now and then it would dive down and resurface a little further on.  We've seen most other iconic Australian Native Animals on our trip but not the platypus, so it was great to see the first platypus of our trip.

A Platypus at Platypus Park

Josh climbing on the steam engine

After Platypus park we headed out to Lake Tinaroo.  On the way out to the Lake we stopped at a Strawberry farm and had lots of fun picking our own punnet of strawberries, and they were very tasty.

Natalie picking her strawberries at the strawberry farm

Lake Tinaroo is a beautiful dam which is used for all kinds of watersports,  the kids had fun playing on the playground before we headed off around the dam to see what we could find. We stopped in at one of the campsites around the lake and had lunch as we watched people waterskiing on the lake.

Lake Tinaroo

From here we continued around the lake until we found the Cathedral Fig tree.  We were expecting to find a big tree – however what we found was the most amazing tree we have ever seen!  It completely took our breath away and reminded us of ‘home tree’ in the movie Avatar.  Our photos don’t capture how awesome this tree was.

The amazing Cathedral Fig Tree

This 500 year old monster was just awesome

From here we continued on to Lake Barrine which is a crater Lake and we did a short walk to see the Twin Kauri Trees,  they were big and tall but having just come from the Cathedral fig tree they were a bit ho-hum.  So we moved on, we thought we would find the Curtain Fig tree next,  it was also a beautiful tree but not as spectacular as the Cathedral Fig.  If we had visited the Cathedral tree last we might have thought differently about this tree.  After this we headed back to camp and the kids spent the rest of the afternoon playing with Noah and Emma.

The Curtain Fig Tree