12 October 2011 Forty Mile Scrub National Park, west of Mt Garnet, Queensland.

We have just moved outside the caravan as the sun sets, to once more brave the small flies and sundry bugs that drove us inside earlier. The temperature has dropped from a warm 37 degrees, but then so has the breeze dropped. I am being acclimatised; live and breathe and enjoy the heat, preaches my husband.

Our departure from Atherton was without event this morning, and we soon found ourselves at Herberton, after climbing over the Herberton Range, in first gear more often that not. Herberton is an old mining town spread along a dry valley looking much as it did one hundred years ago, I would think. There is a heritage museum there that is much acclaimed, however both Chris and I feel we are rather heritage museumed out for now. We paused to buy The Australian and were annoyed to find the price has gone up by 20 cents, something we had not noticed yesterday when it was purchased with the groceries. How very sneaky of the publishers!

To digress, but staying with The Australian, I read just yesterday that wild fires had been burning out of control up near Walkamin, just north of our War Memorial Park stayed at a few days ago. It was smoke from this that disrupted the All Black’s annihilation of Argentina on Sunday afternoon.

The road through to Ravenshoe (pronounced Ravens-hoe not Raven-shoe as Chris and I have been saying while planning our route) was through beautiful farmland, much of it planted in crops, including potatoes. At one point of the trip, we were stopped by police to pull well off the road to let a large truck with an even larger load through, a piece of mining machinery as we had encountered on the Bruce Highway when travelling northwards now many months ago, but here the road was much narrower. The route we took through to Ravenshoe is apparently the highest in Queensland, the summit at 1,143 metres, and so it is no surprise that the town is Queensland’s highest at 920 metres ASL. You might be excused by thinking that there one might enjoy alpine temperatures as one walks about the streets in the bright sunshine, however this is definitely not so. The temperatures on the television weather report for Mareeba over the last few days have been at 37 degrees and I would say that this is fairly standard for the whole area.

Ravenshoe, has a population of about 1,000 and once upon a time was heavily involved in the timber industry. In 1988 the area was World Heritage listed and has become increasingly a tourist destination. We did not find it to be a very inspiring town, however the people we spoke to were all very friendly and helpful, and I am sure it has a wonderful community spirit. It seems also that once World Heritage status is achieved, all modernity is abandoned and the place becomes locked in a time capsule.

The Millstream Falls

There is a steam train that operates from Ravenshoe on part of the remaining railway line back to Tumoulin, which we had passed in getting there.  The station and all the paraphernalia that goes with rail enthusiasm is all here for the tourist, however we decided to give it a miss, at least for today. We left after buying cream buns to go with our lunch and a resolve that we would start our more regulated food intake tomorrow (the need for this being the over indulgence during our month of being so hospitably wined and dined in New Zealand).

We drove on to the Millstream Falls National Park and walked down to see the widest single drop falls in Australia. While they are only 13 metres high, they are very pretty, falling over layers of black basalt, residue of former volcanic activity.

Back up to the car park, we did another walk around an area once busy with military might, well marked with explanations.

This whole matter of the military activity throughout this area has fascinated me and up until now, not been satisfactorily explained. The panel at the start of the walk explained clearly and concisely as set out here:

In 1942, the Commander in Chief of the Australian Military Forces, General Sir Thomas Blamey, decided that he would use the Atherton and Evelyn tablelands as a base for rehabilitating and training troops. The area was close to the battle fields of Papua New Guinea and the climate would give the troops respite from the tropical heat of the coast. The tablelands also provided training areas with environments similar to that of South East Asia. During 1943 troops began arriving at bases established on the tablelands.

At any one time, up to 100,000 troops in 320 army and ancillary units were based on the tablelands across 160 sites. Today, the remains found here are the most complete: tent sites, walking tracks, drains, concrete slabs, trenches, training areas. corduroy roads, a flag pole site and training and parade grounds are clearly evident.

It struck me that conservation for  historical purposes is quite an interesting problem. Here at the end of the war, much of the building and plant was removed to return the area back to its original state, as miners now do with rehabilitation of the land. In doing so, the evidence and the stories of the past are lost and yet I am the first to scoff at the exhibition of middens all around the place which are essentially just rubbish tips.

We lunched in the cool confines of the caravan, then headed off south west on the Kennedy Highway, passing a rest area near the Innot Hot Springs we had considered to be the day’s  destination, the afternoon still young and the air conditioning of the land cruiser very attractive. We carried on, through Mount Garnet to this rest area here on the edge of the Forty Mile Scrub National Park.

The reserve or National Park is just a tiny pocket of Dry Tropical Rain Forest in a midst of open eucalypt woodlands, of the kind we had been travelling through since we left Ravenshoe. When we arrived there were three road trains parked and taking up most of the car park space, detracting from the charm of the place. We walked the small loop track by which time the trucks had gone and we decided that we would stay on here after all. The trucks have continued to rumble on by, but are lessening in number as the day closes. I suspect they will be on the road again early in the morning, and so our day will start accordingly.