Day Ten: Around Yungaburra
The day opened to be a stunner. A coolish sun rising over a glassy lake. It doesn’t get much better.
Peter was up first to head into Atherton to see a physio as his shoulder pain was at best an annoyance and at worst equal to an undiagnosed grade three man flu.
Physio visit done, with some immediate improvement noticed, Peter headed back to camp to find Ron’s waterworks had backed up badly. Truth is, Ron had just forgotten to turn the grey water tap on so the addition of washing water, shower water and whatever else water had overflowed the tank and caused it to back up the line into the vanity. Quickly fixed, the van was back on track and the world could rest easy again.
We finally got ourselves tourist ready and headed out to visit the Lake Barrine tea house on the shores of an oversized dam of the same name. The scones, pumpkin damper, tea and coffee were all great, yet the grumpy lady serving still had cause to falsely accuse our gathering of a code four misdemeanour being changing the table numbers. We quietly reasoned she would probably need a bit more solid evidence to prosecute given her audience this day.
Tummies filled we motored off to Lake Eacham but a short drive away. This landmark was only slightly less impressive than its cousin with neither demanding a return visit in the next few decades. Further on we encountered the curtain fig. Now this attraction was worth every cent of the free admission. The story goes, two fig trees were growing close to one another. One fell onto the other, then a bit of inbreeding took place, so now they are one with the massive root system forming a curtain in the rain forest. Pretty impressive stuff.
Finally our visitations landed at the platypus viewing area just west of town. It is fair to say we stared at the water for long enough to entice any true blue platypus to pop their head up to say g’day, but today was not a day to be social. From our experience this spot will be known as the water viewing area.
Before heading back to camp we dropped into town and happened upon the Yungaburra corner store or something. This place was in a league of its own. In the one spot you could, get fuel, wine from the bottle shop, bait, and an infinite variety of other goods usually sold only in specialty stores. What a little gold mine.
Back at camp we started to think about preparing a feast for dinner as we had Denise and Richard’s friends, Bill and Marri-Anne coming over for dinner. In the interim G and Denise walked back from town dropping into the memorial recognising the sacrifice of our armed forces serving in Afghanistan. This was a beautiful way honour those who served.
Dinner was served as a veritable banquet of roast everything followed by lemon curd tarts and chocolate cake. It arrived just as the rain did, so we huddled a bit closer and had a wonderful evening talking travel and most other things accompanied by some very friendly Curlews.
Tomorrow we head for Chillagoe armed with wisdom of the ages.
