Christmas in July - why not?!

Yesterday we drove inland from Cairns through the Atherton Tablelands. This area is where a lot of the local produce comes from, e.g. we drove through plantations for sugar, banana, tea and coffee.



One interesting stop was at the so-called "Curtain Fig Tree" where lots of other trees and roots have literally overgrown the original tree and created an enormous monster of a tree.



For lunch we wanted to eat at a Swiss restaurant (with its own yodeler bar!) in the small town of Yungaburra. However, when we got there we arrived too late because they need to get ready for a big event that evening...Christmas!!! Yup, that's right. Why only have one Christmas a year when you can have two?! (A concept, which surprisingly Lucy and Fiona thought was just brilliant.)

We did end up at the Vienna Inn just up the road in Yungaburra for lunch instead. Apart from tha,t things in Yungaburra were just fine (especially at the senior citizen bowling club, where all the excitement of the game was well contained)...



In the afternoon we stopped at a crater lake named Lake Barrine. All very quiet and relaxing...



...until we were "woken up" (just before Cairns) by a huge noise approaching our car from the rear.



Literally a few hundered "Hells Angels" on their motorbikes were coming into view in the rear mirror... And a few seconds later surrounded us, which made for quite a grand arrival as they kind of "shepherded" us back into Cairns.