Field Family of Four: Day 4

Yes you read the title right Day 4, I am skipping Day 3. I plan to add Day 3 with Day 7 since both days were spent at the Great Barrier Reef and it is hard to tell which pictures came from which day.

Day 4 was sunny and wonderful!

We took a bus tour of the tablelands and the area south of Cairns.
Westly had some styling shades.

The tablelands are on top of the rain forest mountains, it was so beautiful up there.

Our first stop on our bus tour was lake Barrine,

which is a giant crater left by a volcanic eruption.

We took a boat tour around the lake and

saw 1,000 year old giant kauri trees,

and even some turtles!

After Lake Barrine we stopped at Curtain Fig Tree, estimated to be 500- 800 years old.

This type of fig tree is called a strangler fig, it will slowly wrap it's roots around the 'host' tree and will totally take over, or strangle the host tree of its nutrients, hence the name "Strangler Fig"

While at the Curtain Fig tree we saw a tree kangaroo! Unfortunately you can hardly see it in this picture but maybe you can spot the tail hanging down.

Our third stop was Millaa Millaa Falls.

Guess who jumped in? It was freezing!

While Bridger was swimming the rest of us hung out on the shore catching rays of sunshine.

Probably the most exciting spotting of the day was the cassowary crossing the road.

She definitely looks like a dinosaur descendant to me.

One of my favorite stops was Paronella Park

Jose Paronella was raised in Spain and grew up listening to his Grandmother tell him stories of beautiful Spanish castles.

He moved to Australia in the early 1900's and made his fortune. He eventually built his own Spanish castles here in Australia in the early 1920's.

Paronella was a genius for his time and built his own hydro-electric plant (see on the right side in the picture below) and was one of the first to have electricity in the county.