PWWBVA - Part VII

Lake Barrine, Atherton Tablelands, Queensland.

Lake Barrine, and it's sister, lake Eacham are crater lakes high up on the tablelands. The road from Cairns starts off snaking through fields of tall sugar cane before entering the lush vegetation of the hills. If you don't like the road, you can take the single gauge railway up to Kuranda. It's dead touristy but it's one of those things you just have to do, and the return journey is via cable car suspended above the rainforest. You fly higher than the cockatoos and have a view out to the barrier reef. There's no finer place.

We'd never have gone to Lake Barrine, but we were guests of a friend's Auntie, who lived in Malanda (start of the longest milk run in Australia). She'd started life in the UK, married and emigrated to Queensland where she'd raised a family mad on the outdoor life. They live in a proper old Queenslander house on a large plot with lemons in the garden, possums sniffing in the attic and wild platypus mooching about in their creek. We watched them through the binoculars early in the morning, it was magical.

The spider in the laundry cupboard, however, was unwelcome.

Next day they took us to both lakes and to the curtain fig tree. We picnicked on home-made banana loaf and coffee from a thermos flask and saw giant turtles swimming in the lake. I've never forgotten their kindness.