Josephine Falls

Friday 18 September… Woke up to rain this morning with a heavy mist, still very warm as the nightime temp never dips below 19 C. We are now eating our evening meal outside again, bugs permitting, though this site doesn’t seem to have too many. We do have a good spray with a repellent just in case. Anyway the rain didn’t last long so we drove into Innesfail to have a look around. Innesfails claim to fame ( all towns have one, you may have noticed) is that it is the Art Deco capital of Australia, and it has a point. There are many buildings in the Art Deco style mostly in good nick but very few doing what they were originally built for, the Riverside Hotel is now a Woolworths supermarket, and the A N Z Bank, used to be a department store.
Later we drove out into the hills and more rainforest to look at the fantastic Josephine Falls, another waterfall and swimming hole with the water originating from the top of Mount Bartle Frere. Bartle Frere is Queensland’s highest peak at 1622m and it is a 7.5K climb. We would have done it but we were a bit late getting to the falls, so we went and had a look at the Golden Hole instead. That’s a deep water swimming hole down stream from Josephine Falls, and is inhabited by leeches. As we were running late, we didn’t bother with a swim, besides it looked like rain again, but as we drove down the hill back to the coast it turned into a different day. Up in the hills the low cloud and mist never really cleared but at sea level it was another gloriously hot day, so we scooted back to Flying Fish Point for a dip in the pool followed by a few V B’s.
PS tried the sapodilla at lunchtime. Looked like a small brown potato, cut in half the flesh was brown with 2 seeds like beans, texture like a pear and did taste of caramel! Very sweet but I don’t think they will catch on!