Chillagoe - Limestone Caves, Indigenous Art and Ford Cars

We vacated Rainforest Estate for guests early in July and headed west.  We spent a few days with friends at Mount Molloy at the top of the range on the Atherton Tablelands before driving further west through Mareeba and Dimbullah to Chillagoe.

Chillagoe has long been on our list of places to visit so we planned to spend a few days in the area.  Chillagoe is in limestone and marble country with some interesting rock formations.  (The stones in the pond at Rainforest Estate are tumbled Chillagoe marble.)  We booked into the showgrounds to camp ($6 per night with water and no power) for 5 nights and then called into The Hub to book some cave tours.  Our days of donning overalls and using ropes and ladders to negotiate muddy caves with their spectacular formations are over - unfortunately - so we are restricted to tourist caves these days.





The scenery and caves did not disappoint us.  We booked in to tour 3 caves.  The Royal Arch and Donna Caves were discovered in the 1890s and cave tours were conducted at that time by the Atherton family who owned the property which covered what is now known as The Atheron Tablelands.  The Trezkinn Cave was only recently discovered so is the "least touched" by tourism.  All cave tours are conducted by knowledgeable rangers and the caves are well maintained with boardwalks and stairways.

Our first cave was the Royal Arch Cave which has huge caverns.  This cave is not lit so we all carried miner's lamps which provided plenty of light for us to see the formations.  There were few "live" formations in this cave and the tour took about 90 minutes.  We saw several micro-bats and huntsman spiders which live in the cave.

The next day we toured the Trezkinn Cave, the most recently discovered cave open to tourists.  This cave is full of live formations and is very pretty.  It's well lit so we didn't need to carry lamps.  This cave is above ground so it doesn't flood in the wet season although the many pools will contain plenty of water then.  We're planning a trip back to see it in about February.

The next cave we saw was the Donna Cave which was also well lit.  It's named after a formation close to the entrance which looks like a woman.  This cave also has many live formations - stalagmites, stalactites, shawls, straws, flowstone and chandeliers.  It doesn't take much imagination to see shapes in many of the formations.

About 1km from the Donna and Trezkinn Caves is Balancing Rock, a limestone outcrop defying gravity.

In addition to the caves, Chillagoe has several indigenous art sites.  The Wullumba art site is only about 20m from the Balancing Rock carpark.

About 16km from Chillagoe is the Mungana rock art site.  The art site is close to the road, through a gate. 

About 1km along the track are some self guided caves.  The Archways is a semi-open cave system where several caves have collapsed.

About 15 km further along the main road we crossed the Walsh River.  A very picturesque area with a lovely campsite we've noted for future use.





As with most country towns, Chillagoe has its characters.  One of these is Tom Prior, an old timer with a passion for Ford vehicles.  He has a huge collection in various states of repair from rusty junk to fully restored.  We spent some time talking to Tom and exploring his vehicles and workshop.

We travelled back to the coast via an alternative route.  We knew there was a dirt road from Almaden, 30km east of Chillagoe, to meet up with the Gulf Developmental Way about 15km east of Mount Surprise (we spent time in Mount Surprise when we travelled The Savannah Way in 2014).  Travellers in the Chillagoe Showgrounds recommended it so we decided to make the trip.  The road was in excellent condition - probably one of the best unsealed roads we have travelled on, and the scenery was beautiful.

We travelled through the Atherton Tablelands through Ravenshoe, Atherton, Tolga and Mareeba before spending a few more days with our friends near Mount Molloy and making our way back down the mountains to Mossmann.

Rainforest Estate, near Mossman in Far North Queensland

Until mid-2017 we will be caretaking the wonderful Rainforest Estate property.  The property is a high-end rental property and we will be here when there are no guests in occupation.  When there are guests, we will move out with or without our caravan, depending on what we want to do.  We will also be able to spend some time exploring this part of our country.

The house we’re looking after is HUGE.  Its really 2 houses - 1 with 3 bedrooms/4 bathrooms and a smaller 1 bedroom/2 bathroom “pavillion”.  Total room to sleep about 16-20 people.  We have a pool, a hot tub, beautiful tropical rainforest gardens - and an indoor pond and waterfall.  Being in the rainforest there is an abundance of wildlife.  Birds, we have resident bush turkeys and stone curlews as well as sunbirds, various cockatoos and kookaburras; butterflies - bright blue Ulysses and orange toned Cairns Birdwings; geckos; various snakes (pythons and tree snakes) which keep to themselves (we like it that way) and wallabies. We keep the outside doors closed - to keep the rainforest animals from coming inside.

Lucky for us there is a gardener who comes with his 2 or 3 helpers every week and a pool guy every 2 weeks to keep everything spiffy.  Robert gets to play with some "boy's toys" and has a tractor mower to keep the lawns under control.  It’s strange to be living with so much space and we seem to do a lot of walking just around the house.

We’ve had pretty good weather except for last week when it rained pretty much constantly - and we had an ongoing battle with mould in the humidity.  It's the "dry season" now so the rain was unexpected.  The wet season will be interesting.  Now it's back to normal with bright sunny days about 28C and cooler nights around 20C.

We’ve both joined the library and have also joined the local art group (DAB).  Robert is going to pottery classes and Cherryl spent several hours learning how to make glass jewellery.  Watch this space for some pictures of our masterpieces when they are all fired and completed.  This weekend the Mossman Show is on.  It’s the last regional show in Queensland before the EKKA in Brisbane.  Tomorrow is the Show Day holiday here so we are planning to go to the show then, along with the rest of Mossman.

Far North Queensland

We've made our way north from Townsville to Mossman, 75km and about 1 hour north of Cairns on the edge of the Daintree Rainforest National Park.  Total distance is about 450km so we did the trip over 2 days.

We stopped for lunch at Cardwell.  This small coastal town was the centre of international interest in early 2011 when it was at the centre of Cyclone Yasi, a huge Category 5 tropical cyclone which crossed the coast here.  The cyclone devastated a huge area - the eye of the cyclone had a 100+km diameter - and it's effects were felt hundreds of kilometres away.  Much of the town has been rebuilt (as have many other affected coastal towns) and the trees have mostly recovered from their battering.  We travelled through here in late 2011 and saw just how devastating the cyclone damage was so it's good to see the recovery is well under way.   We usually stop at one of the bakery/cafes for lunch or coffee on our way through.

We travelled on and camped overnight at Babinda about 50km south of Cairns.  The campground is a credit to the Babinda community and was well patronised.

The next morning we made our way through Cairns - the tourist hub of Far North Queensland.  Cairns is much smaller than Townsville.  It will become our major centre until mid-2017.  The Bruce Highway ends at Cairns and we travelled further north along the Captain Cook Highway.  About 30km of this road passes through the World Heritage Area "Where the Rainforest Meets the Reef".  The scenery is magnificent and there are a couple of lookouts where the scenery can be admired.  We'll be stopping of at them all over the next few months.  The road itself is narrow and winding with few passing and stopping areas so it takes about an hour to cover the 70km to Mossman.

Now we are caretaking the Rainforest Estate about 5km from Mossman.  I'll do a separate post on our new home.  Our new "Big Smoke" is the holiday town of Port Douglas about 15km away.