Hervey’s Range Tea House and Train Tunnels

August 1, 2006

We went on a bus tour with a really friendly guy who showed us around a historical area. He brought us to this “tea house” which looked like a trailer home from the front, but the inside was beautiful. Everything was dark wood and very homey. It was built in 1965 for the cattle drivers at a hotel. He then brought us to some trenches where train tracks used to run. They used to bring nickel to a little place down the road. They brought so much that they depleted the source with in 15 year and ripped up the tracks in 1997. But along the tracks there are tunnels that they made by cutting through solid rock. Pretty cool stuff. Here's a pic.



Beside the tracks were patches of rainforest. We are in dry season right now (their winter) so there was very little to now water right now, but in a few months the whole place will be full of waterfalls – can’t wait! Here's pictures of the rocks.



But I was smart and brought sneakers this time so I had no problem hiking down the rocks, but the other cute little Americans decided to wear flip-flops, which by the way are thongs here – not to be confused with the underwear, I’ve made that mistake a few times, it’s a little embarrassing. they had a rough time of it. The view from down there was amazing though. Here's a pic



Supposedly, this patch of rainforest is one of the oldest. There are some type of pine trees here that grow an half an inch a year, and they were over 200 feet tall (or at least looked it) but this is one of the biggest patches of these trees in Queensland
After that little tour we went back to the teahouse where they served us “damper” and syrup. Damper is a type of bread that the cattle drivers used to eat while they were on the trail. It was delicious. Then we had our tea and I got a meat pie, which was quite delicious. Here's a picture of us in front of the teahouse.



Then we went back into Townsville and went to this little park that they just started building. There are three phases of building for the park, the first stage is done – the pool, art gallery and restaurant. The next phase is an AFL stadium (Aussie rules Football league), and I’m not sure what the last phase is. But the park is a 20 minute bike ride from JCU and its right on the river so we will probably go there more often especially since it is free. This is a picture of the pool, you can see the river in the background.