Ingham & Cairns

Saturday morning we all went to the local Lutheran church for service. It was nice even little difficult to follow the service in foreign language. It was nice to sing along the familiar song written by Pekka Simojoki & Anna-Mari Kaskinen (original words). After service we had some refreshments and had nice walk in the town.

 At night we went to Lucinda beach to have fish and chips for dinner. It was nice to see the sugar loading harbor and storages. Huge buildings in fact where  sugar trains drop their loads for temporary storage and from where the sugar was moved to ships on the sea with 5,75km long convoyer belt. Loading capacity is 1400 tons of sugar in hour. With that you can quickly get enough sugar to your coffee mug. Some idea about the size of the convoyer you can get if you think that beside the convoyer there there is service road for cars to transport people and material for operation. Unfortunately convoyer system was out of operation because previous cyclone in February made some damage to it and they are repairing it all the time. Currently sugar is transported to Townsville (~400km south) for shipping.

 For dinner we had Spanish makrill with chips and it was extremely good. Best fish and chips ever. I also got my first touch to Bundaberg ginger beer (non alcoholic version) and that was also vary tasty.

Sunday brought us possibility to participate barbecue party in Satu’s place. Food ws very delicious and we enjoyed chatting in good company and watching kids playing various games and getting along without any language barrier. They found their way easily. After barbecue we visited Ingham cemetery. Interesting mixture of different kind of tombstones visualizing the customs of different churches. Minor stones in Lutheran area, huge monuments and chapels in catholic area and something between in other areas. Feels little strange when thinking that those marble or concrete & tile chapels may have been more expensive than the houses where live their life in that time.

Moday was lazy day again gathering some strength for coming days. During weekend we tried to arrange cruise to great barrier reef. We tried to arrange the trip from Mission Beach because that is close enough for one day trip. We tried Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, no  couldn’t make it, too much wind to go there. That’s a bitty but we have to leave something for next trip also. We also did some shopping and mailed some post cards to our dear friends in Finland.

Tuesday. Huge views day. Marko has day off from his work in paramedic and took us for a drive to Wallman Falls. What a great trip. Incredible long winding road and also narrow in some places. Pirjo-Liisa has survived so many occasions. I think this might be too much for our motorhome and thank God Marko has that nice AWD for comfortable ride.  On the way up we also got together with one cassowary, which is the national bird of Queensland. What a nice bird it was a bit like emu but nicely colored head and black hair. We got higher and higher and what a views up there.  ~250m high free waterfall. There is also hiking track down to waterfall but it was closed and we didn’t plan walk there anyway because it requires very good physical condition or heaps of time. Marko also said that he does not like to go down there because he has rescued some peoples from down there and it takes 8 hours  from 8 persons to go down and carry injured person back to the top. Helicopter can not be used due to difficult winds. Way back to town we drive to look the place where Lea and Esko used to have their sugar cain farm.

Wednesday, time to go ahead. Early morning we started up from Ingham and headed to Mission Beach to meet a nice couple from Finland. Mission Beach is the area that got the worst damage from the cyclone in February this year. Lot’s of boats were smashed and thrown from the water up to the cliffs. Now Sauli and Pirkko have nice view to the Pacific ocean over a row of houses and two roads but before the cyclone forest of palm trees blocked the whole view to the ocean. Effects of cyclone can be easily seen on the hills where all the forest is “blown” away and new trees coming up. We also saw many banana farms on our way that were completely destroyed and new trees planted and growing.

From Mission Beach we headed up to Cairns and built our camp on caravan park enjoyed the last rays of the sun at the terrace of our motorhome. After sunset we walked to the city and had our dinner in Subway.

Thursday morning we checked out from the caravan park and headed to the cairns beach esplanade. We parked our motorhome at the north end of the beach and walked the beach walkway south about the middle of the beach enjoying the sun (or maybe enjoying the shades because we started to feel little hot at north) Change of the climate has been clearly visible during our trip from Brisbane to Cairns. In Brisbane we have to use the heater at evening to get proper temperature for sleeping and wake up at the morning and switch heater on again to heat up before getting out from blankets. At the middle we just heated up before sleeping and in the north we have to use air conditioner to cool our residence before we go to sleep.

Anyway we had nice lunch in Italian restaurant and started walking back to the car letting our right shoulder get some sunshine this time. After checking out our motorhome we had a taxi taking us to airport and checked in to our flight to Darwin, relaxing a bit at the airport and arrived to warm Darwin night nicely in schedule. At Darwin airport we were gladly surprised by Aino’s friend who was at the airport to welcome us and provided a lift for Aino, Anna and Anni and some luggage to Penni’s house so me and Pirjo-Liisa take one taxi for us and followed them. Unfortunately Penni was not in Darwin at this moment due to her brother birthday in Melbourne.