The morning was clear, and our previous night’s fears of a possible flood seemed silly in knowledgeable retrospect. During the night I caught a small Green Treefrog (Litoria Caerulea) in the campsite restrooms, and move it to the nicer facilities within our motorhome. It was very cute, though still young and therefore not exhibiting the dumpy forehead look characteristic of its species. The first part of our morning therefore started with a rather prolonged treefrog photography session, after which we released it, placing it on the backside of a large leaf, where her kind tend to spend their days.
After breakfast we moved the motorhome further up the road, to the parking lot that marked the trail head for the Jourama falls hike. At some point along the ascent to the lookout on the falls, Daniel and I were engaged in a favorite game – “what irked Daniel in 21 questions”. That is, Daniel was sitting and scowling, from time to time describing the terrible acts of abstinence that he would inflict upon himself in order to make us sorry for our evil deeds (not eating for a whole year featuring as a lightweight threat), while I was trying to understand what exactly we did to provoke his wrath, taking care with the way I phrase my questions, lest I raise his fury further. Fortunately for me, this time providence intervened at a relatively early stage of the game in the form of Tamar, running back to us and crying “We found a monitor. A large one!”. Daniel immediately forgot how fed up he was with the lot of us, grabbed his camera and ran after Tamar, with me following. When we got back to where Lilach and Tamar spotted the large lace monitor, it already made its way to a nearby tree, and started climbing its far side, hidden from the track. I made a hesitant attempt to catch it, but it had no intention of being caught be undetermined people, and quickly escaped up the trunk. We could still appreciate its beauty from afar.
The falls themselves were very nice – a series of small falls and cascades running down the otherwise rather dry hillside. On the way back Lilach returned to her old hobby of photographing tree barks, while the kids tried to catch lizards, and both succeeded for the first time, which made them extremely proud. The lizard theme continued with a second large monitor, which we saw from the car on our way out of the park.
We went to Townsville, where we had a pre-scheduled appointment at a caravan repair shop (scheduled and paid by Apollo) to take care of some issues with our caravan – primarily the main hatch which was broken and wouldn’t open. They couldn’t help us with that, but did help with several smaller issues, which all in all improved the situation. After a good lunch in a family-run Thai restaurant and a Major resupply stop, we started the long road to Airlie beach, where we had a reservation at the local BIG4. There were a couple of bush fires along the road, and passing near them was a rather unpleasant experience, with heavy smoke engulfing the road, and the heat of the fire clearly felt. But we saw others do it, and so did we…
After dinner at the campsite, a mother brushtail possum and her joey in toe came to visit us.They were clearly interested in food, which we resisted giving them, but stayed around for quite a long while nevertheless. We spent the next day at the caravan park, where the kids enjoyed the playgrounds and activities. In the evening they saw the open air movie after which we had a BBQ feast, eith a large and varied salad and excellent wine.
Family Trips 