We had camped next door to Billabong Sanctuary. Set in native bushland, this is an Australian animal only wildlife park.
There are over 50 native species including; Dingo’s, Crocodiles, Koalas, Kangaroos and birds. Most of these we had already seen in the wild, so we focused mostly on the animals that we hadn’t seen before.
One of these was the Cassowary, A large flightless bird native to north-east Australia.
We did actually see one of these in the wild as we were driving along a couple of days later, but were unable to take a picture.
The crocodile section was also very interesting, I am very glad that despite the warning signs, we haven’t seen any of these in the wild.
"My, what fine teeth you have"
It wasn’t a very big park, so we were finished by just before lunchtime.
We drove to the Paluma National Park. I was quite a long drive uphill, but this did have the benefit in that it was a lot cooler in the national park, rather than the more intense heat of the coast.
There was a campsite within the park, but the online booking was unsuccessful, so we headed back towards the main road to the alternative campsite.
The next morning we did a short walk to some rock slides. David spotted our first snake on the path ahead, but it had slithered out of sight by the time we got the camera out. There were a lot of interesting insects and skinks to see instead though.
Our campsite had recommended a mango farm down the road that served ice-cream, so we headed there to cool off.
We headed to Jourama falls. By this time we had come down in altitude, and the heat was starting to get to us, so we collapsed in some shade for a while during lunch and tried to cool down.
In the afternoon we headed to Wolloman Falls, on the way we passed by a lagoon. This had quite a few warnings about recent sightings of crocodiles, and after a visit to the wildlife park the previous day, we were a little bit jumpy as we walked around!
An hour’s drive took us to Wolloman Falls by late afternoon. This is allegedly the tallest single tier waterfall in Australia. At 268 metres, the view from the lookout was impressive!
There was a walk going down into the gorge, but as it was getting late we decided to leave this until the following morning.
Going to the nearby campsite, the only way to make a booking was online, or by calling the office. As we had no signal here at all, David had the fun of making use of an available payphone. It is probably one of the few payphone in existence that still gets frequent use.
Until Next Time
Joanna and David
