.

Next morning I forced myself to keep quiet early, didn't want to upset the other campers on a Sunday morning, so laid in and read a book until I saw movement about.






Packed up quickly and got going.





Just a point of interest, when wandering I like to have 2 types of maps, its really nice to have a relief map and a road map (the map in the car dash changes scale really easily with the tuning knob from the stereo)
A bonus if I can have a satellite view on Google maps, really helpful especially when hooked into the car, I can literally push a button on the steering wheel, say "navigate to a bakery" and Google will find the nearest bakery and direct me.






This bridge marks the edge of the national park and start of the farming area/civilisation, I spent nearly an hour here taking photos and just soaking in the beauty.













You can just see the video camera on my bonnet in the pic above, it's on a suction mount. It fell off while going down the range from Kuranda later in the trip and survived being run over and bouncing along the road, footage intact. Walking back along that road to collect it may be the riskiest thing I did on this whole trip, straight drop off on one side and tight, busy road on the other. Thank God it wasn't far from a lookout otherwise I probably would have had to leave it behind.







The drive out of here was an amazingly fun way to spend a Sunday morning, I had the road to myself and made full use of it.













In one of those magical coincidences I believe I inadvertently took 2 photos looking back on each other, 1 here and 1 about a half hour later up the mountain range







Look straight into the centre background of this pic about two thirds of the way up the range and imagine yourself looking back at this point







I was on that valley floor looking up here, without knowing where I was headed!




The blue scribble is the campground, 459 Goldsborough road is about where I took the photos on the hilltop, the lookout speaks for itself.

The drive up Gilles Range Road was so curvy, tight and steep that I actually found it intimidating towards the end and was glad to reach the top. The one time on since I got my new car that I could've wished for something else, early on I thought I was doing well, passed a couple of sedans, car was running smoothly, I check my rear mirror and I've got one of those new Ford Focus Sti's up my butt, next slow lane I'm ashamed to say I let him pass...

The round lakes in the bottom left of this map grab are the craters of 2 extinct volcanoes, filled with rain water and some of the most pristine lakes I have ever seen, including lake McKenzie on Fraser Island. Lake Eacham especially was divine, I'm lucky enough to get to see a lot of places and this was one of those spots that just feel special. I even forgot to take many photos or use the loo, I was spellbound.


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