Town Councils that go the Extra Mile

The author's car and caravan at front

Like any organisation, town and city councils are only as good as the people who work there and members of the public who contribute. Burdekin Shire Council obviously has staff who dreamed up a unique idea that appealed to us and dozens of other grey nomad travellers and was probably done with a view to helping local shopkeepers, publicans etc increase their sales.

Caravans as far as the eye can see

You see, caravanners like to free camp occasionally. That is, instead of paying $30-$45 or more per night to stay in a caravan park, we like to pull up somewhere near a toilet block where we can stay for one or two nights at no cost. Across the country there are probably thousands of such places, but I haven't seen one as well planned as that at Home Hill, Queensland.

Home Hill's main street is on the Bruce Highway, the main highway servicing Queensland between Brisbane and Cairns and perhaps farther north. Running parallel with the Bruce Highway, two streets west is a long, wide, nicely bitumenised road along which the council encourages travellers to park and stay for up to two nights. The encouragement comes in the shape of a well designed, attractive, comfort stop building with toilets, showers, a free electric barbecue and tables and bench seats. It's all very well done and immaculately clean and maintained.

Caravans and RVs line half the street

The only undesirable feature is that a railway line also runs parallel with the free camping street and while we were there, a few trains rumbled by late at night, making a great noise ... one with sparks flying out from the wheels, which was entertaining. However, when you sleep at free camp spots they are often near main roads and other places where there is traffic, so you become accustomed to not taking much notice. You can't really complain when it's free eh?

We contributed to the town shopkeepers' wealth by having a couple of beers at an hotel and buying some groceries from the local supermarket. No doubt the dozens of other free campers would also have contributed to some extent buying fuel or other goods.

The Burdekin Shire Council is to be congratulated for having the initiative to dream up such a scheme that helps thousands of travellers per year and also brings sales for local shopkeepers. I've emailed them to congratulate them on such an innovative and excellent effort.

Many other town councils should follow this example, perhaps even the Alice Springs Town Council, where I live.

Robin

Barron Falls, Kuranda and the Scenic Railway

Far North Queensland, as the locals call it, is a tourist magnet with dozens of beautiful, sunny places to visit. One of the most popular is Kuranda in the Barron Falls National Park which I believe is on the tail end of the Great Dividing Range. (I stand corrected).

Kuranda is accessible by road, but many tourists prefer to use the Scenic Railway and Skyway, the latter of which provides a gondola trip through the top of the rain forest. Tickets provide for a return trip using both media either up or down ie, take the Skyway up to Kuranda and return via Kuranda Scenic Railway or vice versa.

Barron Falls

Preying Mantis Statue

Enroute to Kuranda is the Barron Falls which at the time of year we visited (late Winter) was down to a trickle, but still looked outstanding. Barron Falls has a railway station to which one can walk via a well designed and constructed walkway with several lookouts into the falls and local rain forest. Along parts of the walkway are bronze statues of some of the wildlife found in the national park.

Train Entering Station

When the scenic train winds its way to Barron Falls station, people properly situated can see both the train engine and the tail end carriages. Always a novelty.

Kuranda is a smaller township with a moderately "Hippy" marketplace built into the side of a hill on several benches. Shops sell the usual multi-coloured clothing, cheap jewellery, ice cream, other foodstuffs and from memory, I think you can have your chakra balanced, get a Thai massage or have your palms read if you are so inclined. The people at the market, and indeed, all over Kuranda are friendly and accommodating.

In the town itself is a police station (it must be the most comfortable posting in Queensland, if not the prettiest) and numerous shops selling clothing, pharmaceutical supplies, various massage therapies, and art and trinkets to tourists. There are only so many fridge magnets, caps or pens you can have in one lifetime, so we never bought any of the branded tourist wares.

We'd been on the scenic railroad and skyway previously, so this trip decided to drive up and back and take in some of the sites not usually seen from either of the previous eg, those from the walk to Barron Falls. The walk is pleasant and not too demanding and as with many of these type public facilities, seems to have been designed to include people in wheel chairs or who can not traverse stairs.

There's nothing much at the Barron Falls railway station but a few bench seats. At the time we were there the downwards train just happened to pass, so I managed to get a few photographs of it before we headed back to Kuranda along the return walkway.

The trips and visit to Kuranda are well worth doing if at any time you are visiting nearby Cairns.

Robin

The Amazing Daintree Discovery Centre

Christina outside the Daintree Discovery Centre

 As a young boy living at Tennant Creek in Central Australia, I was an habitual and invariable fossil collector. Most of the fossils I found were those of trilobites, one of the earliest creatures that had lived in the oceans 600 million years ago. It always enthralled me to know that at age 11 I was holding the fossilised image of something that had lived so much longer ago than I could imagine. And there were thousands of them spread from one end of the outback to the other, many fragmented, others whole.

Christina on the aerial walk

When I visited the Daintree Discovery Centre, I was astonished to know that the rain forest is estimated at 110 million years old, 40 million years older than the Amazon. Trees I touched and photographed had ancestors that evolved all that long ago - before we animals arrived - and lived inordinately long lives before dying, degrading and eventually returning to Mother Earth as is the destiny of all living things.

The Daintree Discovery Centre is a privately owned business that consists of a coffee, food and souvenirs shop with a ticket-selling desk included. It's just a short distance from parking near the main road.  After you buy your entrance ticket, you walk onto an above ground footway (the Daintree  Aerial Walk) that leads to a large interpretive centre and a huge Canopy Tower with several platforms on which you can sit and soak your senses in the peace, tranquillity and greenness of the forest

Tickets, even without a senior's concession are reasonably priced and come with a nicely produced A5 booklet with extensive information about the forest, it's trees, plants and vines, animal life including birds and the elusive cassowary. It has a special section with photos and explanatory text about those fruits, roots etc that the first Australians used before Caucasian, Asian and other African settlers arrived.

The ticket cost includes use of an audio device to listen to descriptions of the different aspects of the forest as you wander around. Each point of interest is numbered and you simply press the number on the audio device and hold it near your ear for the description. The devices have six or seven different language options.

Just the forest

There were far more tourists than birds and hardly any other animal life at all excluding two small skink lizards that scurried across the pathway in front us. Many of the forest inhabitants are, of course, nocturnal and hide during the day, but the absence of birds was disappointing . The most obvious creatures we spotted were butterflies while we were at the top of the tower in the canopy where they can find sunlight. They flitted about but didn't sit long enough to identify their type or to get a decent photo of them.

The Daintree Discovery Centre is only 20-30 km from the Pinnacle Village Caravan Park, Wonga Beach where we stayed. The drive through rain forest is very pleasant and one needs to take a short ferry ride across the Daintree River that costs $13 AUD each way. We returned late afternoon. I don't know about you, but I can only take in so much awe inspiring beauty in a day, so I was pleased to return to the Pinnacles to shower, have dinner and take it easy for the rest of the evening.

The Daintree Discovery Centre, Aerial Walk and Canopy Tower should have a place on everyone's Bucket List. I've added it to mine and ticked it off.

Robin