Tully

Tully claims to be the wettest town in Australia, the 'golden gumboot' in town is the height of the amount of rain they received in 1950 - 7,900 mm, or 7.9 metres. That's a lot of rain! Luckily for us most of it falls during the tropical wet season, and we experienced hot, dry conditions.

Tully is just inland of where tropical cyclone Yasi hit the coast on 3 February this year, causing immense damage to the town and surrounding districts. Many buildings are still covered by tarpaulins as they wait to have roofs repaired and you can see many damaged and derelict buildings. However the town is well and truly open for business, and I am sure would have appreciated the money we spent during our stay.

The countryside all up the Queensland north coast is sugar cane country, and the sugar mill at Tully is one of the last that still runs tours. We've done quite a few tours on our trip around Australia, mostly of mine related sites, and typically you are driven around in a bus and not allowed to even open the windows for a decent photo, let alone to get out and get close to the action. However, the Tully mill tour kits you out in a hard hat, safety glasses and ear plugs and takes you walking all around the site. We got to see the whole process up close, from the time the cane is tipped from train bins onto conveyor belts, through crushing, washing, purifying, crystallising and drying, all the way to raw sugar crystals. Further refinement of the raw sugar down to the white sugar we are all familiar with is done elsewhere, and all of the product from the Tully mill is exported. The mill generates its own electricity using the waste cane after crushing ('bagasse') and in fact earns several million dollars annually from selling surplus power back to the grid. It was a fantastic tour, we got to peer through a window inside the red hot furnaces, look down into the crystallising machines (holding onto our hard hats so they didn't fall in) and taste the molasses laden crystals before final processing. We even got a small sample bag of the final product to take home!

The Tully River is reputed to have the best white water rafting in Australia, and thanks to the hydroelectric power station 50km upstream of the town the water level is guaranteed all year round. We spent a fantastic day rafting down rapids up to grade 4, getting very, very wet in the process. We were probably 30 years older than everyone else (maybe 20 years older than the guide) but we paddled, screamed, hung on and fell out with the rest of them. In case you are having trouble picking us out in the photos at left, we are in the second back row of the boat, with John on the left of the photo and Wendy on the right in a red helmet. The trip included a barbecue lunch, which provided a welcome respite for us to recover our strength before the final hour down the river. Our arms ached for a couple of days afterward, and we had to reschedule the golf game we'd planned for the next day - neither of us felt we could possibly swing a club with any sort of enthusiasm! But we had a great time, and showed all those youngies that you don't have to give up on adventure just because you are past the first flush of youth.

We'd planned to do a bit of walking in some of the national parks around Tully and Mission Beach, which is on the coast about 20km from Tully. However quite a few walking trails are still closed because of cyclone damage, and it took a couple of days to dry our runners after the rafting trip. We did manage the 2km return walk up Murray Falls, which was steep enough in the tropical heat to count as a decent walk. The rest of the trails will have to wait until we revisit this beautiful part of the country.