On the Atherton Tablelands

We're home from our family hols today. It was such a good time.

I have a whole slew of posts J wouldn't let me publish from the road in case robbers who read blogs knew we were on holidays. It's his first world paranoia.

So now we will have ALL travel snaps ALL the time for a few weeks while I catch up. Possibly interspersed with some Christmas stuff.

The Baby is a brilliant flyer! After all my worry that he would hate it and make me pay, he covered himself in glory on his first plane flight from Brisbane to Cairns.

Before heading to Japan we spent a few days in the Atherton Tablelands with J's grandmother. The Baby is her first great grandchild.

She is a complete duck and lives in Atherton, a few hours out of Cairns. J and I came to stay here a few days after we were married, en route to our honeymoon. I must have been starry eyed with love, because I formed no lasting impression of the place from that trip at all.

I'd forgotten how charming it all was.

We took the Baby to the Crystal Caves in Atherton.

The 'caves' are out the back of a shop and are made of polystyrene painted to look like rock, with crystals and things embedded in them. Sounds a bit crap doesn't it? The earnestness of it all and the fact you get a helmet with a torch and are allowed to TOUCH EVERYTHING means it treads that all important line of naff attractions and manages to be AWESOME.

Especially if you are 1.

After the caves we had lunch and a huge lemon, lime and bitters at the Barron Valley Hotel a few doors down.

This place is country pub perfection. 1930s woodwork and furniture as far as the eye can see and a beautiful pub lunch.

I want these chairs in my house.

Next we drove out to to Lake Barrine, a perfect still pool in a volcanic crater. Just look how gorgeous it is.

This is the view from the cafe.

And the kid's play area in the cafe… inside a fireplace.
I hesitated with a wriggling monkey in my arms for a few moments before deciding this was an inspired idea. We waved to him cheerily on the other side of the bars as we drank our coffee.

We took a slow boat trip around the lake and saw giant eels, turtles and all kinds of water birds. We looked for the giant pythons that live in the rainforest around the lake, but the sun had gone behind a cloud so they weren't out.

The Baby had a Grade A tantrum towards the end of the boat trip but not even this could spoil such a completely perfect day.