venture to innisfail, silkwood, paronella park, undara.

We set off to Inisfail a small north Queensland town with friendly people and spent the night in a caravan park.This is an entry to a caravan park in the main street of Inisfail but not the one we stayed at. The trees light up at night.
Just south of Inisfail we found a winery called "Murdering Point Winery" named after a massacre which occurred at that location many years ago. However the wine was made from the local fruits and native herbs grown in the area including lychees, mangoes, passionfruit and many others. They were all very nice especially the liqueur to rival baileys.

We travelled through the village of Silkwood which has the smallest bank in Australia.

Then onto Paronella Park a castle built by the  catalonian man Jose Paronella  who arrived in Innisfail in 1913 and worked hard for 11 years buying and selling cane farms to enable him to buy land where he commenced building his castle which included a ballroom and movie theatre. He planted 7000 trees and built Queensland's first hydroelectric power plant. There was also tennis courts and change rooms for the swimmers. However in 1946 logs being cleared upstream descended on the park destroying the refreshment rooms and then fire in 1979 swept through the castle and a cyclone in 1986. The new owners are gradually restoring it. The kauri forest above is often the backdrop for wedding photos.
Undara was our next experience, this is a series of lava tubes created by volcanic phenomena 190,000 years ago. Undara is home to one of the earth's longest lava flows from a single volcano with lava flows travelling more than 90 km to the north and 160 km to the north west. This resulted in the formation of underground caves with water flowing through thier bases. Many of these remain undiscovered. Some of these are homes to microbats which as they fly out they are eaten by the snakes which live in the trees at the cave entry.

Undara was originally part of a cattle station and its owners provided tours and accommodation and when the parks and wildlife wanted to turn some of this property into national park it was on the condition that it remained a tourist spot with various forms of accommodation along with tours. Guests eat at the restaurant and partake of a bush breakfast with kookaburras who drop in to sample the food from tourist's plates. We satyed in  ofthe old Queensland Railway carriages which had been converted to hotel rooms. Kangaroos roamed the outside gardens unperturbed by anybody.

Our next adventure was to Bowen which is a quiet town south of Townsville which is Queensland's oldest town, with Captain Cook passing this site in 1770. Captain Henry Daniel Sinclair discovered Port Denison in 1859 which is Bowen Harbour. Within a year of settlement there were 20 cattle stations in the area along with hotels, stores and government agencies. The movie "Australia" was filmed in Bowen. The history of Bowen is depicted by a series of murals painted on the side of buildings around the main street. There are several lovely beaches and walks around the area. The township has been maintained by the establishment of the Abbot Point Coal Loading Facility which is 20km north of Bowen and employees 500 personnel. Once again we found purdy relatives an old friend of Dale's who has a mango farm. He took us for a tour and told us the story from growing the small trees to exporting the fruit which was fascinating

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We  commenced our working holiday 15th January 2011 but not without drama as the heavens opened the week before we were due to leave Ballina causing road closures. Each day we mapped out a new route and in the end all exits were closed. I flew to Townsville and Dale followed in the car.
When I stepped off the plane a wall of humidity hit me and I thought "What have I done"  Roslyn (sister-in-law) picked me up and I stayed with her overnight and nearly melted. I went to my unit the next day which was right behind the hospital. Dale arrive later that day and we started settling in to our 2 bedroom townhouse with everything provided.
The Mater is very different (I had no expectations). Everything they do is different and the only familiarity is the anaesthetic machine which is the same as the old one at St. V's.
We had many an enjoyable weekend whilst in Townsville. We stayed at home one weekend and went away the next. The weekends we were home we went for a walk along The Strand which is a 2.4km walking/bike track along the foreshore with beautiful gardens, bbqs, benches and a water playground for the kids - although some were big kids.

We had a weekend on Magnetic Island - a small island 20 min ferry ride from Townsville. It has 4 bays catering to the holiday makers.

Early Feb Cyclone Yasi paid us a visit but we were not in the eye of it and only lost power for 24 hours and no damage to our unit but it certainly caused havoc around Townsville with powerlines down and trees uprooted.

There are other agency nurses here Gayle, Maree and Lisa who are very friendly and love a chat they have been on other placements like Burnie, Hobart, Saudi and the Emirates.
Dale commenced work mid Feb repairing household whitegoods full-time which part of the plan but that was what the company wanted.
We also did the 3 historical walks around Townsville visiting the old pubs, railway station and shopfronts. One one of our walks we found the old government offices and were invited inside to view an apartment - it was beautiful and all for a cool $1.49mill. The building had been converted into 5 apartments.

Charters Towers was our next visit just 1.5 hours drive from Townsville. It is a very quaint town with beautiful historic buildings. Gold was discovered here in 1871 and at one time was the 2nd largest city in Queensland with a population of 30,000. This very wealthy goldmining town had 3 calls a day at the gold stock exchange when mining was at its peak. There were 92 hotels in the city to cater for the miners thirst and had its own brewery. During WW11 15,000 USA military personnel were stationed at Charters Towers. Whilst here we visited the family history centre to track down Purdys as they lived here in Cemetery Rd and 2 purdy children were born in Mt Leyshon Rd. We got a little lead but Dale found other living relatives so we spent an entertaining afternoon with them. Dale's father went to school here.