Tully Sugar Mill, Tully, FNQLD

During our second stopover at Mission Beach with Andrew's parents, Andrew and Ian went on a tour of the sugar mill in Tully. We've been passing through hundreds of kilometres of cane fields for several weeks, including seeing cane being harvested and transported to mills on little cane trains. The tour gave quite a detailed look at the whole process and was very interesting and informative.

Basically the whole train carriage is tipped upside down and the cane dumped on a conveyor belt where it passes through a strong electro-magnet to remove any metal before it is crushed and pressed to remove the juice. The crushed cane is sprayed with hot water and pressed several more times to make sure all the juice has been removed. The left over fiberous matterial, begasse, is dried and used as a fuel for the boilers that power the mill.

The juice is then spun in a centrifuge to separate out the raw sugar crystals, which are then dried in a huge tumble drier, before being placed in trucks and sent to the port, ready for export to China. The mills runs 24/7 between June and December/January, unloading a carriage of cane every 40 seconds. Last year they processed over 3,000,000 tonnes of cane at this mill alone!

The Atherton Tablelands, Kuranda Rainforest Markets, FNQLD

We took the long way back to Andrew's Mum and Dad's place in Mission Beach, climbing up onto the Atherton Tablelands. First stop was Kuranda, where we tried to embrace our inner hippie at the Kuranda Rainforest Markets! This was a fun place and for Andrew, bought back memories of family holidays at Byron Bay in the early 70s when he was a kid.

The Atherton Tablelands were quite interesting; it's  a tropical dairy area and looks very similar to Gippsland. The rainforest has all been cleared to make way for lush green pastures, dotted with dairy cows. We also saw many coffee and tea plantations. Such a dramatic change from the jungle and palm tree lined white beaches of the coast.

Low Isles, Great Barrier Reef, FNQLD

Today's excursion is out to Low Iles, an hour and a bit off Port Douglas on the inner reef. The plan all along was to go snorkeling on the Barrier Reef, so we'd been looking forward to it for many weeks; every time we contemplated things like a helicopter ride over Katherine Gorge, we'd decide to walk away and save the money for a trip out to the reef. In the end it was soooo worth it!  

The weather was absolutely perfect for snorkeling - no wind for the last few days meant clear water and the sun was out for the 'postcard' photos. We saw lots of coral, fish large and small, as well as quite a few small reef sharks (plus at least one big shark that I didn't even see; I saw it later when reviewing the video!) Even though we were swimming in the ocean, and been within a metre of reef sharks, we were surprisingly not scared of them. To be honest I was very concerned about meeting a shark that might want to eat me. However all that fear disappeared after the first shark swam past without showing any interest in me at all.

The tour company put on a fabulous smorgasbord lunch, but to be honest we put off eating until the last possible moment, because we didn't want to leave the water!

Relaxing with a drink on the trip back, while watching the colours of the ocean change as the sun started to go down, was a lovely way to cap off the day. Unfortunately the lack of wind that gave us the clear water, meant that we couldn't use the sails.

There's no doubt that this will be a day we'll talk about for years!