Balgal Beach (Townsville)

After watching Brazil get beaten 7-1 by the Germans, it was time to leave Cairns and start the long journey south back to Sydney... only two weeks to go!

First stop was "The Boulders" at Babinda.

Our next stop was Tully. We tried to find a farm where Graeme stayed 30 years ago on his family holiday to Cairns, however no luck. We think we found the property but the farm house was gone!

Was this the Tully farm from 30 years ago?

We stopped in at Hinchinbrook lookout before finding a caravan park in Ingham for the night.

Hitchinbrook Lookout (16 km north of Ingham)

We were all up early the next morning to watch the second Soccer World Cup semi-final between Nederlands and Argentina. After 120 minutes and no score Argentina won on penalties.

We packed up and left the caravan at the park and then headed up to Wallaman Falls. The main drop is 268 meters, making this Australia's tallest single-drop waterfall.

We then made our way to Little Crystal creek and Big Crystal creek... these were both beautiful and gave us another chance for a swim!

Big Crystal Creek

Little Crystal Creek

Bridge over Little Crystal Creek

We then moved onto one of our favourite camp site of the whole trip, Balgal Beach. This is a tiny free camping site approx 40 km north of Townsville, and is located between the beach and the river. The river had a jetty and boat ramp for easy fishing, and the beach was great for a walk at low tide.

We also took a day trip down to Townsville and had lunch on the new $40M board walk. We also ran into Jonathan Thurston a couple of days after Origin 3.

We ran into a grey nomad who was going up and down the beach with a metal detector. So what do we do - offer to help! We found 2 x $2 coins and a number of old soft drink cans.

Balgal Beach was an overnight stay which turned into a 4 days... a great place to stay.