2020 Far North Queensland
 

Atherton Weekend

2020 Far North Queensland
I have a very rough night. The primitive bed is awful, I think it is a left over from the goldrush days. I finish up moving into the bunk beside me and taking a sleeping pill. This morning we decide to move out and go to a proper motel (knowing that we will lose the $200 we have paid in advance for the next two nights). Jenni looks on Google maps and finds two motels reasonably close to Judy and Neil's. She examines both and decides to book us into this one, the Atherton Hinterland Motel. She chooses a freshly renovated room at $140/night and books us in for the next two nights. We kiss $200 goodbye for the next two nights at the B&B. After booking the motel we go to Judy and Neil's where Judy has prepared a huge bacon/egg breakfast. "What do you want to do today Jordan?" Well, after last night's big surprise, Jordan decides that, in our honour, he'd like to spend the day at the skate park with his friends.
We pose for a few family photographs. This is Judy and Neil who have been Jordan's court-appointed foster family since he was fours years old. They are totally wonderful people who love and care for him. It's not easy for them to raise a teenage boy but Jordan is turning into a wonderful human being. We support Judy and Neil totally and they are grateful for our support. In practical terms, it means all of the political crap that has accompanied their stewardship so far, has disappeared/is disappearing. I think the next time we see Jordan, he'll be taller than me. Jenni looks like a midget between us. Judy and Neil are Kiwis. Judy is 70 and a few years older than Neil. Neil has failed kidneys and needs dialysis a couple days each week but he's quite cheerful about it. Indeed, he's a very cheerful bloke anyway. He loves Jordan and Jordan responds equally.
We drop Jordan off at the skate park and go into Atherton village to look for a coffee. There are no traffic lights in Atherton Village. The Council did this by making all streets connecting with the main street, Left Turn Only   entries. To continue your journey, simple, drive 100 metres along the main street, do a U turn and then turn left into your street. In practice this means it's better to avoid the village completely and to cross at either end of the village.
Atherton has a population of around 7500 and is at an elevation of 750 metres. This is is the Atherton Courthouse which was used as a wartime hospital for officers during World War II; it has air raid bunkers beneath the building. Atherton is 17.27° south which puts it a long way into the wet tropics. The land around Atherton is used to grow a variety of crops, including sugar cane, peanuts, mangoes, corn, potatoes, avocados, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries and macadamia nuts. Dairy and beef cattle are also reared in the area. The Grand Hotel has seen better days and could use a coat of paint. It is a backpackers hotel Built in 1936 and is up for sale for the first time since 1994. This is a 1938 Pontiac. How do I know this? Dennis Percival's dad had one and there's a 38 on the number plate.
Atherton is very attractive to retirees and "tree changers" due to the cool climate, fertile garden soils, housing prices significantly lower than the nearby coastal city of Cairns, and the vibrant cultural life (live music, visual arts, theatre and sport). Property prices here make you weep. $350,000 (or offer) for the one on the left and $285,000 for the one on the right (with a 1092 M² block). Now, about that coffee; all the coffee shops are shut either because it's Saturday afternoon or because of Covid. We pick Jordan up from the skate park and drop him off at home. We then drive out of town a short distance to the Yungaburra Platypus Viewing platform. With typical human arrogance, we assume that the platform is there so that we can view the Platypus in their native environment. But the reality is different, it's so that the platypus can view humans in their native environment - and they remain hidden while observing our curious mating rituals as they do so.
We go into the historic village of Yungaburra but still no coffee although Jenni manages to find an ice cream shop. What strikes you if you're from the South or the dry tropics is that the trees are different. I don't know what these trees are but I know what they aren't: they're not eucalypts. It's great that the original buildings still survive and people still run businesses from them. Who needs supermarkets? Looking back at the Yungaburra historic village. This area used to be a Mabi forest; more on that later.
All of this grass land was once like the tree-covered mountains in the distance; a tropical rain forest or probably a Mabi forest. The soil is predominantly derived from basalt which covers 56% of the tablelands area. Basaltic soils are reminders that this area has a volcanic past. And here's a reminder of why this area is what it is: the remains of a saw mill. There are two steam boilers on the site. This is the remains of a large electrical generator driven by one steam engine while the other boiler drives the saw mill equipment. I know I'm critical of previous generations of settlers and early pioneering families who destroyed a resource that my generation could be enjoying. But . . . the thought occurs to me that my generation is doing nothing about climate change and is wilfully ignoring the effect that it will have on our own future generations. We are every bit as solipsistic and wilfully ignorant as those who preceded us.
The Federal Government banned logging of tropical forests in 1988. Another way of reading this that the Government banned logging ONLY in 1988. I imagine that, at the time, arguments raged about the "loss of jobs", the usual tactic used to terrify governments. But 32 years later those jobs are gone and so is the Mabi forest. This is interesting; the tree has grown around the milling equipment in the years since this operation closed. I assume this large iron wheel drove the sawing and milling equipment. We then visit the Curtain Fig National Park and see this fascinating road sign.
This small area is a National Park and it's easy to imagine how the whole of Yungaburra was once a Mabi forest and looked like this. We walk towards the Curtain Fig and we're impressed by how easy Queensland makes it for you to visit attractions like this; a person in a wheel chair can still enjoy it the same as any other person. This is a Mabi Forest, a type of rainforest that occurs in North Queensland. It is found in small patches on the Atherton Tablelands, between the towns of Atherton, Kairi, Yungaburra and Malanda, with a remnant patch also located at Shiptons Flat, near Cooktown. The Curtain Fig Tree is one kilometre north of the town of Yungaburra, in the Curtain Fig National Park within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.
The vegetation type indigenous to the area is Mabi rainforest (complex notophyll vine forest) which is now classified as endangered. Note: notophyll = medium sized leaves, 7.5-12.5cm long And there it is and it's huge. The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service estimates the tree to be at least 500 years old. Its curtain of aerial roots drops 15 metres to the ground. The Curtain Fig Tree is of the strangler fig species Ficus virens . Normally these figs germinate on top of another tree and grow roots into the ground after which the fig then grows vigorously, killing the host tree. In this case, the host tree tilted towards a neighbouring tree and the fig grew around it. Although these figs kill their hosts, they are an epiphyte that feeds from the ground unlike a parasitic plant that feeds from the sap of the host tree. The tree is approximately 50 metres high with a trunk circumference of 39 metres. The canopy extends in a radius of approximately 30 metres from the trunk of the tree and is directly over our heads from where we stand.
The story of this unique tree. A variety of plants and animals make their homes in Mabi Forest, including the nationally threatened Large-eared Horseshoe Bat and Spectacled Flying-fox. Other species, such as the Musky Rat-kangaroo and the nationally endangered Southern Cassowary, used to occur in Mabi Forest. However, the remaining patches of Mabi Forest are too small for these animals to survive in, and so the Musky Rat-kangaroo and Southern Cassowary have become locally extinct. This makes me want to puke. Our next stop is Halloran's Hill Conservation Park, the highest spot in Atherton. Halloran's Hill is an extinct volcanic cone that is home to a eucalypt forest and a fragment of an endangered Mabi forest; it is very near Judy and Neil's place. We take movies from here as the scenery does not fit into a single picture At 5:30 we go back to Neal and Judy’s where Judy has prepared cheese & crackers and fruit. We collect Jordan and take him to the Barron Valley Hotel where he orders the most expensive thing on the menu: reef and beef at $45 a plate. I also order the reef and beef and Jenni has lamb cutlets. Jordan orders garlic bread and a huge bowl of sweet potato chips and eats the lot including Jenni's leftover chips as well. He’s a growing boy.
My Movie 8B 2029-07-13FNQld-6 2029-07-13FNQld-7 It's Sunday morning and I go into Atherton village to get some breakfast; nothing open except McDonald's and starvers can't be choosers. Our first stop is Gallo Chocolate and Cheese.
It's a "Fun for all the children" kind of place but I don't see what the fun is. Jordan agrees to spend part of the day with us provided we can get him back to the skate park by 14:00. "It is what it is" as a great leader once said. No cassowaries but plenty of imported stuff. We move hastily on. We head for Mt Hypipamee and, on the way, we travel over a single-track strip of bitumen down the centre with dirt edges. A large number of Queensland roads were like this years ago and it means that both vehicles have to head for the dirt to pass each other.
Mount Hypipamee National Park is within the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area (WTWHA). Proclaimed in 1988, the WTWHA extends for about 450 km between Cooktown and Townsville in an area of nearly 900,000 ha (9,000 m²). Vegetation includes tropical rainforest, open eucalypt forest, wetlands and mangrove forests. Mount Hypipamee NP has many inhabitants: common brushtail possum (in its coppery rainforest form), striped possums, smaller long-tailed pygmy possums, and gliders. Less often seen is Lumholtz's tree-kangaroo . Several different forest types are found in Mount Hypipamee National Park. As climatic conditions at this higher altitude (1100 metres) are wet and cool, the rainforest plant species around the car park and along the crater track are much the same as plants typically found in the sub-tropical rainforests of southern Queensland and New South Wales. The composition of this rainforest is also affected by soil type. On rich, red basaltic soils, near the bridge, the forest is particularly diverse. Where the track splits to Dinner Falls, the soils are derived from granite, resulting in plants with more uniform trunk sizes and smaller leaves.
Towards the crater, the forest opens up and the nearby ridge is dominated by wet sclerophyll forest — an ecotonal forest between rainforest and the dry open woodland of the drier country to the west. Note 1: Wet sclerophyll forest is characterised by very tall eucalypt trees (and their close relatives) which form the upper canopy layer. The trunks of these trees tend to be straighter than those of other eucalypts, and their leafy parts are often concentrated in the top third of the tree. Note 2: Ecotone, a transitional area of vegetation between two different plant communities, such as forest and grassland I could not find the age of the diatreme itself but Atherton Volcanic Province puts volcanic activity in this area to have occurred over the period 200,000 years ago to 10,000 ya. This means that Australian aboriginal peoples have witnessed these eruptions over much of its active period. This sign overlooking the crater explains how this diatreme (the only one in Queensland) was formed.
The crater is a huge 61 metres in diameter and 82 metres deep. The viewing platform is 50 metres above the water. Jordan is extremely interested in the geologic forces that created this diatreme; well, maybe quite interested, a bit interested? anyway, not totally uninterested. Jordan and I spend a lot of time looking for rocks near the crater but we can't find any (presumably they have all been thrown into the water, our purpose of course). Later, down the track to the waterfall he finds several throwing size rocks. I get him to bang two rocks together to spit one open so that we can see the granitic structure inside. He seems to be quite interested in this.
We follow the path down that leads to the Barron River Falls. These useless, horrible birds not only infest our National Parks at Mount Colah but even up here 2500 kms away. My Movie 8A We then go into nearby Herberton and have lunch. Herberton is another quaint village on the tablelands that, at its peak, was the richest tin mining field in Australia. It was home to 17 public hotels, 2 local newspapers and a brewery - all of the essentials of life.
There is a Mining Museum here and I assure Jordan that it is a tremendously exciting experience to see cabinets full of rocks and some black and white photographs. He does not share my enthusiasm. When we finish lunch (Jordan eats as though he is at the last supper), we drop him off at the skate park as promised. For the rest of the afternoon, we decide to explore the Atherton area. There are many interesting things to see here provided you're not a 14 year old boy. Our first stop is Lake Eacham, a popular lake of volcanic origin 20 kms east of Atherton. Lake Eacham (Yidyam) is the main feature of the 4.89 km² Crater Lakes National Park , along with a dense rainforest and thousands of small animals. It is a protected area under Queensland State legislation and is managed by the Queensland National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Crater Lake is part of the Atherton volcanic province which covers an area of 1800 km2. The province contains 52 eruptive centers, including small lava shields, cinder cones, maars, and one diatreme at Mt Hypipamee. The maars, the only ones in Northern Queensland, range in age from 200,000 to 10,000 years before present. Reference Atherton Volcanic Province A maar is a broad, low-relief volcanic crater caused by a volcanic eruption in which both gases and steam from groundwater are expelled. A maar characteristically fills with water to form a relatively shallow crater lake. Craters are formed by the outward explosion of rocks and other materials from a volcano (Calderas are formed by the inward collapse of a volcano). Craters are usually more circular than calderas. I've never seen a sign like this before. Shield volcanoes are formed by lava flows of low viscosity - lava that flows easily. Consequently, a volcanic mountain having a broad profile is built up over time by flow after flow of relatively fluid basaltic lava issuing from vents or fissures on the surface of the volcano. It is named for its low profile which resembles a warrior's shield.
Once again, we marvel how Queensland parks cater to the needs of the disabled. "Lake Eacham (Yidyam) was formed over 9,130 years ago when molten magma from the Earth's mantle rose to the surface and heated the water table. The steam that resulted from the boiling water was trapped underground, until massive explosions signalled its release. Huge cracks appeared in the ground and the trees that once grew on the mountainside were levelled and burnt. Eventually, after the eruptions ceased, groundwater filled the crater and the trees grew back creating the tranquil lake we see here today." The nearby Lake Barrine formed in a similar way, over 17,300 years ago. There are no streams that flow into or out the lake. Water is lost only through soakage and evaporation and replenished only through rainfall. The level of Crater Lake can fluctuate up to 4 metres between wet and dry seasons.
Jenni ventures onto the pontoon. Local lads use this as a diving platform. The viewing platform to see the turtles is on the upper left. How Queensland was born - Lake Eacham Crater. Information from Queensland Wet Tropics Management Authority Evolution in all its majesty. As cold-blooded animals, when the temperature drops in the winter, a turtle’s internal temperature drops with it, and its metabolism slows down to match. While they are in this slowed-metabolism hibernation period, their oxygen needs are quite low, and the oxygen diffused from the water running over them is enough to sustain them until spring. We then visit Lake Tinaroo. Tinaroo Dam was constructed in 1952 when the Barron River was dammed to supply irrigation water to farming areas of the Atherton Tablelands.
We had visited the headwaters of the Barron River just a few hours ago at Mount Hypipamee. This is mega boring so we leave. Dam the river, use the water rather than let it escape into the sea. No argument, but why decimate the natural forest that once grew in this area? This print adorns the wall of our motel room. The painting, called "The kite flyers", is by Australian artist d'Arcy W Doyle (1932 – 2001) and it reflects rural Australian life circa 1920. Mr Doyle was a painter of Australian landscapes and historical scenes; he was self taught. 2029-07-13FNQld-9
Our intention this Sunday evening is to buy dinner for Judy, Neil and Jordan as a thank-you for their hospitality. We wander the cold lonely streets of Atherton and find that, to our horror, Domino's Pizza and MacDonalds are the only places open. In the end it doesn't matter, it's the thought that counts, and we have a very sociable dinner at Judy & Neil's place.    
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