The Effects of Rain

When it rains, water falls from the sky.  When it rains heavily a lot of water falls from the sky.  It collects in puddles, soaks into the ground, gathers in streams and rivers, and where the terrain drops suddenly, it creates waterfalls.

Now we’ve seen some of these waterfalls.  Very often they’re about as exciting as a dripping tap, with about as much water going over them to boot.  But of course, there’s been rain, a lot of rain, and the waterfalls are going full bore . . . .

. . . . and they look just great

For those who are interested, these are the Malanda, Millaa Millaa and Millstream  falls.  Of course, not all the falls are big, some are quite gentle and have paths that cross them.

Now what needs water?  Did I hear you say “tea”?  Quite right.  So we visited the Nerada Tea Plantation a few kilometres outside Malanda, which is Australia’s largest producer.  This is what tea bushes look like.

Did you know that left alone, the tea bushes will grow up to five metres tall and produce flowers?  Here’s the flower, it’s small but quite pretty.

Of course the other drink (non-alcoholic) of which we’re very fond is coffee and so we took a look at the Jaques Coffee plantation, near Mareeba.  Here we learned about all the trials and tribulations suffered by the family to get their business off the ground.  Twice they were completely wiped out, firstly by severe weather and then by misguided government action spraying their bushes to eradicate a pest which they didn’t have.  The spraying killed every bush.

Happily, the business is now flourishing, along with their 150,000 coffee bushes.

And of course we’ve seen acres and acres of banana plantations and sugar cane, and this extraordinary fig tree.  Here’s just a little bit of it.

After all that chasing about, it was time for a short rest.  We found a really nice camp site at Lake Eacham and stayed there for a couple of days.  The camp kitchen was equipped with a rather good fireplace that we made use of to drive away the dampness of the evenings.  We also met Bob and his lovely Chinese wife Annie and spent quite a few hours putting the world to rights.

With only a couple more weeks left, we decided to go as far north as we could reasonably get and so crammed in some miles, stopping overnight at Mount Carbine where I practiced being nonchalant as the sun went down.  And it wasn’t raining!

An early start the next morning and by noon we arrived in Cooktown.  Take a look on the map, it’s just south of the Cape York Peninsula, as far as sealed roads go.  The road climbed through the mountains and we stopped a few times to take in the view.

Cooktown is where James Cook landed and repaired his ship the Endeavour in 1770, after it had been holed on coral.  His landing is re-enacted annually each June and there are commemorative statues and plaques all over the place referring to his visit.  There’s also a museum which we found fascinating.  Amongst many other items, one of the Endeavour’s anchors and a cannon that were dumped overboard to lighten the ship have been found, stabilised and are now on display.  Given the hardships they endured and the shoals in the vicinity that had to be avoided to return to sea, it’s very clear that Cook must have been a remarkable seaman and an individual with a remarkable strength of character.

And then by way of contrast, we saw the local police dealing with a drunk.

For some people it never rains but it pours J