Thierings on Tour

The Townsville heat really turned it on this morning, it was already boiling hot by 8am as we were packing up. The girls got to enjoy some pool time and practice their diving and underwater swimming. These fish would be happy to do a tour of all the pools in Australia without ever seeing anything else!

We headed off to the first stop for the day – Big Crystal Creek, recommended to us by my sister. What a beautiful spot with clear, refreshing water and gorgeous views all around! It was a new and slightly different experience for the girls swimming in a creek and poor Jazzy was freaking out about the fish she could see thinking they were going to bite her. But they didn’t and we had a great cool off during our lunch break stop followed by sandwiches at the van.

Unfortunately a lot of the nearby swimming spots and nice walks in the area are currently closed due to some major landslides in the area following big recent rains. One of the guys working on traffic control at the side of the road said that about 10m of road has been washed away in a spot that plummets at least 80m below. Which means that the residents are having to do 140kms trips one way every day to get to work in Townsville. 

From there we headed to Ingham and dropped the van at a rest area where we would be staying for the night. We then headed to Wallaman Falls by car only as the road looked a little too undulating for my liking to take the van. That was a good idea as the road had some very sharp hairpin turns!

Wallaman Falls is the highest, permanent, single drop waterfall in Australia and it certainly didn’t disappoint! Wow, what a beautiful sight and all the recent rain probably added to the magic. It was very impressive! Seeing waterfalls always gives me such a sense of perspective of size and force of nature compared to humans… 
There was an option to go down to the bottom of the fall, but one of the local ladies I spoke to said it was not recommended with kids so I promised Jazzy we would come back together when she is older. My poor adventure girl is keen on all the hikes, but disappointed we haven’t been able to do some of them recently!

Heading back into town Chris had to run to Super cheap, so the girls and I explored a bit of local history in mosaic lane. It’s incredible to read about the history of the sugar cane industry and how physical the work was back in the days without all the modern machinery. I’m also amazed at just how much sugarcane there is every time we drive somewhere. I feel like that’s all we’ve seen for hundreds of kms now… Now a quick Google shows that it’s in fact 30-35 million tonnes a year! 😳

Then we couldn’t go past the “original pub with no beer”, which now thankfully sells beer! The girls were disappointed to hear that the “game machines” that looked so enticing (pokies) were for adults only, but luckily the lady behind the counter had a stash of colouring in paper and pencils to keep them busy while Chris and I enjoyed our beverages.

Back at camp we had to be swift with our dinner as the mosquitoes and other bugs were out in full force again and we were still recovering from Cape Hillsborough! 

Kms travelled – 244