Ravenshoe

Leaving Cairns but wanting to continue to explore the Atherton Tablelands we moved on to Ravenshoe (Pronounced Ravens Hoe) booking into the caravan park associated with the local railway museum, a small outdated park run by the volunteer members of the local steam railway society who are hopeful of getting the tourist railway working again, but with most of the volunteers well past retirement age and the amount of work that is required, I fee this may just be a dream which would be a pity.

This base would allow us to explore places like Atherton, Herberton, Irvinebank, the Tully Gorge, and a little place that no longer exists other than for a War Memorial Evelyn Scrub which we did on ANZAC Day, but after the Dawn Service which was held there (More about this visit later).

 

Atherton was interesting with a history of Chinese residents, China town is now long gone though there is evidence of where it once was including an old Chinese Temple and Pig Oven.

From here we went to visit Tinaroo dam but ended up in the Yungaburra Heritage Village, not where we had been before but well worth the visit, as you can see in the photo gallery.

Our visit to Herberton did not go as planned, I was distracted by a sign to a “RUINS” and thinking it would be an interesting place to visit, we did not find the ruins , but on the way we did find a small heritage village where all the older building are listed, Irvingbank, these building though listed are now under the care of the local progress association the members are dwindling and aging with the younger people of the village moving out for a better future, will this town and the building go the way of the Ravenshoe Steam Railway, a real pity as it deserves to be preserved.

We never did visit Herberton as to do so would have taken more than one day just to see the museum.

In the other direction we did get to see the Tully Gorge a worthwhile trip.

NOTE if you are ever in this area and see a shortcut to Ravenshoe that uses SILVER VALLEY ROAD whatever you do DO NOT TAKE it unless you like traveling on what is almost a 4wd track it is that rough!

This flooding in Central Queensland affected our plans, and although the road between Charters Towers and Hughenden was OPEN, we were informed that road between Hughenden and Winton (the next part of the journey) was badly in need of repair and as such NOT OPEN, this meant that if we were to go on to Hughenden, we would need to take a much longer detour.

Hughenden was scrapped, so what to do now?

Carol had always wanted to visit the Lava Tubes, so this was added to the trip. For this we needed to stay at Mount Surprise as the Lava Tubes are in a National Park and we had MM, (and no I do not regret taking her with us)

 

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