Day 10
Summary: Explored Atherton Tablelands (Lake Eacham, Millaa Millaa Falls, and Josephine Falls), flew from Cairns to Sydney
Saturday, January 11th
Our last day of the Australian tour! In the morning, we checked out of the hostel but left our luggage in the office for the day. Then we hopped in a van and our tour guide drove us to three swimming spots in the Atherton Tablelands region.
On our way up the windy mountain roads, we stopped at Heales Outlook. It was a nice view but I was also very focused on not getting carsick (and succeeded in avoiding it)!
Our first stop was Lake Eacham, a crater lake created 9,000 years ago by an explosion of steam that was caused by underground boiling water.
Apparently, there is one freshwater crocodile that lives a bachelor lifestyle in the lake! Someone released him into the lake and there he remains, but causes no trouble. Freshwater crocodiles are much more timid than the aggressive and deadly saltwater crocodile. So you are perfectly safe to swim there as long as you don’t seek it out and disturb it. Our guide said he’s been to the lake many times and never even seen it. What caused the most trouble were the little fish that were nibbling the dead skin off of people’s feet as they swam!
Our next stop was Millaa Millaa Falls! The rainy season was only just beginning, so the waterfall was light on water, but it was still beautiful.
The water was freezing, but we got in and swam under the waterfall!
Our guide told us that years ago an Herbal Essences commercial was filmed here, so people who visit the falls will often do the famous hair flip photo.
Here’s mine! How’d I do?
Next, we stopped in a town to get some food for lunch and dinner. Greg and I shopped around the local grocery store and got a loaf of cheesy bread, pasta salad, strawberries and our favorite purple sweet potato chips. The pasta salad was a great idea until we realized we needed a fork! We went back to the deli counter to ask if they had any forks and they said no. We left the grocery store and walked to a cafe and they only had metal utensils. Greg checked in the Burger King with no luck. We kept walking and finally succeeded in McDonald’s. Phew! Then, we walked back towards the van and ate at a picnic table with some of the girls. We ate the pasta salad and some strawberries, but saved most of the rest of our loot for our dinner later.
After lunch, we drove to Josephine Falls which is an area with a natural water slide! The water was chilly, but worth it! Greg said he could have spent all day there. Our guide told us that it was deep enough that it was safe to go feet first, head first, whichever way you’d like. Since we were the honeymooners in the group, he suggested that Greg and I try a special duo move where I sit on top of Greg’s back and he slides down on his stomach. I was worried I would squish him and that he would crash his head into a rock or something, but he assured me he was fine, so we did it! I plugged my nose, but I barely went under the water because Greg’s body acted like a boogie board!
It was a crowd-pleaser so we did it a second time and also to get another video angle.
When our time at the falls was up, we drove back to Cairns, picked up our bags at the hostel, and we said our goodbyes as our guide dropped us off at various locations. We were dropped off at the Cairns airport with one other girl. We changed into non-damp clothes and distributed the items in our luggage so we had the proper weight in our carry-ons and checked bags. We ate some of the cheesy bread and strawberries for dinner and hung out with the girl until we had to say goodbye and board our separate flights.
Our flight departed at 6pm and landed in Sydney at 10pm, but it was only a 3-hour flight. When we were in Queensland, we were an hour behind Sydney because Queensland does not participate in daylight savings time. Since we were only traveling along the east coast of Australia, I didn’t realize that the times would be different, but it was no big deal.
We got a taxi from the airport to our hostel, Mad Monkey Backpackers. The after-hours guy at the desk showed us to our room and gave us a tour of the confusing layout of the building. The rooms and bathrooms were really nice though! We needed to do laundry, so Greg bought a tiny bag of detergent from the front desk and we spent a while navigating the website to pay for the machines online. We got it working and stayed up doing laundry until we could finally go to bed!
Thanks for reading!
-Rebecca
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