Day 23- Innisfail

backdated! and no reception here so will do photos later...

Did the big waterfall drive around Millaa Millaa today. We all piled into Dad’s 4WD to make it easier over the mountain range. Beautiful countryside through here, really amazing. There is still sugarcane everywhere but also lots of papaya and banana covered hillsides. And we are back to dairy cow country!

We called into the Mungalli Creek Cheese factory for morning tea. It could quite possibly have been for lunch cos we were there at 11:30 but I did not want to fill up on ‘real’ food when there were so many nice looking cakes to try. And I was only saying to Mum yesterday that I thought I was due for a proper nice coffee from somewhere (we were even going to head to McCafe for afternoon tea just for their coffee and cake!) so we figured we’d treat ourselves. We also had a free cheese and yoghurt tasting which was really, really nice! Some quite different cheeses like herb and paprika quark (like ricotta) and a delicious feta, and incredibly good passionfruit greek yoghurt. And not expensive either. I settled for a bottle of REAL organic biodynamic milk. The kind of milk that you have to shake before you drink it cos the cream rises to the top. I’ll admit it is not as creamy as I had hoped (like the milk fresh from the farm at Dorrigo) but it’s still pretty good.

We headed off to the waterfall circuit after that. Saw some beautiful scenery. There are probably a dozen really big waterfalls in the area but we chose three to look at; Ellijaa, Zillie, and Millaa Millaa falls. Ellijaa falls had just a small waterhole at the bottom but quite a big drop so there was a lot of force in the falls. The bottom of the falls was soooo windy that it was hard to swim in under the waterfall to the little ledge in behind the water but it was worth the effort. I took Jordy in with me and he was pretty happy to swim in the water (but kept complaining about the cold!) but I think the noise or the wind of the falls may have scared him cos once we got under the water he just yelled to go back to Grandma and Grandpa on the bank. So we did.

Next one was Zillie. A HUGE drop and only visible from a walkway and lookout from above. No swimming here! But we saw a massive spider that was just hanging over our heads before we noticed it. Freaky huge thing.
Last of all we stopped for a picnic lunch at Millaa Millaa falls. Even though it is not even close to tourist season and we have seen virtually noone around the place Millaa Millaa falls was packed with tourists. I can’t imagine how busy it will be there in a couple of months. Although the water was a little cool so maybe over winter it is too cold to swim in…?? There was a really large swimming hole and the entire back of the falls is all rock ledge where you can sit behind and look up through the back of the fall. It was really beautiful with the sun sparkling through the water. I wish I had of had a waterproof camera to take with me. Jordy had said he did not want to swim this time so I went in by myself (everyone else was just too wimpy) but once he saw me in the water he wanted to come in too. So we had a bit of a splash and swim over to the other side of the little lake (but not under the falls this time).



I had to include this photo for Tim… not really sure what the statue designers had in mind.

On the way home we called in to the camp spot at Henrietta Creek that we had thought about camping at. It was really nice! We needed the caravan park for a few days so no point having regrets but it would have been a lovely spot to stay. From there we drove on to the Crawfords Lookout (right on the road). Massive drop! Hard to believe that we were driving that close to the edge of such a big drop. There is a canopy walk called Ma:Mu rainforest walk that goes out along the edge of the mountainside but at $20 a person we decided against it (we’ve all done the Dorrigo one more than once so it would be nothing all that different).

Back home in time for another load of washing and a quick dinner of ham and cheese quiche pie thing in the microwave. Surprisingly yummy! The boys both went to bed at 7:30 and I fell asleep putting Darcy to bed and Tim fell asleep putting Jordy to bed and that was the end of it! I got up at 10:30 when it started to rain and I realized we had not bought the clothes in or wound the windows up on the truck, but I was straight back to bed.

We both certainly needed the sleep. I have to say that even though we are not working I have never been so tired! We never seem to have time to just sit down for 5minutes. It’s always go, go, go. But it is nice to be busy living rather than busy working.