Tablelands With Uncle Brian's

Was picked up by the Uncle Brian's Waterfall bus as the first passenger. We drove around town and picked up more people. We were supposed to be 21 but 7 people either over slept or were stuck south of Tully, so we ended up being just 14, and apparently with an unusual concentration of guys, in fact it was 5 girls and 9 guys. Pretty strange to experience after being 17 girls and 3 guys for the past 2 weeks.
The bus was called Gus which made me think of Gus bus from the North Island of New Zealand. Brad our tour guide was a lot of fun in that classic Australian tour guide way, which means a lot of really bad jokes and inappropriate comments. Brad was however also very knowledgeable and informative.
First stop after leaving the Cairns was Babinda Boulders, here we did a short walk to look at some rapids down from the swimming hole and then we had some cake, biscuits, and juice before jumping into the water, and when I say jumping I mean jumping. We swam across the lake to some boulders and did, dives, bombs, flips, and other jumps.
After the swim we drove up the mountain to Josephine Falls, here it was prohibited to swim as the water levels were to high after all the rain the area had received during the past couple of weeks. However, during some rock hopping I was unfocused for a few seconds and didn't make it far enough between to big boulders. So I slid down the boulder on my stomach, landed beautifully between 3 boulders in the water and got myself out of the rapids before I was swept away. Other than two very small cuts I escaped completely uninjured.
We went and had an included lunch in a small B & B, it was simple food, but really good. On the way we played a few games, such as pass the pastil between matchsticks in our mouth, and we were surprisingly good.
Next on the agenda was Millaa Millaa falls, here we went for a swim, and the best part was we could go behind the fall and swim through it.
Final stop was Lake Echam, which is a lake in a volcano so obviously we had to swim there as well, here we again did jumps, and there were hand rails running into the lake, which were the perfect waterslides.
Next we went to a hostel to change and then drive down the 262 curves down the mountain to Cairns, during this drive we sang along to songs and danced in our seats.Read more