Day 28 – Monday 16 August 2021 – 388km

We left Cobbold Gorge this morning after chatting to some camping neighbours and letting the tyre pressures down a bit more. It took us around 2 hours over the very corrugated road to travel the 48km back to Forsayth where we stopped in the shade next to the park and pumped the tyres back up to their correct pressures again. Lunch at the Goldfields Hotel across the road with lots of flies descending once our meal arrived. We read the history on the walls of the hotel, all very interesting.

The road condition to Georgetown was good with only around 10km of dirt before we refuelled and turned right towards the Atherton tablelands. The bitumen was a blessing after all the bad dirt, however the dual lane changed down to a single lane of poor bitumen then back to dual & back to single for the next  200km until we reached Mt Garnet. We stopped to stretch our legs, the local visitor centre was closed and we checked the distance to our planned destination, it was only 60km more to Malanda Falls Caravan Park. We phoned & they had a spot so we booked in and continued on our way. The scenery started to change, noticeably the termite mounds were bigger & baulbous, different than what we had seen previously.  Once we reached the Atherton Tablelands we climbed up onto the range, the temperature dropped to 15C and it started to rain.  We are driving in the clouds. Lush and all so very green grass & magnificent rainforest trees are a welcome change, the cold & rain is not.

We found Malanda Falls Caravan Park easily enough, booked in & set up. Jeannette, the park manager, recommended the Malanda Hotel (now The Big Pub) for dinner so we walked down the road & treated ourselves to another feast, so full of good food. We have been using very light covers for the last few weeks, but tonight we got our warm doona out. We think that we will stay here for another night as there are so many places to explore around here. Another great day.