Day 17: Travel Day, part 1

6 June 2017

Today we began our journey inward, away from the ocean.  What I will miss the most is leaving the slider of our bedroom balcony open at night and hearing the ocean as I lay in bed.  We decided to make a few stops along the way.  We are staying the night in Charters Towers, a medium-sized town along the way to the farm stay. 

Along the way, we stopped at a re-creation of a village called Herberton .  There is an actual village of Herberton a short ways away, but this is a re-creation.  It looks like a small village, with homes and shops, but each home and shop is either re-created to look as it did long ago or houses a collection of some sort.  The buildings are all original, brought to the Historic Village, either as a whole or in parts.  Some are from the actual town of Herberton, but some are from other villages.  I preferred the buildings that were created to look like they originally did.  There was one shop they called a toy shop (it hadn’t originally been that), but it housed a collection of toys.  Another was called a frock shop (women’s dresses) but it housed a collection of women’s clothing and christening gowns.  A sign said that many women brought fine dresses with them from England, only to realize that the clothing was completely unsuitable for life in Australia.  It was an interesting museum, containing something for everyone.  It also included an old pub turned hotel that served an historic meal (stew, bread, billy tea), but it was still morning so we did not purchase meals.  I would recommend it.  I especially liked seeing the old homes and how they families lived.  There was a lot to see, but we just glanced at some of the less interesting bits and spent more time for our interest (I, of course, spent the most time in the school house and enjoyed looking at some of the homes and shops).

bedroom

primary classroom at the school

Intermediate students' classroom

Nice passage about mothers that read to their children!  :)

The outside of the school

The back of the bank.  The bank tellers worked at several different banks.  Included in their pay was an allowance for feed for their horse who was stabled out back.  The teller slept in the bed before setting off for the next bank.

Women's dresses and infant christening gowns.  In the front was a cradle they found in a scrap heap.

A children's puppet theater from France.

Old metal "billboards" for Sunlight soap, made in England by the Lever company,  They originally started using the boards as advertising in Africa, but the locals kept stealing them for the metal.  Then they started using them to advertise in Australia.  Most of them that are found have bullet holes from people using them for target practice (these did too).

Apothecary bins

creek at Herberton.  We never even got to the part on the other side of the creek!

The local gentry's home.

One of the streets lined with shops

For our next stop, we took a road that visits three waterfalls.  We saw these last time we were here, and two of them are worth the drive (the other one didn’t warrant a stop).  We stopped first at Millaa Millaa Falls.  When we had been there before, it was very pretty, with a pool at the bottom collecting the water and two teenage boys were swimming there.  This time there was a building with changing rooms and there were two bus-fulls of teens and twenty-somethings swimming in that cold water.  The falls in the area were caused by the actions of the earth after volcanoes erupted, as can be seen by the basalt columns behind the waterfall. 

The second  waterfall was Ellinjaa Falls.  I remembered that the last time we were there, there were wild turkeys in the picnic area leading to the falls—they were still there!  (Though they might be different turkeys—I’m not sure how long they live).  There are many steps down to the base of the falls—they were quite damp and muddy.  The steps at Millaa Millaa were dirt framed by wood and they were also damp, so slippery as well.  Again, both of these falls were sacred to the indigenous people of the area. 

Then, straight traveling to reach Charters Towers around 7:30.  Our rooms had a double bed, two twin beds, a small refrigerator and microwave, so we stopped at a Woolworth’s grocery store we saw on they way to find dinner and bought some milk, muffins, and fruit for breakfast.  Tomorrow is an early start—leaving at 6:30!

sugarcane

A cane train.  The small-gauge tracks run along the side of the fields.  The trains take the cane to the refineries.

The cane train