YUNGABURRA

Well Hello again! Due to a combination of not having the computer, a lack of Internet connections and feeling a bit daunted by not having written for so long, it is now time to get back into the swing of the blog again. We are the last vehicle in the large campground at Yungaburra, a large grassy field just out of town where a couple of hundred tents, caravans, buses and motorhomes stayed for the last few days. The rest of the folk departed over the last 24 hours after spending a fantastic weekend at the 25th. Yungaburra Folk Festival, it is quite strange having the whole place to ourselves now. There have been some amazing bands playing in the six venues, plenty of activities and entertainment for the kids including a special lantern parade on Saturday night culminating with a great display of fire dancing accompanied by the tribal rhythms of ten drummers at dusk. We have caught up with quite a few people who we met at Wallaby Creek Festival last month and we have enjoyed the camaraderie and good vibes of the whole Festy thing. The last ten days we have spent with Jonas, Maree, Angus and Merrick, a family from Melbourne who are travelling the same way as us. We all get on very well and we reckon we will see them on and off on the way back down. Had the tinny out on Lake Tinnaroo last week, putting out our yabby trap and trying to catch a barramundi. No success with the fishing side of things but we did manage to get five red claw yabbies, a freshwater lobster type creature which tastes similar to their saltwater cousin. They dammed the Barron River to create Lake/Dam (we have seen signs calling it both) Tinnaroo which is a huge expanse of freshwater, attracting lots of boats for fishing and waterskiing. The weather has been extremely warm this weekend, a taste of things to come. Cairns has been a bit of a trial for us. The saga of the bus and the computer has dragged on and hopefully the final instalment will end tomorrow when a mechanic in Atherton is going fix the oil seal on the timing cover. We have spent a heap of money rebuilding the engine as one of the cylinders had failed and the water from the radiator was going into the motor. We finally picked up Bessie after three weeks in the bus hospital, got 2 kms down the road, (1km away from our caravan park….) on a Friday evening and the temperature gauge went very hot. I pulled over and found water spurting from the engine, got on the phone, a mechanic came straight out and discovered a welch plug had blown out. Three hours later I could drive her back to the waiting family who were all very happy to be “home”. We have a few bugs to iron out until I will have the confidence in her again to start our journey down through the centre back to Vic and hopefully that is the last of the dramas. So we are off to Atherton in the morning to drop the bus off for the day. We will go to Lake Eacham for a swim like we did today. It is a very beautiful lake, the water is a lovely greeny blue colour, (not like the algae!) there are a lot of fish and saw tooth turtles swimming about and the kids can jump off the rock walls into the water. The lake is a crater from an old volcano and is surrounded by rainforest. Just down the road is an amazing curtain fig tree, something I knew little about until now. We have had such a lovely time in this part of the land that it takes the edge off the whole engine rebuild debacle as we would not have seen half the stuff around here or met all these great people that we have in the last six weeks or so.