Platypus

When early morning mist envelopes you and water drips from the trees it's a reminder that you're in the
Wet Tropics, though this is year three of drought, with much less rainfall than usual. We were up early, just after dawn, to quietly walk the trail beside Peterson Creek looking for platypus. And we did see a few in the murky water.

Bush Stone Curlew

Yungaburra

Yungaburra is a tiny village southwest of Cairns, in the Atherton Tablelands; the name means "meeting place" in Indigenous language - many groups have lived here for at least 60,000 years. Lured by gold and tin, Europeans began settling here in 1890, and 19 buildings in the village date back to early years.

The Butchery

The Butchery is listed on the Heritage Register and has "traded continuously as a butcher's shop through wars, depressions, recessions and cyclones" according to a walking tour pamphlet.

A popular place for cyclists to stop on weekends

The Whistle Stop Cafe was the Bank of New South Wales from 1913 to 1967; it was here that we first saw a small local history book called The Pioneers Speak, compiled by Meryl Allen for the district centenary in 1990.  It has some wonderful photographs. It was a hard life for the first settlers - a pioneer saying in the book is "the soil was so good that when you planted corn it would come up overnight - it did too, for the bandicoots would bring it up."  One of the first European women to reach the Tableland packed her two small children into kerosene tins that dangled from the side of a mule.