Day 7 - North Queensland - Chillagoe

Spot the Wallaby!

After seeing that awesome sunset over the smelters I had the rad idea to wake up ridiculously early and go photograph the smelters at sunrise! Sunrise was definitely not as dramatic as sunset :P Oh well, I'll share those photos in a seperate post because chillagoe is pretty image heavy! There was a lot happening for a sleepy sleepy town! After my photo expedition I went back, grabbed Ben from his delicious slumber and we checked out of our hotel motel.  The dude I think was a bit taken a back and just told us to leave it all open!

We then set off to Chillagoe's information centre to book our tickets to go cave exploring! I mentioned Chillagoe is famous for it's dinosaur bones though it's probably more famous for it's limestone caves! We ended up in the information centre engaged in conversation with a delightful old man, who obviously loved his town. He gave us several ideas to fill the day plus our tickets for Donna Cave, which promised a 'fairy grotto'!

One of the attractions we were told to check out was, Balancing Rock, so we went there before our tour of Donna Cave started.

The landscape of Chillagoe is amazing and not what I was expecting.
I was thinking inland = dryness but it was actually lush and rad!

eep! the obligatory shot of Balancing Rock!

Donna Cave was amazing but again I have that nasty habit of taking too many photos for one blog entry, so i'll skip to our exploring we did afterwards. Chillagoe has six caves, three are by ticket/guide only and three are self guided. We decided to check out Pompeii which is a self guided one. Although much smaller than Donna cave it was definitely worth checking out!

We definitely fell in love with caves!!

After our cave exploring we checked out the local aboriginal paintings

Minimal but cool none the less

Too many things to do...we then made our way to the cemetery.   When the lovely old man from the info centre mentioned it as something we should check out, I loved him even more as I love cemeteries!

It was super hot so we then popped into the local swimming hole we had been directed too. I appreciate North qld for it's deserted swimming holes!

We then went to check out the smelters, Chillagoe other claim to fame, even though I had already been there, Ben wanted to check them out as well :)
(but I'll save that overload of images for another blog post)

Let's just say it turned into an epic day, we said goodbye to Chillagoe and started the long drive back to Mission Beach making sure to stop in at some cool places on our way back...stay tuned!

Always fascinated by the different signs up here!

Frog Rock ART!