Roadtrip Tully, Cardwell to Ingham

Although things have been very quiet on the blog over the last couple of years, those of you who follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will have seen we’ve still been out and about having a few adventures with Black Betty and Peter Prado. As I have been getting to know our blog again, it is really interesting to review our stats and see that we still get anywhere between 50-100 visits per day to the blog through people searching for camping spots and landing on places we have visited, so I definitely want to add this small trip to the blogosphere!

Way back in June 2016 when Matt and I were both still Scout leaders, we headed off to a scout camp with the kids in Ingham and along the way managed to add in some quality family time by turning it in to a long weekend. To start with, we took a whole day to travel just over 300 kilometres to our overnight camp at Abergowrie State Forest. It was an ‘explore your own backyard’ kinda day. We really loved it – we could almost pretend we were back on the road travelling around oz again!

Here’s how the weekend went down …………….

First stop was the Big Gumboot in Tully. While Matt and the kids climbed to the top of the Gumboot, I did a quick trip to the op shop up the Main Street to buy some cheap towels which I had realised I had forgotten to pack – ooopps! Obviously out of practice! Tully is well known for being Australia’s wettest town, but we managed to see it with blue skies between showers.

Big Gumboot

From Tully we headed off to travel along the Cardwell Forest Drive (we did it backwards) and see if we could locate the famous Cardwell Spa Pools – mission accomplished with a stop at the Cardwell Lookout at the end of the drive for lunch from the back of the camper. We can highly recommend the forest drive – heaps of great places to stop and explore. It was a little tricky to find from the Kennedy end of the Highway though – if in doubt – ask at the Kennedy Shop.

We had a look at the Kennedy State School first which is where my Grandad, Fred Morris, was the principal for many years.

Forest Drive road – dirt but not too rough

A small creek crossing

Beautiful little creeks

We did indeed find the Cardwell Spa Pool and it is just as spectacular as my google searches had showed! The water is such a beautiful, clear, blue colour. The mozzies were fierce when we were there though – highly recommend the insect repellant. Matt and the kids all had a swim and the best bit was that being a Friday, we had the whole place to ourselves. It is not a very big swimming spot so would be crowded with a few people there.

There were a few other spots to check out along the way, we stopped at Dead Horse Creek for a look, but didn’t have time to do the walk to Attie Creek Falls – saved that one for next time.

The lookout was a top spot for lunch and we were all starving!

Next it was on to Abergowrie State Forest to set up for a quick one night camp. We arrived around 4pm so had time to get the camper up and then go for a quick wander before tea. It had rained a little before our arrival so the campground was quite soggy. It is a beautiful spot – very quiet due to being a long way in off the highway. There is a beautiful swimming spot with a pontoon, but being winter, none of us braved the water. We did a couple of short walks around the campsite, one along the creek and one along the boardwalk to the big fig tree – plenty to see and plenty of space with a great day use area. It would be good kayaking and canoeing here too.

Our campsite – Abergowrie State Forest

From Abergowrie we headed in to Ingham for two days of scout camp. Our adventure continued on the way home when we decided to go and visit Wallaman Falls, Australia’s highest, permanent, single drop waterfall. It was spectacular and well worth the bit of extra driving.

You can walk all the way to the base of the waterfall, but we didn’t feel up to carrying Kipp all the way down and all the way back, so we just walked part of the way to a couple of extra lookouts. Beautiful scenery. There is national park camping there too – we did a quick drive – looked nice but quite cramped.

We finished off our quick weekend away with a stop in Cardwell for fish and chips and a crab burger for lunch – YUM! Cardwell is such a beautiful spot – just such a shame that there is no swimming due to crocs. Oh we also had a quick drive through the Hinchinbrook Channel Lookout too.