We only had one full day at the Atherton Tablelands but still managed to fit in three walks, a visit to a dairy farm and two roadside stops at significant landmarks.
Our first stop was Lake Eacham, which was another one of mum’s childhood visits. It was a perfectly round crater full of cool crystal clear water. We waded around in the beautiful water and when we got out we realised that there was a croc living in the lake crater. Next we did a rainforest waterfall walk at Malanda’s information centre – it was so much cooler in the rainforest than at the Mungalli creek dairy farm where we had our cheesy mac and cheese lunch.
After our lunch in the middle of the paddocks we went back in to the cool of the rainforest for one last walk at the Hypippamee crater. Before we reached the crater however we were stopped by a Cassowary standing 2 metres from the path. It was amazing and we stood there for ages but than when we were finally ready to leave the cassowary wouldn’t let us go past it so we had to do a diversion and run strategy to make our way to the crater and waterfalls on the other side. After our awesome walk around the waterfalls we made our way back to the car – as we where driving out another cassowary stopped us, crossing the road in front of our car. We stopped and watched it for ages again until a baby cassowary came along and everyone’s attention turned to it, after another 20 minutes of watching cassowaries in the wild it was finally time to go back for dinner. Another great curry experience for those foodie readers.
The Smiling Nomads 