Ingham – Tyto Wetlands
Beautiful birds and more Kangaroos at Tyto Wetlands in Ingham
We stayed for one night in Ingham, beside the Tyto Wetlands. If you’re ever up here it’s a must do. They reckon there are about 230 bird species here – however we’ve only seen a handful. There is also an abundance of crocodile warning signs. So, we made sure to stay away from the water.
Ingham also has a great Italian Deli supermarket (Lou’s deli) with olives, cheese, sausages and a huge variety of pasta. Unfortunately, Casa Pasta, recommended by Monica was closed due to the public holiday but the fresh pasta from Lou’s was as delicious as their coffee!
Sugar – Tully
Between northern NSW and up past Cairns there are about 6000 Cane growers and 26 Sugar mills. Australia is the 2nd biggest sugar exporter in the World after Brazil. We have seen a lot of sugar cane on our travels so far. Those fields seem to go on forever. Beside the roads you also see the sugar cane rail tracks, a network that is apparently 4000km long. The sugar cane harvest is just about to start, so we haven’t seen any harvesting or filled sugar trains, however they seem to get ready and to put the empty trains into the fields. To get the most sugar extracted out of the cane the freshly cut sugar cane has to be processed in the factory within 16 hours.
Australia has several sugar bulk storage facilities and terminals to ship sugar to the rest of the world (mostly Asia). One of those terminals is in Lucinda just east of Tully. With 5.6km it is the longest Jetty in the southern hemisphere. It just seems to go on forever and you can barely make out the terminal in the far distance.
Sugar Cane needs a lot of water – apparently 30% of the production cost is for irrigation. So no wonder a lot of the cane is grown in high rainfall areas. Tully’s highest rainfall was in 1950 with 7.93m!! They’ve built a giant gumboot exactly that height. Impressive to think that so much water can fall in a single year.
The cane cutter way – Paronella Park
Tully is also the start of the World Heritage listed ‘Wet Tropics Rainforest’ and as I write this it’s raining heavily outside (despite visiting during the ‘Dry season’). We’ve visited dense rainforests, stunning waterfalls and great swimming holes.
Paronella Park shows the remains of Jose Paronella’s dream castle built in the 1930. It’s now a strange set up of rainforest-covered ruins with waterfalls, fountains and parks. Flooding, cyclones and fire have destroyed a lot of what once was a stunning park – said to be the first ‘Themepark” in Australia. After a fire destroyed the main ballroom the whole park got abandoned until a new owner bought the place in the 90’s. They are now working hard to restore it to some of its former glory and to continue Jose’s dream.
Since it was still raining, we drove off after breakfast and picked up some “fresh” bananas for $1.50 per kilo at a road stall in Innisfail. The next stop was Josephine Falls - the rain didn’t stop but we still walked the 600 m to the viewing platforms. We decided to drive a bit further to ‘The Boulders” just off Babinda. What a difference to Bowen. A big free RV parking area with toilet and a dump point in Babinda, big parking lots for RVs with a toilet block and cold showers with 72h stay for free right at The Boulders. And what stunning views: enormous rock formations, rounded and smooth from thousands of years of running water, rock pools and swirls… what a shame that the weather is not the best to captures this in our pictures - and there’s even a playground here for Sarah :-)
