It doesn’t matter where we are.

Or how far we’ve travelled.

Or how hot it is.

Or cold.

Or what time of day.

Whether it’s time for a snack, a meal, a nightcap, morning tea or midnight feast.

We can always drop in to Red & Pilchard’s Ultimate All-Australian Travelling Café!

Because it’s ALWAYS open.

For us …

… and serves up food just the way we like it!

With fresh, local ingredients.

Like food from our favourite bakeries.

Or fast food.

Or even good, old fashioned home-cooked meals.

But Red and Pilchard’s Ultimate All-Australian Travelling Café isn’t open to just ANYONE!  Its exclusive membership deals are just for two!

Usually.

BUT … there’s an occasional dispensation for a special guest, or a mate.

And the best thing about Red and Pilchard’s Ultimate All-Australian Travelling Café?

Against a fascinating and ever-changing backdrop – tropical, desert, coastal, inland, rocky, sandy, scrub, bushland, beach, mallee, lakes, rivers – the Café provides an oasis of stability.

Because no matter how dramatic the changes to scenery, weather or company, the Red & Pilchard’s Ultimate All-Australian Travelling Café Chairs have remained the same for nearly a decade.

So whatever adventures we’re having on the road, we come home to Red & Pilchard’s Ultimate All-Australian Travelling Café.

And our Café Chairs!

They’re not even close to being worn out yet, so if you’re out on the road and you see them (and us!), why not drop in and see if the Cafe’s open?!

Want MORE?

• Dales Gorge, Karijini National Park, WA
• Cairns, Far North Queensland
• Wyndham, Western Australia
• Lake Pamamaroo, Menindee Lakes, NSW
• Stonehenge, Queensland
• Waikerie, South Australia

The post Red & Pilchard’s Ultimate All-Australian Travelling Café appeared first on Australia by Red Nomad OZ.

1925 D17 Class Steam Locomotive ‘Capella’ in Tumoulin, Queensland

Crossing the trestle bridge, Tumoulin to Ravenshoe



Tumoulin Railway Station sign

Creatures en route to Tumoulin

Spot Paris!

No 268 – Capella

No, not a bushfire!  It’s a Steam train!





Emergency!

Centenary re-enactment – cutting the ribbon





Ravenshoe Station, Atherton Tablelands, Queensland



Harry’s Dunny … no, not a real person inside!!

• More photos on Flickr!
• Where is it?
• Ravenshoe Steam Railway
• Ravenshoe Railway Company
• Atherton Tablelands

The post Random Adventure #7 – Taking the Train to Tumoulin appeared first on Australia by Red Nomad OZ.

Cairns is one of the best Australian travel destinations – and I’ve got the photos to prove it! This laid back city 2000 km north of Brisbane between World Heritage Listed Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, has come a long way from its sugar-cane farming roots to become Far North Queensland’s tourist hub.

Cairns has just as much to offer travellers seeking cheap holidays as it does to those looking for luxury! In fact, the only problem will be limiting your visit to a week!!

Luckily, I’ve been travelling to Cairns for 20+ years – the time period over which these photos were taken – and Pilchard even longer!  So use our 7 Day Cairns sampler itinerary guide to get you started …

Day 1: Cairns Botanic Gardens

The pint-sized bag-snatcher at the Cairns Botanic Gardens Cafe was probably a one-off. No, really!! The toddler who picked up my handbag didn’t take kindly to Pilchard’s attempts to remove it from her grubby grasp.

Attracted by the shrieks, her rampaging mother berated Pilchard for making her darling cry, gave the child my bag to play with and turned back to her glass of wine table. With a) child clutching b) the handbag.

Now you tell me. Was it so unreasonable for Pilchard to insist on its return?

Sadly, this whole stultifying display of disturbed parenting could have been avoided if only I’d taken my handbag with me to the ladies room …

Happily, in addition to the Scenic Public Toilet, the large Cairns Botanic Gardens complex is full of distractions, with wonderful displays of tropical plants; several interpretive trails, magnificent butterflies and brightly coloured birds!

Although ‘wild boar’ sounds so much more exotic than ‘feral pig’, they’re both equally destructive when crashing through the undergrowth on the mangrove boardwalk through to the Centenary Lakes picnic area. Although I’d rather meet a wild pig than an unsupervised homo-sapiens (juv) allowed to run amok by overindulgent parents …

Spending the whole day in the gardens is easy – the 6.6 km Mt Whitfield trail loop gives splendid views over the busy international airport and Cairns itself. But I’m not sure if the group of school kids led by two young and ever so perky teachers we dodged on the track were a fair replacement for the cassowaries once common in the area.

Day 2: North to Port Douglas

The block of land for sale a few metres below the Port Douglas Lookout platform has the same staggering view. But would that be enough to counteract the 24/7 comings and goings above? Maybe the local residents were on to something when they tried to get the lookout closed …

The Lady Douglas probably isn’t the ritziest craft to cruise Dixon Inlet – but I’ll bet she’s the classiest! And if you want to take a look behind the scenes of what once was a small fishing village but is now amongst Australia’s most expensive real estate, the inlet is awash with wildlife – including crocodiles!

Time it right and attend – or miss, depending on your point of view – the Port Douglas markets, but whatever you do, DON’T miss Mocka’s Pies! This FAAAAABULOUS Bakery (come back for the cheese pasty, potato & pea pie, apple, lemon meringue – hell, come back for ANYTHING) has the well-deserved distinction of being our ALL TIME favourite!!!!

Day 3: Northern Beaches

Although the artificial lagoon, sandy beach and infinity pool are a good substitute for lack of foreshore beach, nothing beats the real thing! And heading north, the real thing is abundant starting about 20 km from the CBD.

Spend a day exploring all the beaches; or stay on one beach all day; or take an extra day and do both!! From the unspoiled excellence of Wangetti Beach (below the hang glider launch spot I’ll always be too gutless to try) to the ritz of Palm Cove; Ellis Beach between the highway and sea to the fabulous curve of Trinity Beach; Yorkeys Knob cliff and marina to the vast sand flats and rock wall at Machans – eateries, picnic and BBQ areas, walks, birdlife … there’s something for everyone!

Take your pick – and if you got it wrong, try again tomorrow!!

Day 4: Esplanade … and Cairns itself

Want a perfect day on the Cairns Esplanade?

WELL … my guest post on 52 Perfect Days will tell all!!

But because I’m a tease nice person, here’s a glimpse!!

Of course Cairns is much more than its foreshore! There’s shopping and eating precincts – yes, a bakery or two – the Visitor Information Centre, galleries, restaurants, museums … do I need to spell it out??

Day 5: Outdoors in the Rainforest …

Snakes, goannas, birds, butterflies, hungover backpackers – I’ve yet to visit Crystal Cascades without finding something interesting to watch!

This popular series of swimming holes on – you guessed it – Crystal Creek buried deep in the rainforest is a water supply access point but walkers can take the track for 1.2 km to the barrier for a taste of REAL rainforest and wildlife. Near the start of the trail, a track – classified as ‘strenuous’ and ‘rough’ – heads almost vertically upwards to Copperlode Dam in the ranges far above …

… and as if to prove it’s not all sunshine and serenity in the tropics, the temperature dropped 8ºC in the 25 km drive from Cairns CBD up the ranges to Copperlode Dam aka Lake Morris, 365 metres above sea level. And the hot soup that sounded so ridiculous in the balmy, high 20’s temperature on the coast was more than welcome in our efforts to counteract the chill wind!

It’s best to be sober when attempting this steep, twisting track with several one-way sections, and breathtaking (aka ‘hyperventilating’) dropaways, often being repaired after heavy rain at which time they become ‘washaways’ … But the stupendous views on each side of the range show just how much unexplored rainforest remains.

Ambitious walkers undaunted by the steep gradient can attempt further exploration on the 3km track dropping straight down from the dam to Crystal Cascades below …

Day 6: Islands

‘Tropical paradise’ is such a cliché – there’s only so much blue sky/clear water/white sand/palm trees you can take, right?

Perhaps. But a trip to the Frankland Islands or Green Island will leave you begging for more, cliché or no!

Trust me.

Day 7: Skyrail and Kuranda Scenic Railway

Despite the jaw-dropping views above the unspoiled World Heritage listed rainforest canopy to the spectacular Cairns coastline, acrophobics* may find the 7.5 km Skyrail cable-car journey from Cairns to Kuranda (or vice versa) ‘challenging’.

But luckily, a couple of stops for the rainforest interpretive centre and Barron Falls lookout break the journey and allow equilibrium to be regained before another 6 person gondola – and the next leg!

But is going up the Kuranda Range by Skyrail any worse for acrophobics than dropping nearly 300 metres through 15 tunnels and across 40 rickety bridges crossing drop-away chasms down the super-steep Barron Gorge if returning via the 34 km Kuranda Scenic Railway?

As a recovering acrophobic I unreservedly recommend both trips – just breathe normally into that paper bag while taking photos all the way. And don’t look down …

Well, how quickly 7 Days can pass!

And I haven’t even started on heading south to the other side of Trinity Inlet, the Goldsborough Valley, and Gordonvale’s Cane Toad World!

Or west to the Atherton Tablelands …

That’s another 7 Days all by itself!!

I developed this 7 day guide based on visits to Cairns totalling MANY weeks over 20+ years!  Photos all taken 2009-2011, except the Kuranda train (1998) as that pic was better than the ones I have from later trips.

*Acrophobia= fear of heights

Want MORE?

• Not quite enough photos here, right? There’s plenty more on Flickr !!
• Cairns and Tropical North Queensland
• Cairns and Tropical North Visitor Information Centre
• What I’ve done in and around Cairns
• My other 7 Days in … Guides

The post 7 Days in … Cairns! appeared first on Australia by Red Nomad OZ.

We Arrive on Green Island

Although it was 20 LOOOONG years since our last Green Island National Park visit, Pilchard’s first action on our return just MAY have been a little bit extreme.

I mean, propelling a perfectly good hat into the sea wasn’t some kind of superstitious ritual, was it? Did he perhaps think it meant we wouldn’t have to wait another 20 years before our next visit??

But the capricious gust of wind that had plucked the hat from Pilchard’s head and flung it into the depths where it sank like a stone was pure accident.

AND embarrassing.

From the frenzied clicking and suppressed giggles behind us, I strongly suspected the whole episode had been captured on film …

Our return to Green Island wasn’t going well …

Green Island – the Facts!

The 12 hectare rainforest-covered coral cay – known as the Green Island Recreation Area – is one of the most popular and accessible tourist destinations in the Great Barrier Reef, a short 27 km (~17 miles) boat trip from Far North Queensland’s Cairns.

Green Island’s Fascinating Past

Estimated to be several thousand years old, post-colonial plunder and exploitation have threatened the island’s continued existence since its charting and naming by Captain James Cook in 1770. But luckily, the multi-layered protection that several regulatory authorities jointly brings will prevent further structural, environmental and biological damage, given the accountability and harmony so often seen in competing bureaucracies. Right???

But changes to the island landscape since 1770 are far greater than those observed by Pilchard and I after our 20-year hiatus! Green Island’s new (to us!) interpretive boardwalk charts the effects of human interaction – and the changing demands for its resources.

From Guru-Gulu Gungandji Indigenous people’s hunting and initiation ceremony site to present day recreation area of reef, resort and National Park has been a long and bumpy road for this beautiful spot.

‘Plunder’ and ‘pillage’ the 1800’s themes, the island was exploited trashed cleared by bêche de mer fishermen who had no use for pristine rainforest and reef while involved in this labour-intensive industry. But in the 100+ years since the processing plant, living quarters and gardens replaced the forest, it’s grown back completely – with 134 charted plant species today.

During this time drunken ‘picnic’ parties, like those described in this postcard facsimile above, decimated island resources with activities including, but not exclusive to dynamiting fish, shooting birds and souveniring coral!

In what the unkind may describe as ‘poetic justice’, one local character’s arm was amputated after a nasty accident with the dynamite while ‘fishing’! Could this have been the rise of the notorious Aussie ‘yobbo’**??

In an almost complete turnaround, the island’s potential for tourism was exploited developed in the 1900’s complete with world firsts – including glass bottomed boats for underwater viewing, films of life on the Barrier Reef and Cassius, the largest crocodile (5.5m or 18′) in captivity in the only crocodile farm – Marineland Melanesia – on a coral cay. If that’s important.

Green Island – Now What?

now, around 300,000 tourists visit Green Island each year, continuing to exploit its resources, albeit more sustainably. In theory, anyway – imagine the impact of so many on the beaches, coral reefs, walks and wildlife.

But the multi-layered management model would have changed all this for the better, right? Well … look at what’s changed in the last 20 years – do the changes contribute to island sustainability? Or are they just cosmetic? You decide!!

20 years ago, you got a Green Island cruise or day-trip – now it’s a Green Island ‘Eco-Adventure’, although weirdly, most activities haven’t changed … and neither has the snorkelling equipment!!! How jealous would my friends have been in the early 90’s to hear about my Eco-Adventure!!

20 years ago, visitors could cross the island on a dirt track through the centre, and the only restricted areas were the resort grounds, and crocodile farm (as if you needed to be told that!!). Now, a boardwalk follows the beach, leaving the centre free from human activity. Oddly, the ‘walk’ from one side to the other is now marketed as a ‘self-guided tour’!

20 years ago, Emerald doves wandered the forest floor – but now, after a successful rat eradication program, large numbers of Buff-banded Rail aggressively hunt and gather from the main food court – and appear to be the only ground-based fauna. Like house-guests from hell, they bathe (and defecate) in the pool, snatch food from unwitting tourists, and hog the best sunbathing spots. In a strange zoological reversal, tourists unable to fend them off are invited to eat in a wire mesh enclosure (aka ‘cage’) the birds can’t enter …  The attractively marked Buff-banded Rail normally shuns human contact, so getting a close look at one isn’t that easy. But now? I don’t care if I never see another one …

20 years ago you were left to your own devices upon arrival on the island – now, there are warnings for the aged. Apparently a high risk group, tourists aged 50+ (aka ‘old’) are encouraged to alert the lifeguard when entering the water in case the exertion is too much. Although the only danger I faced was from Pilchard himself when I offered to tell the lifeguard that he was about to go snorkelling.

Green Island’s Natural Attractions

But these are minor points in the context of the magnificent beauty of the natural attractions. Broad white beaches. Water so clear and blue you could spot a hat through it. Superb corals, giant clams and fish. Lush, green rainforest. Ample birdwatching opportunities. Turtle spotting. And the ultimate? Whale watching!!

Sitting on a shady beach after the trauma of keeping our reef fish wraps and chips** from the hovering anxiety of a brace of Buff-banded Rail, we watched a pod of whates frolicking for a good 30 minutes before they moved out of sight. Then, another pod was spotted from the return ferry. Happily not required for scientific testing that day, the whales were free to cavort for the Aussie, American, French and Japanese photographers lucky enough – and thrilled – to capture them on film.

A stunning end to a fabulous day, our return to Green Island had certainly picked up from its inauspicious beginning.

SO … will we return? Hell, yes! After all, we’ve got Pilchard’s hat to look for …

* Yobbo = Aussie term of endearment for people (usually blokes) who indulge in ‘exuberant’ behaviour, usually taking the format of alcohol-fuelled best mate bonding sessions involving various combinations of camping, fishing, barbecues, hunting and cruising.

** Chips = fries

The post Return to Green Island – via Cairns, Far North Queensland appeared first on Australia by Red Nomad OZ.

Well, the government was never going to do it – and it probably didn’t occur to anyone else. So when casting about for something other than its 100 year sugar milling history to put it on the map, Gordonvale, deep in the wet tropics of Queensland’s far north, didn’t have to fight too hard for the right to immortalize what is arguably Australia’s worst environmental disaster.

As one of the original 1935 Bufo Marinus (aka ‘Cane Toad’) release sites, Gordonvale’s sugar industry was under threat from pests including the cane beetle. So it was well placed to observe the effects of Cane Toad introduction and their subsequent, and somewhat successful takeover bid for Australian environmental supremacy.

While there’s no doubt the government ‘experts’ meant well, the simple hypothesis that sounded so viable on paper (ie Bufo Marinus = cane beetle predator, SO introduction to OZ = cane beetle eradication = healthy sugar industry) just didn’t work in reality.

Why not?

Well … place a toxic toad – with no local natural predators and so spoilt for dietary choices it almost completely ignores the cane beetle – into Australian conditions, near ideal for adaptation and invasion?

HHHMMMmmm… what could go wrong??

Then add in a significant reduction in native species that feed on toads and tadpoles.

Oh, and bufotenin, a chemical secreted by the toad? It’s a Class 1 drug – although toad licking as a form of ingestion may be a bit extreme …

From the original 1935 release of 102 Hawaiian toads, numbers in Australia are now thought to exceed 200 million! So apart from a weird line of novelty gift products, controversial use in informal sports, and a cult-status documentary about the cane toad invasion, what does a nation like OZ do with a predator like Bufo Marinus?

Give it its very own Cane Toad World, of course!

But suppress those visions of being photographed with a cane toad, the Big Cane Toad, cane toad rides and cane toads in song!

Cane Toad World currently consists of the cane toad story in mosaic mural and a cane toad themed playground.  Just a little bit anticlimactic … unless, of course, it’s still in development!

But on another level, the mosaic unashamedly exposes the ongoing problems caused by the Bufo Marinus invasion and is therefore a caustic comment on government ‘expertise’ and ‘accountability’, implementing untested environmental solutions and the ongoing effects of such decisions on ordinary people.

So its really just as well we’ve introduced effective risk analysis methodologies, implementation guidelines, effective monitoring mechanisms and accountability frameworks so we’re not destined to repeat past mistakes, isn’t it?

Or we might be left with another infamous Aussie icon like the Cane Toad …

Want MORE?

• Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (the movie!)
• Cane Toad World
• Gordonvale, Far North Queensland
• MORE RedzAustralia Weird Stuff

The post Only in OZ #16 – Cane Toad World, Gordonvale, Far North Queensland appeared first on Australia by Red Nomad OZ.

It’s amazing how the public toilets in the superb Cairns Botanic Gardens are a match for its visual delights!

Set on a rolling green lawn, surrounded by lushly growing tropical plants and flowers, it’s a delight to do business there!!

To make your visit even more worthwhile, the nearby Botanic Gardens cafe serves a truly amazing dessert of icecream, cream, chocolate sauce, chocolate pieces, cherries, raspberry sauce and marshmallows served over a waffle that my mate and I devoured (on our 2009 visit) to the horror of some nearby overseas tourists – who took photos!  I guess to show the disgusting behaviour of the natives …

The post Australia’s Scenic Public Toilets #7 – Cairns Botanic Gardens, Queensland appeared first on Australia by Red Nomad OZ.

We marked our 2009 return to Cairns after 10 years by finding a patch of ‘absolute virgin territory’ – no mean feat given the many attractions we’d seen on several previous visits.

Looking from Frankland Islands to the Mainland

On the Mulgrave River en route to Frankland Islands

One of the Frankland Islands, Cairns, Far North Queensland

Beach, Frankland Islands, Cairns, Queensland

The post OZ Top Spot #2 Frankland Islands, Cairns, Far North Queensland appeared first on Australia by Red Nomad OZ.