FRIDAY 27 NOVEMBER   ATHERTON TO GREENVALE   328kms

We were up at 7.15 and away at 9am. After five weeks, we are leaving Atherton! This is the longest time we have stayed anywhere, to date, on this trip.

We got the mailing address for L and J, the sisters from WA with whom we have become friends,  and will write and see how their bowling goes. They have our address and say they will miss us. I hope they will be secure here, over summer.

Between Atherton and Ravenshoe there was mist and fog, and a few short rain showers just after Ravenshoe. As we moved further inland, and it got later, so it also got hotter.

Once south of Ravenshoe, we were really into the savannah scrub and woodland country of the inland.

We stopped for a cup of coffee at the parking area at Forty Mile Scrub, where I was fascinated by a lot of little butterflies – yellow, pale blue and white – settled on the ground where there had been puddles and was still moisture. They were different from the usual butterflies.

Once south of the Highway 1 junction and the road west through Mount Surprise, we were on new ground. The country didn’t change much, though. There were occasional low hills to break up the monotony of the dry grass and scrubland.

We hit a pale headed rosella that flew across the road, right into us. I hoped it somehow survived.

The road for much of today, the Kennedy Development Road, was a single sealed strip, as it seems most such roads are. There was not much traffic, so we did not have to pull over onto the unsealed shoulder of the road very much.

We stopped to eat our packed lunches at a road making area about 20kms north of Greenvale. The rosella we hit was still caught on the roof – it had a broken neck. We were both upset. It is a reality of this sort of travel that we will sometimes, inadvertently, injure or kill wildlife – but it does not make it any easier to deal with.

We would have to pull into Greenvale for fuel, and decided that would do to stay the night. We had both had enough travel for the day and did not feel like pushing on to Charters Towers and having to set up late in the day.

Booked into the Greenvale Caravan Park – $12. We were able to stay hitched up – hardly anyone else in the place.

Greenvale was, we thought, a strange little place. It was built in the early 1970’s, to house workers in the new nickel mine nearby. This became the largest nickel mine in the southern hemisphere, for a time. There was a railway built from here to near Townsville, to transport the ore. Then the mine closed a few years ago and the workers went elsewhere. But the town has been bought by a developer, who is selling – quite cheaply – rather nice houses and flats there. But I suspect there is not the local or surrounding population to sustain the town. It has an Olympic sized swimming pool and good sports facilities, hotel, supermarket, bakery, butcher. The caravan park is also a hardware store and plant nursery. Despite all that, it is hard to see why one would want to live here.

We went for a little walk around some of the town. There are lots of apostle birds around – called Happy Families in these parts, because of the way they cluster together, I guess.

Sweet and sour pork spare ribs for tea.