Atherton Tablelands - Mount Hypipamee Crater, Dinner Falls & McKenzie Falls

Mount Hypipamee Crater

Mount Hypipamee Crater is an old volcanic pipe. It's 58m down to the water and the water is 70m deep.

Dinner Falls

The walk to Dinner Falls was very pretty with lots of elkhorns and other epiphytes.

The Dinner Falls consist of three different levels.

This little Brown Gerygone was flitting around on the other side of the falls.

There were also a few birds around the picnic area that distracted us while we ate lunch.

Grey-headed Robin

Pale-yellow Robin

Yellow-throated Scrubwren

Grey Fantail

We could hear an occasional bowerbird high up in the trees and there are two new-to-us species up here, so we were keen to see them. After a while there were a few more birds carrying on and getting annoyed with each other. With much neck craning we managed to see some of them. The photos aren't great because they were so high up and moving fairly constantly, but they are good enough to identify them.

Satin Bowerbirds (male & female)

Tooth-billed Bowerbird

McKenzie Falls

On our way home I planned to stop by another waterfall that looked good in some photos. The National Parks website said "Take this short, easy walk through the forest from the car park to the top of McKenzie Falls" so we expected an easy detour. I was expecting some unsealed road to the falls, but it turned out to definitely be 4WD only! We got to a bit of a bog hole and decided to have a look and see how bad it was just as some dirt bike riders came through. They stopped for a chat and told us this was the worst bit of the road, and there was a side track around it, so we kept going. When we got to the "car park" it was just a wider bit of road with a couple of tracks leading to it. We took the one going down to the falls and then it seemed to finish suddenly. Dazz check some track notes on his Explore Oz app, which said to walk through the scrub, so we did, and came to the top of the falls, with no view of the falls themselves!

It didn't look like a terribly difficult climb down around the side as the rocks were very "stepped" so I scrambled around to get some videos.

There was a different track that led out to the north, so we thought we'd try that because it might be better. Just down the hill from the carpark was the Millstream River that needed crossing. We both looked at it and have seen enough disasters on YouTube videos to know that we would need to walk it first. It was getting late in the day, we were tired, and we had no idea what awaited us on the other side of the river, so decided to just come back the way we came. Here's some short snippets of the trip back from the "carpark".

Atherton Tablelands - Tully Gorge & Millstream

We've seen parts of the Atherton Tablelands as day trips when staying with family in Cairns, but they were always rushed visits and the last one was over 20 years ago. This time we planned for 11 nights spread over the south, central and north - and it still only feels like we're barely scratching the surface. Since we were starting in the southern tablelands we travelled south from Cairns and up the Palmerston Highway. This gave us an opportunity to see Mount Bartle Frere - the highest mountain in Queensland. On our way up it was covered in mist and rain. We also realised that we hadn't taken any photos of cane fields, in spite of their constant presence up here, so we also rectified that!

Tully Falls and Gorge Lookout

The dams and hydro stations mean that there was hardly any water over the Tully Falls, and it was in behind rocks and trees, so there was no water to see.

There was a short forest walk, with a couple of pretty streams that flowed down different parts of the cliffs.

At the end of the walk there was a bit of a scramble around and over rocks, and we were standing on top of the waterfall looking back down the gorge. Unfortunately it was looking back into the sun so the photos aren't great.

Little Millstream Falls

Millstream Falls 

Cairns

Most of the photography in Cairns revolved around birds. We went down to the esplanade a couple of afternoons to see what was on the mudflats.

Bar-tailed Godwit 

Eastern Reef Egret

Grey-tailed Tattlers

Terek Sandpiper - There was just one in the flock of Grey-tailed Tattles, distinguished by the upturned beak. It was out the back of the group, so not quite in focus.

Black-winged Stilt 

We went to the Botanical Gardens and Centenary Lakes a few times, and each time saw some new birds... and a few pretty flowers.

Orange-footed Scrubfowl 

Little Bronze-Cuckoo 

Leaden Flycatcher 

Hybrid Mallard Duck

Rainbow Bee-eaters

Striated Heron

Australasian Figbird 

Eastern Great Egret - that had some success with its fishing!

Black Butcherbird - that was enjoying crab for lunch.

Yellow Honeyeater 

Helmeted Friarbird

Magpie Geese

And just to prove that Dazz can take photos of butterflies when they aren't in an enclosure...

Brown Pansy Butterfly

Common Eggfly (male)

On our way to the Skyrail I had noticed a sign for Cattana Wetlands, so we stopped in there on our way home in the afternoon just to see what it was like. It was really pretty, with a number of different lakes. We got talking to another birder/photographer and he showed us where the kingfishers hang out, and two of them dutifully showed up!

Yellow Oriole

Comb-crested Jacana (juvenille)

Azure Kingfisher

Sacred Kingfisher

On the way home Dazz pulled over on the side of the road because he could see something moving in the reversing camera (turned out to just be a twist tie that was caught on the bumper). As I jumped out of the car to check it I almost stood on this dead bird. 

Buff-banded Rail

The caravan park also provided a couple of birds.

Bush Stone-curlews 

Magpie-lark

Metallic Starling - A large noisy flock appeared in a tree behind us late one afternoon, but by the time Dazz grabbed his camera they were gone again. On our last afternoon when I was bringing washing in I noticed a small flock of dark quiet birds fly into the same tree. I thought they might have been the starlings, so Dazz raced out again and this time caught a few shots in the last rays of afternoon sun right at the top of the tree. They are migratory and by this time of the year most of them have gone back north to PNG, so we were pleased to get a photo... of course now we'll probably be seeing them all the way to the top of the Cape!

Four O'clock Moth - one evening outside the toilet block and the morning we left.