Hot Springs, Cloud, Drizzle & Lush Hills

We packed up and left Mount Surprise around 9.30 this morning heading for Innot Hot Springs as we move closer to Cairns.

Innot Hot Springs is a tiny town with three hot springs in Nettle River. There is a caravan park alongside the river where you can pay to swim in five different temperature pools, or you can do as we did, and simply walk to the river (which is quite low at this time of year) and find your own perfect temperature pool to lie in.

Some of the pools were boiling hot, and unfortunately Cadbury learnt this the hard way by accidentally falling into one of them. But further away from the source, the water cooled down enough to paddle in.

Gadi and Cadbury splashed around and I sat
In the shade taking photos and enjoying seeing clouds in the sky and feeling the first cool breeze in many weeks.

Eventually, we continued to the Atherton Tablelands where we decided on staying at a working farm not far from the town of Atherton, so we can spend the next few days exploring the Tablelands, as we’ve only ever done day trips out here from Cairns previously.

We set up the caravan on a lush field on this maze growing farm and walked to the nearby river to spot platypus. We nearly gave up when we eventually spotted one, but it was too far away to be anything but a small black blob under the water.

After dinner we went to the camp kitchen where you can hand feed peanuts to local wildlife, and although they had already been fed when we arrived, we did see a possum and a pademelon, and Cadbury was very curious and wanted to get up close.

Pademelons are small forest-dwelling marsupials, smaller and more squat in shape than a wallaby but similar in that it hops and females bear young in their pouch.

After our night time animal adventure I went to sit at the communal fire for a while and Gadi went off to watch his TV show.

We then settled in for the night, doing some paperwork and looking at maps to decide where we will head tomorrow.

Night night from the cool, lush Atherton Tablelands xxRead more