We stayed out of town in a new bush camp on a corn farm, Bonadio RV Park. The farmer had cleared a small area beside the river. I don’t think they thought it would be so popular. The area was packed. It might have been just because of the school holidays or it may have been because it was cheap. $12 unpowered and $17 for powered. We were told to go down and pick our spot. We were going to go for powered but some of the vans had parked anyhow and some were taking up more than their share of room so there wasn’t enough left for us to fit into a power site. We generally like it when we are told, “to pick a spot” but not this time.

The park only had one set of facilities each and a family room. Whilst we were there, there would have been about 40 vans. One lady’s shower and one for men just didn’t seem enough. Like I said I don’t think the owners realized how popular the site would be. We talked to one of the owners and she said “we hardly had anyone until someone put it on Wiki and now we can’t keep up.”

The owners told us they had platypuses in the river and told us where they were frequently spotted. In the evening we took a walk along the river to see if we could spot any. We were out of luck. It was a nice walk though.

We took a trip to see the Curtain fig tree. It was massive. It is said to be over 500 hundred yeas old. Totally Amazing, I couldn’t get the whole tree into the photo it was so large. A curtain tree starts with a seed being deposited in a host tree. It starts to grow and send out aerial roots. This is the sad bit; the aerial roots will encircle the host tree eventually strangling it. Being dead the host tree will fall over onto another tree. The fig will continue to send roots out and in doing so will forms a curtain like appearance. The old host tree will eventually rot away. Not many of the old curtain fig trees are left now as a large part of the forest has been cleared to make way for man.

We drove on to a lovely village. Yungaburra. The streets were lined with flowers and there was an old fashion feel to the town. It is said the town has largely been unchanged since 1910. Walking around the town it is easy to believe it.

We were walking along looking at the different shops when we walked into a coffee shop to have a look at the pickles they were selling when the owner asked up if we already had morning tea. “No.”  “Well I have a high tea set up and the people have just canceled. It is only $10 a head if you are interested.” High tea for $10 each we are there. A table had been set up in the garden and we sat down with strangers. It was a lovely morning tea.  We chatted away to the strangers and we ate until we couldn’t eat any more. (Or maybe that was just me.) Some people left then more arrived; in the end there was 10 of us. We found out the morning tea was to raise money for the Leukemia Foundation as one of the women has lost her husband 10 month before from the disease. We were pleased we were there to support the Leukemia Foundation. If we had known we would have been happy to pay more.

We continued our walk around the town. It wasn’t over large but it did have some interesting shops. One shop had set up a little loom and asked people to “weave the love.”   We both had a go. I don’t know what would become of the item after it was finished. I only thought of that after we had left the town.

We made our way up to the Avenue of Honour. It was opened in 2013 as a memorial to the Australians who lost there lives in the Afghanistan war.  It is a fine way to show the contributions made by all service and the undaunted spirit of Australian Diggers. It was wonderful to see the memorial so well kept. I loved the dog. It is not often animals are given recognition. Nice touch.

On our way to the van park we spotted a strawberry farm where you could pick your own. Sound like fun to me. I was surprised at how much it cost to pick the fruit. I ummed and arred at the price, as it was very similar to what I would pay in the supermarket. I wanted a great bargain considering I was doing all the work. The funny thing was when we asked for a tub they insisted on giving us one each. I told them we only needed one and we were told that each person had to have one or they don’t get to pick. Ok. Silly rule but if it made the young girl happy I took one. We walked along being very selective. No I didn’t take a sample. There were sign up saying don’t eat any fruit as it has been sprayed with pesticides.   I don’t know if that was true or just there way of keeping people from pigging out. We filled a tub and went back to have it weighed. The young girl was surprised we filled only one tub. It was a big tub and we pick only what we thought we would eat. I guess most people don’t hence each person gets a tub.

We had been told the Cheese farm was a must see so in the afternoon we took a drive for coffee and cake. Everything was home made which was a problem as it all looked soo good I didn’t know what to chose. We sat outside taking the time to sit back and enjoy the view. Lovely spot.