Friday, 23 September 2011

Day 58

DAY 58 – Sunday
After breakfast we packed our lunch and headed towards Tully.  We decided to go through to Murray Falls first, and then come back to Tully for the sugar mill tour.  At the falls, there was a lovely little campsite, with both a day use and an overnight use area.  We parked the car and made our way along a wooden boardwalk to the viewing area for the falls.  Once again, the falls were beautiful, with water flowing over the lovely small rocks into the pool below.  The water then flowed under and over rocks and down a small creek.  We took some photos, got back in the car, and headed back to Tully.

At Tully, we called into the Tourist Information and paid for our tour.  We found a nice little picnic area where we ate our lunch.  While we were eating our lunch, we noticed that there was a lady sitting at one of the other tables, and she obviously had all of her belongings packed around and under the table.  She told us of a few places to see around Tully, and then proceeded to tell us that she left her husband yesterday, and was waiting for a friend to pick her up. (The next day when we were heading to Townsville, we saw that she was still there!). 

After lunch we headed to the Tully Sugar Mill for our tour.  We waited in a little room for everyone to arrive, and then we had our safety brief.  Next, it was into a side room to get our hard hats and ear plugs, and then off to the mill.

Our first stop was one of the cane trains, which we had seen carrying harvested cane around the countryside.  There was a man taking the pins out from between the carriages, and a machine would pick up the carriage and turn it upside down to empty the sugar cane onto a large conveyer belt.  The conveyer belt took the cane to the crusher and then into the mill.

The rest of the tour showed us all the stages of the processing from cane to sugar.  The mill uses the-by products of the process.  The mulch is sent back to the farms, and the rubbish is burnt to create power that runs the mill.  They also put some power back into the grid.  At the end we all received a sample bag of raw sugar to take home.

When we left the mill, we headed to a local swimming hole called Alligators Nest.  It was a lovely lawn area with public barbecues, and a swimming hole in the local creek.  There were platforms with steps leading down into the creek.  Mitchell and Thomas put on their bathers and raced to the water.  The water was icy cold and after a quick dip they soon got out, and we headed back to camp.

On the way home, we called into Murdering Point Winery and did some tasting.  They had some really nice wines that were made from different fruit such as mango, passionfruit, pineapple, chocolate pudding fruit, and ginger.  We bought some wine, some port, and some liquor crème.

Then we went back to camp, where Mitch decided that he wanted to swim in the ocean.  Darren and I took our chairs down to the beach to watch, and Thomas decided that he would swim too.  Once they had enough, they headed for the shower, while we went back to the caravan to put tea on.

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