The Atherton Tablelands

"In contrast to all other places so far, the Tablelands haven't changed that much since I was there in 2000. Except for kuranda, which just keeps getting worse.

We stayed in atherton at the Blue Gum B&B, which was OK. Spacious room with an attached living room / kitchenette and verandah in front. Nice host, quiet, comfortable and clean. Two little points of criticism: why not put fly screens on the two Windows in the living room as well? And then the breakfast isn't much to write home about, I'm afraid. But hey, we came for the hiking in the national parks all around and that was great.

A couple other places worth mentioning: coffeworks mareeba, nice cakes and shakes. Mungalli Creek dairy, lovely scones and cheese cake, the yoghurt is OK, too sweet methinks, BUT guys, you gotta watch your best before date. We bought this expensive yoghurt from your fridge and only noticed that it was three days past its best before date when we got home. It was still good and we ate it of course, but that's unprofessional and mustn't happen. Khan's curries, the usual inexpensive curries, decent aussie-indian fare. I would have loved to try few places more, but they tend to start closing up at 1pm so hey, I took my business elsewhere. The lake barrine teahouse, beautiful setting, yes, and the scones were very good. But the presentation wasn't, I'd have preferred jam and cream separate instead of already on the scones. On the road to tolga is the humpy, a roadside stand selling fruit and nuts, good stuff and the fruit is cheaper and better than at Woolworth's. But the award to best cafe in the area goes to: the Millaa Café, can't remember the exact name, but there's only one, can't miss it on the right hand side when entering Millaa Millaa. They had fantastic apple pie and also the best WiFi in the whole region. Another nice cafe was the coffee works place in Mareeba, ok but not exceptional.

We did see and do some stuff besides eating of course. The Butterfly Sanctuary is the only reason to go to kuranda and well worth it if you like butterflies and make sure there's no bus tour around when you enter. Btw, WiFi is free and doesn't work, just like at the atherton iSite.  Did some hiking in Davies Ck national park and Dinbin NP, the Barron Gorge, Nandroya Falls in Wooroonooran NP are very pretty, nice and easy walk. We couldn't get to the other two falls along the track in the other direction from the Henrietta Ck campsite because there were wild pigs on the way shortly before the first fall and we did the smart thing and turned back. The highlight was the hike up to the top of Walsh's Pyramid though, 922 meters elevation gain on 3,3km. Pretty much straight up, nice leg stretcher.