Cardwell Forest Drive

Thurs 25 June… We are just going to move up the coast a little further today but with a few diversions on the way. Cardwell town is quite nice as is the campsite but it is very close to the highway and rather noisy so we won’t stay. First stop is to visit the Rainforest and Reef exhibition at the tourist info centre in Cardwell before setting off with a crap map of the Cardwell Forest Drive. It’s nearly all unsealed road with a definite lack of signposts. There is a particularly nasty hill which we can only drive so far up and it’s Shanks pony the rest of the way. It’s a real pipe opener climbing very steeply for 600m to 3 different viewing places, great outlooks and no Japanese, no anybody except us. Back at the van, old saddo the navvo informed the pilot that it was 187steps and a lot of steep track! Our map is a photocopy, virtually unreadable but we managed to get round the rest of the places of interest not necessarily in the right order. Visits to yet more waterfalls and rock pools all different and spectacular in their own way. Attie Creek and Falls is another hard slog uphill to a fall that has nearly dried up ( the Navvo didn’t bother counting these steps!) It was worth the hike. Then we visited Spa pool which didn’t really live up to it’s name as it was a bit still and murky. Dead Horse Creek was a much nicer place than it’s name suggests, it says in the literature, but we couldn’t find it! We think the signs had fallen down. 30Ks later and we are back on the highway, and it’s only then that we spot the thick layer of dust coating everything in the van. 30Ks of dirt road and we must have picked up most of it! It got in via a floor vent by the side door-----What a mess---grit with everything. Later we arrive at a place on the coast called Tully Heads which seems to be fairly quiet and it also boasts WiFi.