Millaa Millaa was our introduction to the Atherton Tablelands – beautiful countryside to drive around, stunning waterfalls – especially after all the March rain – great history to absorb and an amazing range of local and unique produce to sample and enjoy – cheese, wine, honey, jams, chutneys, sauces, etc. We loved it!
Kerry’s snippets in fuchsia
Getting there
Innisfail > Milla Milla (60km)
It’s another short hop to our destination, and we stopped at the Ma:Mu Tropical Skywalk, about half way along. Its a nice relaxing drive through more rain forest areas – a few potholes but most I managed to avoid.
We got to Ma:Mu early – they don’t open until 9:30 – but they are kind to us and let us in a bit early. Cost is $25 for a normal person (Kerry) and $21 for a senior. Very good value. The total walk is 1.1km to the tower and that same distance return.
But it is a lovely walk – especially with the guide book that tells us about the numbered trees and plants. It really is fascinating to see such an amazing diversity of plants.
The walk comprises a 350 metre long elevated walkway through the canopy, a cantilever, a 37 metre observation tower and more than 1200 metres of walking tracks. The initial part of the walk is through the rainforest, and the second part up on elevated walkways, so that we can see the plants from the ground to the tree tops.
The walkway has been built through the areas destroyed by cyclone Larry and information panels explain how the different plants compete to be the plants that recover best – they talk about the race to the treetops. Inevitably, it’s the climbers that win.
The climbers are amazing – so many and such a variety. Loved the “Hairy Mary Lawyer Vine” which is actually a climbing palm. The Candle Vine is also very pretty – having elongated leaves which are pinched half way along their length. Unfortunately though, it seems to be the wrong season for most of the flowers.
The cantilevered walkway and the observation tower provided great views over the North Johnstone River and the valley below. The tower is very high but still does not take us to the top of the nearby trees.
The town – Mullaa Mullaa
Millaa Millaa is a small town on the Atherton Tableland. This area was traditionally home to the Ma:mu Aboriginal people. It is thought that the name Millaa Millaa was derived from an Aboriginal word describing a fruit-bearing plant.
In 1884 the explorer Christie Palmerston created a track from Innisfail through Millaa Millaa to Herberton. Land around Millaa Millaa was first settled by white people in 1910. By 1913 there was a population of around 100. Only 6 were women.
The first settlers created dairy farms and their produce had to be sent to Atherton or Malanda. When the railway was extended in 1921, the Millaa Millaa Hotel opened and the Millaa Millaa Sawmilling Company started in 1924.
Timber was also important: massive logs, eight feet in diameter and up to 30 feet long (the maximum allowed by the railways) were hauled out of the forests. There were two sawmills and two timber merchants in the town.
In the 1960s dairying declined (130 suppliers in 1960, 58 in 1971), the railway closed in 1964, a veneer mill closed and the dairy factory was amalgamated with the Malanda Dairy Association in 1973. The town’s population nearly halved between the 1950s and 2000. In 1965 the Millaa Millaa Co-operative had changed from butter to cheese production, winning several prizes.
Today Millaa Millaa has local shops, a tourist park, the Eacham historical museum, a golf club, a primary school and the Mungalli biodynamic cheese factory. The Liberty picture theatre (1947) is on the Australian heritage register. The nearby Millaa Millaa waterfalls are listed on the Queensland heritage register. The town’s main attraction is the 17 km Waterfalls Circuit which covers three impressive, and very different, waterfalls.
The van park
The Millaa Millaa Tourist Park (Kui) is a large area on the side of a hill. We got the only drive-through site – a hard track that curves around a large tree.
The amenities are fine, if dated, but are a long walk from our site. There is a swimming pool which we did not try as the weather was much cooler than the coast. I could not see a camp kitchen. There is no dump point.
For $25 a night it is a good place to stop.
Day 0 (arrival day)
We went up to the tourist information office at the museum and got the instructions on how to find the the trio of waterfalls on the 17km Waterfall Circuit, on the looping Theresa Creek Rd. None of the falls are far from town and all have sealed road access.
First up was Millaa Millaa Falls. These plunge falls are over 18 m high with a swimming hole at their base. They are reputably the most photographed in Australia and are a popular swimming spot. If lucky, the guide said, we could have seen the Ulysses Butterfly (which we did, a beautiful little creature) and platypus late in the afternoon (which we didn’t).
Unfortunately, there were 3 bus loads of young tourists there when we arrived, stepping over the keep out signs to get to the rock edges. So mostly we saw young tourists doing what young tourists do – make loads of noise and try to impress the opposite sex. It was near impossible to get a photo without people in it.
I decided to get our waterproof camera and swim out to the falls. It was really cool getting in – and I don’t mean it looked great – but once I was in it was fine. In fact very refreshing. Swimming out to the falls was against the current so not so easy with a camera. But I got some good shots.
I swam over to one side of the fall, and saw 3 or 4 of the girls clamouring over rocks in a large cavity behind the falls. But I did not try that as the girls were struggling.
Then suddenly, at some signal, all the young tourists scrambled out of the water and away from the viewing area, and got ready to leave. Then I could finally get a people-free photo.
Zillie Falls are 7.5km from Millaa Millaa falls on the circuit and it is a lovely drive – beautiful rolling hills. 
A short walk from the carpark there is a viewing platform at the top of the falls, with good views of the cascading water and the rapids just up-river of the falls. Its a small viewing area and most people go out onto the rocks just above the falls to get a better look.
We wanted a picture with no people in it and we had to ask a group of 3 girls to move aside after we waited a good while. They were sitting on a rock in the middle of the rapids and no photo could have excluded them.
These young women could see we were waiting to take a photo and just completely ignored us. Eventually 2 of them moved and the 3rd one was just texting on her phone – not even looking at the scenery. I had to clamber most of the way down to ask her to move so we could get a photo.
I don’t think there was a way to get down to the base of the falls safely. We did see a very rough looking track but it was very wet and slippery.
Ellinjaa Falls, 3 kms on from Zillie falls, are picturesque falls that cascade over a series of lava columns. They are reached after a very pleasant rain forest walk from the carpark, perhaps 500m.
The track took us to the pool, but the volume of water made swimming impossible, at least in my mind.
Perhaps if the 3 busloads of tourist had made it there things may have been different.
Day 1
We went to Ravenshoe, visiting a couple of waterfalls on the way. We drove the Old Palmerston Hwy, and turned left onto Mullins Rd. I think one of the falls (maybe Pepina) is signposted at the turnoff, but you need to look out for it.
We found ourselves at Souita Falls after about 7 or 8km – maybe a tad more. This was the falls that the lady in the Tourist Information Centre had said was leech infected. When she and her family walked it on the weekend she had to take one leech out of her husband’s eyeball – doesn’t that make you shiver!
This is probably one of the less well known waterfalls in the Tablelands area, probably because it is in a quieter part of the Tablelands. The car parking area is not well marked and the sign for the falls is old and partially hidden. There is a walk to the falls and we see that this is actually a pair of small waterfalls within close proximity of each other. Both waterfalls are easily reachable from the same short walking track.
The first falls don’t really have a clear viewing point and we see those through the trees. However at the second falls, there is a viewing platform giving us good sideways views. Again, there is heaps of water. We escaped leech-free thankfully, although I had sprayed us both liberally with Deet.
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Having got to Souita Falls we realised that we had missed the Pepina Falls on the way up.
So we headed back driving a bit slower and we nearly missed the sign again. It is at the Middlebrook Creek bridge – a small blue sign tacked on at the side. Kerry was eagle eyed to spot it.
Pepina falls are just next to the road bridge and are small (maybe 5m or so) but really nice hidden waterfalls.
From the carpark we see the view from the top of the falls. To see the body of the falls we descended a short and steep 90m trail, slightly overgrown, which was a bit of a scramble. The path eventually led us to the bed of Middlebrook Creek where we got a great view of the falls.
Then it was on to Ravenshoe, but first we drove up the Maalan Rd to see some more of this lovely country. It can be taken as a loop road. Emerging from that we see the wind farm in the distance.
Ravenshoe was a very interesting town. The traditional owners of the land in the Ravenshoe district are the Jirrbal people. The area was first settled by pastoralists prior to 1881, but when stands of red cedar trees were found at nearby Cedar Creek, a mining entrepreneur purchased the pastoral properties in 1897. A village called Cedar Creek was established. By 1910, the nearby mining town of Herberton has been connected by rail to Cairns, and Cedar Creek had been renamed Ravenshoe. The name is supposed to have been chosen because a copy of Henry Kingsley’s novel Ravenshoe was found discarded nearby.
By 1912, Ravenshoe had a store, a school, the Club Hotel and a population of 1,000 people. The timber industry was by then supplying Queensland maple, oak and black walnut, but it was not until 1916 that Ravenshoe was finally connected with the rail line. Roads connected Ravenshoe with Atherton and Innisfail by 1936, and by 1949 there were three sawmills, two hotels, two cinemas, a guest house and two churches.
The main industry in Ravenshoe had always been timber. But this all changed after 1987, when the government designated the 900,000 hectares of surrounding rainforest as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. From then the main industries have been tourism, beef and dairy farming. The railway service closed in 1988. The town still has two timber mills operating using both plantation pine and hardwoods.
Today Ravenshoe, population around 800 in the town, is regarded as the highest town in Queensland at 920 metres. It therefore also provides the highest pub in Queensland – The Ravenshoe Hotel.
We went first to the Tourist Information Centre and they gave us the information on the town walk – listing all the items of interest as you walk along the street, turn around and walk back up the other side.
But first we went through the Nganyalji Aboriginal Interpretative Centre at the rear of the Information Centre, featuring heaps of information on the Jirrbal people. We found this fascinating.
Before European settlement, the Wet Tropics rainforests were one of the most populated areas of Australia, and the only area where Australian Aboriginal people lived in semi-permanent villages, in large circular mia-mias up to 3m in diameter. The rainforest environment provided everything – spirituality, identity, social order, shelter, food and medicine. They had an economic system in place that involved bartering of resources amongst different tribal groups. A network of well travelled trails traversed the rainforest, linking campsite and bora grounds, maintained as open spaces for seasonal tribal of clan gatherings.
As white settlement gradually took away their lands and cleared the rainforests that had been the cornerstone of their lives, remnants rainforests became critically important and formed sanctuaries. Today, there are at least 20 Rainforest Aboriginal tribal groups, 120 clans and 8 language groups – currently over 20,000 people – with ongoing traditional connections to land in the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.
It was a good walk through the town, starting with the railway station – which now contains the restored station, a vintage D17 steam engine, various carriages, a barn market and a men’s shed – through to the local Vinnies. I was very keen to get to the Vinnies as I had broken a bubbly glass, and was down to the singular. There was a nice glass just waiting for me to take home.
There are 2 pubs but as one is one the top of a small hill, it claims the bragging rights for Queensland’s highest pub.
The big attraction for Ravenshoe are the 2 Millstream Falls. The original Millstream NP was proclaimed over the Little Millstream Falls in 1909. In 1939 the Millstream Falls also became a NP, and in 1962, several parcels of land were included into an amalgamated NP.
The falls plunge over the edge of a columnar basalt lava flow. This is reputedly the widest single-drop waterfall in Australia. It is a mighty place and we can see the basalt in the cliffs above the falls.
We took some time to find the Little Millstream Falls. Back in town we took the Tully Falls Road as instructed but then drove for about 10km trying to find the sign to the Falls. We came to a village and a lady following us took pity on us realising we were indeed bewildered.
She directed us back towards town as the Falls are only 1.5km from there. We came to a sign saying Millstream Falls NP, but no reference to the Falls. We had thought that this just marked the start of the Park. We took a small track in and see a small sign to the Falls – at about thigh high and parallel to the carpark so that it would be hidden by a parked car. We felt pretty silly, but we are not at all impressed with the signage.
A short walking track took us down to the Falls and on the way we could see them below us, Its a nice walk in. These falls are really pumping and we could get very close the edge. The falls actually split into 3 but being so close to one of them, it is hard to see the whole thing. Luckily there is a track – rocky, rough and wet – that took me down to the edge of the pool where I could look back. These falls are simply stunning, one of the best we have seen. Des scrambled all the way to the bottom while I sat on a rock and enjoyed looking at all that gorgeous water.
Five kilometres north of Ravenshoe on the Kennedy Hwy we came to the wind farm viewing area – we got quite close to the turbines. Each of the 20 turbines are 45 metres high and they supply to 3,500 homes. Very impressive, we think.
I think it’s such a pity that there aren’t many more wind-farms around the place. I think they look quite beautiful and are so nuch easier on the eye than the horrible mines we ahve seen and so very much cleaner.
We then went to the Millaa Millaa Lookout on the East Evelyn Rd. This is great and in good clear sunlight we got stunning views across the tablelands towards the coast.
To see some great photos on this blog, click here
Tps see a video on this blog, click here