The Atherton Tablelands

Northwest of Townsville, inland from Cairns, at the top of the Great Dividing Range is the Atherton Tablelands.  Over the past 6 years we've spent plenty of time in this area and once again we hitched up and travelled to The Tablelands.

We are meeting up with our BT friends at Ravenshoe for a few days before travelling on to Mareeba.  We drove north along the Bruce Highway and the coast to Innisfail where we stopped for lunch before turning left, westward and up the steep road towards Ravenshoe.  We set up camp at the Ravenshoe Railway Campground and booked in for 3 nights.

The Pub at Ravenshoe is recommended for dinner.

We decided to do a day trip to historic Irvinebank, which was a tin mining town with a population of over 3,000 and with many pubs in its heyday from 1880 to 1920.  The town has many historic buildings and the Loudoun House Museum is well worth the walk up the hill to look at town's history.   This house, built in 1884, was the home of John Moffatt, mining entrepreneur and the towns "founder". On our way back to Ravenshoe we stopped at Dimbullah where the Savannah Gulflander Train was stopped on its weekly trip from Cairns, through the Tablelands to Forsayth and back to Cairns.

After a few days in Ravenshoe we made our way to Mareeba where we would be based for a couple of weeks.  Although we've stayed at Kerribee Park Rodeo Grounds several times, we always find plenty to keep us busy in Mareeba.






We had coffee at Coffeeworks and visited the Coffee Museum with its great exhibits relating to coffee.  We saw the roasting process with it's wonderful smell of freshly roasted coffee.  









We also visited the memorial at the airport which commemorates the crash of an aircraft during World War II and also has a memorial to Rex Judd, a noted airman from Mareeba.













We celebrated Cherryl's birthday with a cheese platter lunch at Gallo's Dairyland, and of course bought some of their delicious cheeses to enjoy later.









A trip to the Kuranda Rainforest Village about 40km away broke up a day as we had coffee and wandered around the market style shops.  We'd be back again several times.

We were woken one morning as hot air balloons started landing in the Campground.  We had 2 land quite close to us and it brought back memories of our balloon ride in 1995 over the NSW Hunter Valley.

Yungaburra is on the southern shores of Lake Tinaroo and it is the location of the Avenue of Honour for service personnel killed during the war in Afghanistan.  

There is a special memorial there for service dogs that have been killed on duty.  The whole area is a memorable tribute.