Granite Gorge

25 – 27 September 2023

We stopped for lunch in Mareeba, at the park near the Visitor Information Centre then set off for Granite Gorge. I set the GPS for our destination even though we were fairly confident we knew which way to go, and hadn’t travelled far when we realised that, once again, the “crazy woman” was leading us astray. We backtracked and found the correct turn-off.

We checked in and chose our powered site and then the real trouble began. We had packed up in between showers and the canvas was still very wet – and that had led to quite a bit of water getting inside the camper. The mattress and bedding was quite wet around the edges. In the past we have been able to dry things off easily by lifting the mattress slightly and directing the fan onto it but this was much worse than anything we had experienced before. I drove back into Mareeba to buy a larger fan, and also a hair dryer.

Back at the camp we pulled the mattress out of the trailer, set it on the table in the sun and used the new (small and very cheap) hairdryer to dry it out. It took a while, but it worked. We didn’t use the fan so we returned it on our way out of Mareeba a couple of days later.

We had a quiet evening after quite an energetic afternoon. Granite Gorge is home to a unique marsupial – the Mareeba Rock Wallaby so in the morning we walked down to the part of the gorge where they can be seen easily and fed – if you buy the feed at the reception. Mick spent a bit of time wandering the grounds photographing birds, and we also went for a walk along the creek that runs beside the unpowered camping area. It was school holidays and there were lots of families visiting.

We thought we might stay for three nights but decided that two would be enough so we booked a site at Yungaburra for the next few nights and moved on.