22 June 2014

Today started reasonably early given that there was little sleeping done last night, so I was on the road by 7am. One of the fellows at the hostel last night obviously thought he was Sheldon from "Big Bang" and obviously had a thing for the lass in the room next to mine, only he would not only just knock three times, it would take at least thirty before he gave up each time, all night, shame she was out with another fellow though. Anyway Cooktown was well behind before too long and back through the ranges and onward, to be honest there was not a whole lot to tell it was basically driving all day. I was originally thinking I would stop at Atherton, though I was there before lunch time so I just pressed on, finally stopping for the day at about 1630 at Mount Surprise. Oh and the reason for not posting this yesterday, well there was not Optus service at Mt Surprise (mind Telstra was stomping at full power) and as such I could not get telephone or internet.

Anyway, pitcures:

Firstly: Mount Molloy, very quiet but nice little place, had a bit of a walk around and it was very tidy and very quiet.

Then it was back through Mareeba, and on to Atherton, really nice place and lots of rainforest around it. It seems to be a popular area for mountain cycling and it really is a lot bigger that I expected it to be, really quite a regional hub, with long and impressive main street, shops down both sides of a divided and different level road. Actually thinking about it, it must be a reasonable size town as it even has a Bunnings and a McDonalds and they won't open anywhere there isn't a market to sell to.

Look a town where the main street is actually called Main Street

From here it was on to Ravenshoe for a look and here again is another really tidy well kept country town of a reasonable size, actually all of these North Queensland country towns well kept and look really inviting.

The town has a really good steam train group keeping this fine machine running

Finally it was pushing on another 170km to end up at Mt Surprise. Yet another neat little town, though little is the word, a Pub, two Caravan Parks, two Fuel stations, a cafe and a railway station, oh and no Optus service at all. Actually to be fair, there is no Optus service at all from Atherton to Normanton (613km), fairly vast area where the only option for the locals is Telstra.

 Main street (well the highway) looking east

Normanton and Karumba is next