Out and about around Innisfail

Innisfail has been a real surprise, I expected it to quite a dusty cowboy type town probably similar to Cloncurry but it has been a really pleasant surprise. The Johnstone River that runs through the town gives it quite a cool and coastal feel.  We mentioned the lovely river to a shop assistant and was told very quickly and in no uncertain terms that it was full of crocs and not to swim in it.  As if?????  There are signs everywhere warning of crocs!!!!!  There is an abundance of water around the northern areas of Queensland, but none of it has tempted me so far, Crocs, Stinger, Irudkandji, too scary to think about.

The town itself had a wonderful mixture of buildings and many of them a really well preserved, I think they may be mostly Art Deco, but my architectural knowledge is fairly scant.  The shire offices were beautiful inside with beautiful wooden doors, lead light windows and an amazing tessellated floor.


The fire station and St Johns Ambulance buildings were really well preserved.

We picked up some prawns for Des' lunch and some fish for dinner, our fishing rods have not been off the roof rack since we left Espy and then had a picnic overlooking the river for lunch.

After a really good walk around and the completing the most boring task eva - grocery shopping we headed back to Babinda where we are camped up amongst the banana trees and sugar cane. The camp is really pretty and situated on the side of the Babinda River, it has toilets and showers, grass and plenty of shade and all for a donation.  Your only supposed to stay for 72 hours, but we're bucking the system and extending our stay - along with many other campers.

On the way home we popped into see Josephine Fall which we thought was really lovely but I believe they are much more dramatic during and just after the wet season.  Again there were quite a lot of people swimming, mainly backpackers.

After such an exhausting day it was back to the van at top speed as we were late for happy hour!!!!

Over the Top

We finally made it Over The Top to Queensland via Birdsville and we are just loving the change in environment.  I think we have gone a bit banana's and a bit OTT with buying fresh bananas straight off the tree on the roadside stalls.