The Atherton Tablelands are a good bit higher than the coastal area and so have quite a different climate. A very agricultural area but whereas sugar cane dominates the coastal areas here it's cattle country.

There is a lot to see here. Volcanic activity has left lakes like Lake Barrine or Lake Eacham, and vents like Hypipamee Crater. There's wonders of nature like the Curtain Fig Tree (the strangler figs seemed like plants from another planet.) Strangler figs literally strangle whatever they grow up, leaving shapes out of Doctor Who. Came across trees which have flowers on their trunk rather than branches (called cauliflory.) Weird.

Among the other attractions in the Tablelands are the waterfalls. There is a loop you can do which takes in three of them (Millaa-Millaa Falls, Ellinjaa Falls, and Zillie Falls.) It's all pleasantly rural and as yet denied the chance to catch up with the rat race.

I stayed at Chambers Wildlife Rainforest Lodges close by Lake Eacham. This was pushing it for the hire car, the driveway is a bumpy windy one car wide track dirt right through a forest. I did try for Mareeba wetlands but that road even worse too corrugated.

Every night John Chambers feeds the pademelons (a small squirrel like marsupial) with fruit and describes their complex social organisation. They post guards round the ones feeding, regulate the distances between each animal. There's honey gliders and muskrat kangaroos not to mention plentiful bird life. Like the stupid scrub turkeys which take no care of their eggs but instead peer through my door! A torch is recommended as it gets pretty dark at night.

An evening of night-time animal spotting with naturalist Glenn Holmes is my fondest memory here. He led me to a mere where we waited in the dusk for platypuses to emerge – ungainly to see but in water graceful. Saw stone curlews in graveyard. Drove along countless lanes with Glenn hanging out of window with spotlight plugged into cigarette lighter. We saw bats possums (Herberts River ring-tailed et cetera) another leaf tailed lizard on the road, a baby kestrel looking like an owl. The full moon and mist made the evening really eerie. At the platypus pond heard cane toads ‘motoring’ away to each other.