You know you are in Australia when ………. you see a Kookaburra and a Kangaroo.  We saw several Kookaburras today and 2 kangaroos.  One kangaroo was hard to spot but the other one was conveniently close to the side of the road and then bounced away so we had a fantastic view of it.

Guess what?  It was sunny again today 🙂

I went down to the beach with Lara and Harvey at about 7:30 am and we did some really enjoyable exercise which I was going to blog about.  But we did so many other amazing things today, I will save that piece of info for another time or this post will be too long.

Having finished exercising, we had a drink in this cafe. We sat outside and I enjoyed a latte.  I can not think of a more perfect start to the day, than a coffee beside a beautiful beach on a sunny day with my favourite people. James had been busy collecting our hire car 🙂  We have wheels – yippee 🙂 Road trip, road trip!

I had a quick plate of fresh fruit and we set off to the Tablelands, which are South and West of Cairns. We were visiting the Southern Tablelands today and it was quite a long drive so we stopped for something to eat in a town called Babinda.  We went in to the bakery.  This is a typical Australian bakery in a fairly typical town. Australians love their pies and they are nearly always filled with beef.  They are known as “mystery bags” as you can never be quite sure what is inside.  I am not a huge pie fan but there was very little choice.  It was a pie or baked white carbs.

Actually the lady behind the counter, who was incredibly friendly and helpful, believed she did have a huge choice of pies.  We could have had beef pie, or beef and pea pie or beef and mushroom pie or beef curry pie or beef chilli pie or beef with a potato topping.  There were probably about 20 varieties of beef pie.

Humph!  What can I have?  I spotted the “breaky pie” which was more like a mini flan with egg and bacon. Guess what it had inside?  Yes, you’ve guessed it – beef!  Tucked away at the bottom of the pie was minced beef.  It actually tasted OK but was much richer than I was hoping for. Babinda had a Post Office. We could finally post the cards I bought nearly a week ago!  Apologies to all my family with August birthdays as all the cards are late 😦

We were heading for the waterfall trail which takes you to about 8 different waterfalls, some of which you can swim in.  We saw a brown sign for “The Boulders” and decided to have a look.  We are so glad we did as it was the best thing we saw all day and a complete  surprise as we had not read about this beautiful place so it was totally unexpected.

We later realised we could have swum here but there were so many warning signs around, and no one else was swimming we didn’t want to risk it.

We walked along an easy trail in to the rainforest. See what I mean about the warning signs! It is the dry season here now so the river creek is very calm.  But judging by the size of the debris creating a virtual dam, it must get very lively here during the wet. The water drops down and crashes on to the huge boulders below.  The water sounds incredibly loud here. The land drops away suddenly and there is a huge pool below you.  Definitely NOT one to swim in. We continued walking, following the creek, getting deeper in to the rainforest.  It was so beautiful.  I love all the varied shapes of the foliage and all the different shades of green. This was the third of the lookouts and the view was stunning. Over many hundreds/thousands of years the water has smoothed the granite and cut channels through it. All around you and in the distance is the rainforest, which is teeming with life.  You can hear the birds and insects against the roar of the water.It was quite spectacular.
Hard to tear ourselves away. Back on the road and we drove along past miles of sugar cane fields and banana plantations.  We stopped at this roadside stall selling local produce. We saw lots of this bright pink plant which was in contrast to all the lush green vegetation. Australia is very expensive and we are having to watch what we spend so I was delighted to find this very reasonably priced stall.  We bought papayas, mangoes, rambutans, limes, bananas and avocadoes. Over the road was a carob tree.  It is so wonderful to see all these exotic plants growing  and so handy to have a husband who can identify them all for you 🙂 The pods look ready for picking to me. After many miles of sugar cane and bananas the land opened up and became more undulating. We had to make a detour to a Bio-Dynamic dairy and tea house.  We just had to! Oh, so that’s what a Bio-Dynamic cow looks like 🙂 It was early afternoon and so we stopped for lunch.  Lara and I could not decide what to have so we shared.  We had half each of this delicious spanakopita (Ricotta cheese and spinach in filo pastry) with salad. We sat on the deck, looking across the land where happy cows grazed and chickens pecked and scratched. We shared our main so we could indulge in a shared passion for a cream tea served with rainforest jam.  It was great. We bought yogurt, cheese and eggs to take away and left with an ice-cream.  Mine was Macadamia nut and it was quite superb. More beautiful scenery.  The day was racing by too fast and we hadn’t got to any of the waterfalls we wanted to see yet so we got a wriggle on. Millaa Millaa Falls.  Made famous by the Quantas Ad.  By the time we got here the sun was already dipping away and so it was not as bright as it could have been or as warm. I had wanted to swim here but it was too cold for me but not for the little fella!

The sun sets quickly here and we had a long journey back so rather then rush visiting the other water falls, we decided to head back to our hotel and come back another day. For BJ, Guy and Billy.  We wish you could be here with us to share this slab of VBs.  We got through a few of these didn’t we, back in the day? And to Abi as I know you were partial to them too.  We are thinking of you all.

Cheers!