Amazing Places

“Why are we visiting a cemetery?”

Ryan’s question (asked more than once) was an understandable one. Why were we driving six kilometres out of Ingham to visit the “New Ingham Cemetery”?

The answer to the question has its source in a book that was given to us by my sister Monica as we prepared for our trip – “Australia’s Most Amazing Places”. It became an important source of information as we planned our route, and was one of only three trip-related books we brought with us (the other two being “Camps Australia Wide” and “Explore Australia’s National Parks”). Up until this final part of our journey, we had followed a reasonably strict schedule to meet campsite and travel bookings we had made prior to the trip. Now that we are on the journey south, the only deadline we have to meet is to be home in time to return to work/school at the start of Term 4. Now each day is flexible and much of our decision making is “spur-of-the-moment”.

Our quest has become one of visiting as many amazing places as possible, with the book being our guide. Today we have visited three already. We camped last night at Wallaman Falls (“the highest waterfall in Australia”). This morning we walked two kilometres to the base of the falls (before embarking on the long trek back up!). We have just had a swim in some amazing rock pools of the Little Crystal River in the Paluma Range (“rainforest clad hills, swimming holes and superb walking trails”), under the shadow of an old stone bridge built to provide employment during the 1930s depression era. And, of course, we visited the New Ingham Cemetery (“miniature city of marble mausoleums reflects sugar town’s Italian heritage”).

Another of the “amazing places” was Paronella Park (“tropical pleasure gardens and turret-topped Moorish castle”), which was a wonderland for Jackson to explore and continue exercising his fertile imagination. Yesterday we took a detour to Lucinda Jetty (“the world’s longest sugar-loading jetty”), which is used to load sugar from two local mills; and happens to be 5.76km long! Most of these places we had never heard of, and would have most likely driven past, completely ignorant of their existence.

For the next three nights we will camp on Magnetic Island (“wildlife abounds on this picturesque, easily accessed island”), achieving another of our many goals – to call one of the hundreds of coastal islands “home” for a few days.

It’s fair to say that the start of our journey south was initially tinged with a little sadness – an awareness that we were entering the last stage of our adventure together and leaving the remoteness of “The Outback” for more heavily populated parts of the country. The sadness was short-lived as we have travelled between the coastline and mountains of North Queensland visiting amazing place after amazing place.