Tully Gorge

Tully surprised us - well some of us, as we’d only driven down the Bruce Highway previously. We never knew the town was across the railway line and is quite a substantial town with the big gum boot a feature. This represents the highest rainfall recorded in  Tully in 1950 - 8 metres or 320 inches!  Tully does supposedly have  the highest annual rainfall in Australia. 

This town has a sugar refinery and production is just starting this season.

We did a few jobs in Tully and shouted ourselves morning tea at the bakery then headed inland  along  the most beautiful road winding through banana plantations and into the rainforest. 

We booked our sites through the very complicated online National Park process and seeing there were 65 available positions, we were confident we’d have lots of spaces. However, it turned out to be a very busy place as it’s a white water rafting base and a huge group were celebrating a birthday so we were quite fortunate we arrived early enough to claim our area. 

The campground was very pretty, set alongside the raging Tully River - unfortunately not a swimming river due to crocodile sightings but we enjoyed watching the white water rafters. 

Without our tour guides, I doubt we would have found many of the sights so once again, we are very grateful for Mark & Kerri’s knowledge. We found a couple of beautiful waterfalls reached by walking through narrow tracks - luckily we only had 1 leech problem! 

We also explored the abandoned town of Cardstone which was built when the nearby power station was built in the 1950’s and dismantled in the 1980’s when the station was  automated. 

We were very fortunate to enjoy sunny days so we didn’t have any power issues (except maybe Kerri running over the corner of Dennis’s panel, and Dennis falling over Darryl’s! ) 

We have left that glorious part of Queensland and.are now in Paradise! You’ll have to stay tuned to the next blog to see where we are! Hope everyone is well. Love from Brays, Brays and Greenwoods ❌❌❌❌❌