Happy Birthday Aunty Leah

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to Aunty Leah,
Happy Birthday to you.

Emma and Kate went swimming and picked some lillies for you!
Hope you have a wonderful day,
love the Smidt's

Paronella Park





Mena Creek Falls

 Imagine living in the 1930's, what was the entertainment like back then? We visited http://www.paronellapark.com.au/  at Mena Creek near Innisfail and discovered how much enjoyment people gained from one mans dream. At first we were not going to go in, but, we met the owner at the door who gave us a great deal on entry and site in the joining caravan park we could not pass the opportunity. It was well worth the visit and I would recommend it to everyone. The girls loved Paronella Park and enjoyed every bit of it.

A guided tour of the grounds revealed the story behind Paronella Park, Jose Paronella came to Australia to build his dream in 1934. His dream was to build a castle for people to come and enjoy. The first castle was the ballroom and theatre and the second castle was the tea rooms with tennis courts and boche lawns. All this was built on the Mena Creek and he designed the grounds so a view of the waterfall could be enjoyed the the fullest. Kate especially enjoyed the tunnel of love at the end of lovers lane. This tunnel was built to put an aquarium in the tunnel but the walls were too porous and the tanks started to leak, it now houses tiny bats. But still imagine a stroll down lovers lane with views of mena creek falls then thru the tunnel to another waterfall coming from a natural spring. Quite romatic and amazing. The brains and ideas that Jose Paronella had for the park were so clever, he even engerneered and built his own hydro electricity plant to power the park. So imagine back when there was no television or power, going to the castle to watch a film.

Night tour

 Emmas favourite part was the night tour, it was amazing seeing the castles and the falls lit up at night, the girls were both mesmerized.

We went for an early morning walk through the park to see the turtles and feed the multiples of fish. The girls loved touching the eels, they were massive and very greedy. The fish feeding area at the base of mena falls was built in the 1930's as a picinic area, where you could swim or take a (wooden) boat for a row.

Paronella Park would have been a very popular place back in its days. The current owners are doing a fantastic job to preserve one mans dream and share this wonderful story to us today.

Feeding and touching the eels

Paluma Range National Park

Paluma Ranges National Park

Paluma Range National Park is an awesome spot, great swimming, very scenic and some great history to it. We all had loads of fun staying in this area. We camped Big Crystal Creek which had a huge swimming hole, great for swimming and snorkelling. The rocks by the water was our classroom for the morning while the girls wrote in their journals. An afternoon at the natural rock slides, just a short drive from camp proved to be so much fun for us all. Such a unique natual attraction to find.

The girls really enjoyed discovering the tadpoles, Kate found this baby frog and thought it was very cute. We found out that the beautiful, large green frogs that we have been finding are dark brown when they are young and as they grow older they turn into the nice green colour.  The girls were finding lots of the brown baby frogs in the power outlets at the caravan park in Airlie and took one up to the office to ask what type of frog it was and they found out they were baby green frogs. We did see lots of the green frogs in the park as well.




Little Crystal Creek

 Little Crystal Creek was another section with lots of little waterfalls and great swimming holes. This beautiful rock bridge over crystal creek was on the way up the Paluma Ranges, we stopped for a swim and Emma got talking to some girls who are holidaying from Papa New Guinea. The family were very friendly and they are here for a month visiting their family in Townsville. It has been wonderful meeting so many families and couples travelling from all over the world, so we now need to buy a world map to mark the places people come from.

Bowen to Balgal Beach



Bowen Jetty

 Where have we been? Enjoying the warm winter and beautiful swimming. The town of Bowen which you may have heard of as it was the town which the movie 'Australia' was filmed. Firstly we checked out the lookout where you could see the coastline and small township. Everything about the town was old which is why I guess they chose Bowen for the film. The girls really enjoyed walking out on the long and old jetty.

We have been travelling beside cane fields for some time now, but the drive towards Townsville was quite scenic looking at the hills behinds the cane fields.
Townsville is just a big town, which we only spent a day looking around. The highlights were the water playground and the Castle Hill lookout was a great spot for some scenic walks.



Townsville waterpark





Our camping looking at the river mouth

  Our next camp was at Balgal Beach, it was an amazing spot with green grassy sites right on the beachfront and river mouth adjacent. We were there for 3 days and put the boat in for a fish. Darrin caught a mangrove jack and I caught a cod, but both not big enough to keep. But the best catch of all was a mud crab by Emma on her lure. Winding her rod in she yelled in excitment "I've caught a fish" and next thing up came this mud crab holding onto her lure. We were not quick enough to get it before he let go.

The girls had so much fun on the beach collecting shells and building sandcastles and there was a playground there as well. Swimming was not recommended in the beach or river as there has been a crocodile sighting. But there was a georgeous freshwater swimming hole just a few kilometers up the road where we went swimming.

Whitsundays wonderland

Emma diving to the fish

Where do I start? We have been having a fantastic week enjoying the Whitsundays, the girls wanted to stay forever. I would have to say that the highlight of our trip was our visit to The Great Barrier Reef - Emma's ultimate destination. Emma had a ball snorkelling amongst the fish, she was in the water for nearly 2 hours exploring. She was really excited when she actually got to touch a fish. We travelled with http://www.cruisewhitsundays.com/ and they were fantastic, the weather was perfect and we all really enjoyed our day. We were up early to catch the bus to the marina at 7.10am. The girls were so excited and when they saw the size of the boat we were going on their eyes just lit up. Kate was very impressed to see that they served biscuits and milo as we boarded the boat. First stop was Daydream Island and spotting the 3 mermaids was just like a dream come true. Apparently the real story is that captain Cook thought he heard voices when he was passing by Daydream Island and thought they were mermaids.



Waving goodbye to the mermaids on Daydream Island



Once we were out at Knuckle reef we went on the glass bottom boat, snorkeled, went on the waterslide, had a scrumptious lunch, another snorkel and slide and finished off with  a ride in the sub-marine.



The Smidts take charge of the boat



 Kate was over excited when we went out in the glass bottom boat, she went crazy with taking loads of photos of the coral and as you can see she got some great photos of the coral.

Our visit to the Great Barrier Reef is going to be one amazing experience we will all remember. Even though Darrin and I have been to the Reef before, experiencing it through the excitiment of the girls has made it even more unique. Well worth the visit.

 We stayed at the Adventure Whitsunday Holiday Park which was fantastic for kicking back and having fun; they have a great pool with slides, mini golf was fun, we even had a few hits of tennis and the outdoor movies were a hit. We caught up with our friends who we met in 1997 when we first visited Airlie, they cooked us a delicious roast lunch. Our neighbours for the week were a lovely family visiting from Oxford in the UK, they have been travelling for 3 months. Kate and Zoe formed a nice little friendship and we hope to keep in touch.

Kate amazed at the coral



Kates photography



Beautiful Byfield

 

Happy mothers day

 Can I say a very belated Happy Mothers Day to all the wonderful mothers. I am a bit behind in the blogging - sorry busy holidaying!! Darrin was up early mothers day morning, just quietly I was getting a bit excited thinking he was getting me breakfast in bed. But instead I heard him tinkering in his shed (back of the car - it looks just like his shed), he was up early to change the flat tyre. So no breaky in bed.



But, we were in a beautiful place called Byfield, about 45mins from Rockhampton. We spent 3 days exploring this diverse and spectacular area. First stop was Byfield state forest, which was like a little rainforest oasis in the middle of the state forest. We did some snorkelling which the girls found some fish and turtles. They went in search of the stonefish that are meant to be inhabiting the area, but had no sucess in finding any. At night the girls spotted their first cane toad - so a quick lesson in how poisonous they are and why they are an unwanted pest anywhere. But more exciting we found some geckos, did you know that their feet are just like suction caps and that is why they can climb vertical walls.



Holding a turtle





Rock pools by our camp



Finding geckos





Walk to the beach



The next section of Byfield to explore was the Byfield National Park, this section is the coastal part of Byfield. We encoutered massive sand dunes to drive to the coast, lucky there was a big wet season as this made the sand very wet and hard , so our troopy and camper made the trip no problems. The views were quite spectacular and there were some great freshwater rock pools to swim in, as they do not recommend swimming in the ocean because of crocodiles. We did not see any but went for the freshwater option just to be sure.



Waterfall on the way to the beach




One spectacular view of the coastline



The boat has found water.

We are really enjoying the beautiful warm weather at the moment, great for camping. As we are travelling further north the girls are discovering many different people, places and animals that they have never seen before.
The lifestyle as we travel north is more layed back, no shops are open on Sundays, people are more friendly, although it seems that having ACT number plates is a bit of a drawcard for people to come and have a chat.
We visited Bundaberg for a day, places of interest were the free zoo and park and also the rummery. We also visited the Bundaberg,ginger beer distillery and purchased different flavours to try for our happy hours. So far the guava is the favourite flavour.


Time for school and a snack

 A sudden change of plans as we approached the turn off to 1770, we decided to take the girls for a history lesson and show them the birthplace of Queensland. The first place in Queensland that captain cook landed in 1770. This was good for them to learn about Captain Cook and they really enjoyed learning about him. We only spent the day in at 1770 and Agnes Waters, it was not an appealing place to us at all, and there were too many sandflies to share the campground with.



Snack time on the water

 We found a great spot on the Calliope River to camp for a few days and put the boat in. We had a great time fishing in the boat, and the girls were keen to go night fishing with Darrin to use the bait fish they caught during day.  Unfortantely we did not catch the big Barramundi, we have been told by quite a few people that they are biting and there has been a few big ones caught at. I can't wait till we catch a big barra.

We have found paradise.....

  



Finally..the weather was the typical Queensland weather we all imagined...blue sky and a perfect temperature. The girls spotted an awesome playground as we passed through Gympie, and it just happened to be right next to the tourist information. With no plans of where we were going to camp the night we went in to get some information on the area. Rainbow beach was a place that they did point out, basic bush camping on the beach - something that appealed to us so we decided to check it out for the night.



 The township of Rainbow Beach is a small village,with the Great Sandy National Park surrounding it, we camped at the Inskip point section on pelican bay. Right on the water which the girls had loads of fun swimming, playing in the sand and chasing crabs at low tide.

And yes there was also time for school work, what better place to have your classroom than on the beach.

The sand dunes in the National Park were amazing, this photo does not show just how massive and spectacular these dunes are. After spending a few days enjoying this area, Rainbow Beach will be going on our list of favourite places.