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Bullo River
Station |
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To get to Bullo River Station,
you fly from Darwin in a small plane across a vast savannah,
then land on a strip next to the homestead, which runs 6,000
head of magnificent Brahmin cattle.
It’s run by Marlee Ranacher and her husband. Petite, beautiful
Marlee musters cattle, brands them, and castrates the bulls.
After the “wet” season each year, she grades the roads with her
bulldozer. When son Franzie was born close to road-grading time,
her husband rigged up an infant seat next to her on the grader!
On weekday mornings, the boys go to the School of the Air with a
teacher hundreds of miles away. They communicate by phone and
email from a school room in the homestead. They even have choral
practice with the other kids – on the air! Whereas we worry
about teaching kids to look both ways crossing the street, these
boys have to learn to watch out for snakes and salt water
crocodiles.
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After
school, the boys help Mum with station chores and help Dad with the
tourists. When we went barramundi fishing, the boys passed trays of
cheese and crackers and helped Dad gather bait from the river – all
while keeping a keen eye out for the huge old “salties” basking on the
river banks.
I saw fantastic bird life and ancient Aboriginal rock art. I tried to
learn how to crack a whip. I loved touring the cattle yards and seeing
what happens when the cattle are mustered, sorted, and shipped off to
market.
The memory that endures best was the helicopter ride out over the
ranges, down into a stunning gorge past waterfalls, landing on brilliant
white sand, and then swimming in the purest water imaginable. Heaven on
earth! Next time I go, I’m going to spend the night in that gorge… light
a fire, unroll a swag, boil the billy and cook up a steak, pour some
fine Aussie wine and then sleep like a baby. |
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Rose Gums Wilderness Retreat is a very special
eco-lodge in the Atherton Tablelands, just west of Cairns. Every year
thousands of tourists descend upon Cairns to go to the Great Barrier
Reef and the Daintree Rainforest, not realizing that only an hour away
up in the cool mountains, there is an area that has its own special
environment. It is a landscape of banana, coffee and tea plantations,
sheep farms, and rainforests with hundreds of exotic birds. Australia’s
unique platypus, an egg-laying mammal, lives in the creeks here, and the
rare musky rat kangaroo (smallest kangaroo in the world) forages for
food on the forest floor.
The accommodation at Rose Gums is individual villas perched on a
hillside, so you feel that you are in a treehouse. There are luxurous
beds, wood-burning stoves, peaceful decks with comfy chairs – the sort
of place where you can unwind for a few days in the middle of a busy
itinerary, and re-charge your batteries.
Each unit has a fully equipped kitchen, although dinner can be taken in
their unusual restaurant where the chef does Laotian (Asian) dishes
every evening.
Your first morning breakfast makings are left in the fridge for you to
cook – organic eggs, bacon, bread, butter, jams, yogurt and cereals.
After breakfast, you can try one of the many walking trails on the
property. The owners, Jon and Peta Nott, are re-establishing the
original rainforest. They’ve already re-forested many acres with
thousands of trees. Jon is a serious birder and will take clients out
birding. One afternoon I finally saw my first cassowary in the wild!
If you are tempted to leave this paradise, the surrounding area offers
the famous Curtain Fig, wetlands filled with birds, historic sites,
antique shops, crater lakes, and waterfalls like this one! Or you can
try to spot the rare musky-rat kangaroo, the smallest kangaroo in the
world (about the size of a guinea pig).
I wish I had discovered the Atherton Tablelands many years ago. From now
on, I will try to fit a few days there into itineraries that include
Cairns, because it is one of those places where you can be as active or
inactive as you want to, and truly feel at home in Australia! |
