I was right. The room was more like a fridge. According to the reading of my keyring thermometer, the temperature in my room was down to 4°C when I woke up at 5:00am. Believe me, 4°C is the ideal temperature to be set by most fridges.

After fighting against myself for 30 minutes, I finally woke up at 5:30am and hoped to take some exotic sunrise shots. Taking photography seriously is such a pain but I love it. At least I gave it a go. I really don't want to tell myself when I am 65 - "If only I had done it...".

Home sick is always the greatest enemy of long distance travel especially when approaching the end of a journey. This time wasn't an exception. After examining the map half a dozen times, I decided to take a plunge of driving 1,100kms in one day to Melbourne. It wasn't a light decision especially for driving a car without cruise control. Just think about putting your foot on the accelerator for 13 hours without much exercise! I managed to arrive at Jerildere (a small town near the border of NSW and Victoria) at dusk before running out of petrol. Just made it. I was still quite alright even after almost 9-hour drive since my departure at 8:30am. Thank God for the 30-minute power nap I did at West Wyalong.

Finally I was hugged by Kelly at 10:30pm at home. Now the Queensland journey was over and I need at least 3 weeks to recover before heading off to South Australia and Central Australia. If you live near my coming travelling routes, perhaps we should have a cup of coffee together. I look forward to receiving your invitation :-)

Till next time.

Siding Spring Observatory (the white dome) used to have the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere

I stayed at Injune last night. Perhaps it was still in low season, all 20 rooms in the motel were vacant except mine. Lonely or scary? However, the long drive (700km+) to Coonabarabran (NSW) was even worst. There was nothing to be excited especially I had already done Newell Highway three times in last two months. I noticed that the temperature had dropped significantly. By the time I arrived at Coonabarabran, the temperature was down to 10°C - perhaps even lower. Now I missed my sunny Queensland.

I was offered an ensuite room with all sorts of facilities for only $49. I was surprised by the low price and understood immediately when I noticed a fireplace was fully turned on in the accommodation office.

5:15am. The guy stayed next door woke me up. He didn't knocked my door but the thin wall allowed me to hear all noise he made. Presumably he wanted an early departure too. Reluctantly I followed his brave intention and hit the road at 6:15am. The sky became brighter every minute and kangaroos popped out on the highway once in a while. I slowed down and paid extra caution to avoid any fatal wildlife accident. At the same time, I just couldn't wait longer to find out what Carnarvon could offer me.

Believe it or not, it wasn't an easy walk to the Gorge especially with my heavy gear. The track was mainly built on soft sand and river crossings were also quite common. I wasn't ambitious to complete the full return track of 20km+ but still managed to walk 12kms for a return walk to the Art Gallery where a 62m long sandstone wall was decorated by aboriginal painting.

At the Art Gallery, I have initiated and was subsequently invited to take some environmental portraitures of the Aboriginal Interpretive Ranger, Fred Conway. It was an interesting photographic experience outside my primary landscape subject.

I have also conducted a couple of side walks to Moss Garden and Ward's Canyon. Altogether I have crossed the river 20 times!

Art Gallery, Carnarvon National Park

Carnarvon National Park is referred as the Grand Canyon of Queensland. Because of this statement, I decided to check it out. If you have followed my travel diary closely, you would have noticed that accommodation was certainly one of my biggest problems. There are only a couple of resorts in the Carnarvon National Park but they were all full when I got there. I was told that all rooms were fully booked by an American University. It was a surprise that the American students came here to visit our local Grand Canyon.

I was reluctant to skip this interesting place so the only option left was to do a day visit. In other words, I had to find my accommodation from the nearest town. Rolleston is such a town, 61 km north of the junction to Carnarvon National Park. As my final destination was Melbourne so I selected Injune, another small town 110km south of the junction, as my next accommodation stop after visiting Carnarvon.

After droppng Kelly off to the Cairns Airport, I started my 3,300km lonely journey to Melbourne. The plan was flexible but I hoped the journey could be wrapped up by the end of the week. During my 4-hour journey along the coast to Townsville, the rain didn't stop for even a single minute. At some stage, I had to stop due to the sudden flood on the road. As soon as I turned inland to Charters Towers, everything became dry.

There was a funny description about Charters Towers by Lonely Planet - "The gold rush is over, but the locals don't seem to know it. In its heyday, around the end of 19th century, Charters Towers was referred to as 'the World' because of its wealth and diversity". Today its main industries are cattle and mining. It doesn't matter what Charters Towers was famous for but the historical buildings left over caught my attention. Do you believe it had a stock exchange, in a small town in the middle of nowhere?

Stock Exchange Arcade, Charters Towers, Queensland

On our way back to Cairns (via Innisfail), we stopped over at Babinda to check out the Boulders. The Boulders is quite similar to Mossman Gorge - a river with crystal water and round rocks. Due to the past tragedies (people drowned due to strong river current), all lookouts are fenced. In other words, open views are limited.

Although Cairns was supposed to be a sunny city, we were welcomed by four rainy days straight. We visited Kuranda twice and hoped that the wet and grey weather could be utilised to our advantage. One of the major natural attractions to us in Kuranda was the Barron Falls. Unfortunately the rain couldn't help to increase the water flow much and I could only manage to take some snapshots.

One of our travelling difficulties in Queensland was the long distance between hotspots and we couldn't see much in a day. If you really want to study a place well for better photography, staying overnight and revisiting the same place again would be the best option.

Barron Falls in dry season

Millaa Millaa Falls was made widely known to us by Qantas but there are actually quite a number of waterfalls in the surrounding regions. We set our based camp at Millaa Millaa, a small town in Atherton Tablelands. As the name implies, the town is right next to the Millaa Millaa Falls. Getting there from Daintree really took us a while and the initial part of Gillies Highway (between Gordonvale and Malanda) was extremely winding.

As Millaa Millaa Falls is almost a well developed icon in that region, it didn't give me any wild feeling of nature. We visited it twice, late afternoon and early morning in the following day. That's all. Then we headed our way to see other waterfalls nearby - Zillie Falls, Ellinjaa Falls, Millstream Falls and Mungalli Falls. Unfortunately none of them impressed me much. Although I thought Millstream Falls would have been a nice one, the closure of the track to the bottom of the falls restricted us to an ordinary view.

Millaa Millaa Falls

Daintree is a paradise for nature lovers and also a heaven for mosquitos and sandflies. If you are interested in wildlife, perhaps you should consider taking Chris Dahlberg's 6:30am nature cruise. He charged $55 for a 2-hour Daintree river cruise with his speed boat. During our 2-hour cruise with Chris, we spotted quite a lot of wildlife. Just to name a few - water dragon, green snake hanging on a tree, frogmouth, crocodile and some birds. I tried to capture them on video but it was proved to be difficult to shoot from a moving boat. By the time I pointed my heavy gear to the subject, it had already disappeared. Capturing wildlife footage was quite a different experience from shooting landscape which demands more thinking than speed.

Sunshine is supposed to be abundant in Queensland but we got two days of cloudy weather. The lovely overcast condition was perfect for shooting the amazing Mossman Gorge but not Cape Tribulation. Although Mossman Gorge looked beautiful on location, it wasn't a simple task to extract the preferred elements out in a complicated scene with plenty of rocks and barriers. During our visit, it was also loaded with a lot of tourists.

Mossman Gorge - A place with pristine water

Long before the white settlement in Australia, a little fig tree was planted by nature. Lord of the Forest is now sitting somewhere in Queensland (Broadwater Conversation Park near Ingram) without any immediate threat even though the surrounding region is heavily harvested for wood. This giant master is probably one of the biggest in its own kind in Australia. In order to keep it for our next generation, it is now fenced by a circular boardwalk for additional protection. If you are interested in visiting the Lord, please ensure you are equipped with insect repellent as the mosquitos in the park are very annoying. During our visit, they were very aggressive and able to find any gaps on our skin without insect repellent protection. They welcomed Kelly by "kissing" her lip.

Lord of the Forest (not a real name) in Broadwater Conversation Park, Queensland. Kelly posed for me to indicate the sense of scale

It appears that Queensland has been working much harder than other states in promoting their tourism. "Beautiful one day, perfect the next" was just one of the Queenslanders' most creative ideas. Their way of naming various tourist routes is also very innovative. The Great Green Way (from Townsville to Cairns) is one and the Great Inland Way is another. After leaving Airlie Beach, we continued to head north, passed Townsville, and arrived at Ingram. I have to admit that the name, Ingram, was completely new to me although it claimed its uniqueness by having more than half of its local population carrying Italian blood.

There were a lot of attractions nearby and Hinchinbrook Island was the one catching most of my attention. My eyeballs popped out when I saw the aerial shot of the island. The snaked river courses on the island extended themselves like the wild scenes Hollywood created in the Jurassic Park movie. A 10-minute scenic flight was advertised from as low as $39.

To taste the Great Green Way, we visited the local attractions, Jourama Falls and Wallaman Falls. During our visit, Jourama Falls was closed due to the burning and smoking hazards but we still managed to check out the rock pool nearby. In my humble opinion, the rock pool was disappointing until I discovered an unnoticeable corner! To avoid overloading you, I only included one shot here.

Wallaman Falls was a bit out of our way so we had to visit it the following day. I was hoping for an overcast weather and the sun didn't want to go away but eventually gave me a rainbow after waiting for two hours.

An unnoticeable corner at the rock pool near Jourama Falls

Wallaman Fall - the longest single-drop waterfall in Australia

If I could only choose four coastal places in Queensland for my visit, my personal preferences would be (1) Fraser Island (2) Whitsunday Islands & the reef nearby (3) Great Barrier Reef and (4) Daintree and Cape Tribulation. Should I ignore the rest of Queensland then? No. I just have to put them on a separate list so that they can be covered if time is available. According to this Pele's strategy, we worked our way up north and hoped to implement this master plan with other supplementary locations for our consideration.

After watching the BBC's documentary about the greatest wonders on Earth, I believe that viewing from the air would have to be the most effective and efficient way to appreciate the Great Barrier Reef unless underwater photography is your preference. In Airlie Beach, by chance, we picked up an advertisment of flying both Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef in a single flight. After evaluating the cost and risk (as an ordinary humun being, I am a bit scare of height), we decided to take the offer and hoped the weather could match our 1-hour flight. This time I had asked for a sunny day which I don't usually prefer.

This flight package also included a 3-hour stopover flight to Hamilton Island as well as an hour stay at Whitehaven Beach (yes we went with a seaplane). We were also offered to choose the seats before other passengers. Was the flight worth the money? Absolutely.

The beauty of this extenisve reef is just beyond any descriptions by words

Heart Reef - A natural beauty crafted by coral

Hill Inlet - the icon of Whitsunday Islands

Mackay was almost a piece of blank paper to us as we didn't get there until 9:30pm. It was raining and we were struggling to find the caravan park. The DiscoverAus electronic map saved us once again and we finally managed to locate the hidden site. The room was basically a sealed box without any windows. It was a disappointment to us as nothing appeared to be clean. However, we couldn't ask for more with just $45. At least it was an ensuite and probably the most economical cabin I have ever stayed in so far.

If you don't live in Queensland, the chance of knowing the sister towns, Agnes Water and Town of 1770, may be relatively low. The Town of 1770 certainly has a name in its own way and is the first town I have ever heard with a year as part of its name. Why 1770? Because Captain Cook landed there on Bustard Beach on 24 May 1770. He was definitely one of the most influential persons in Australian history and his discoveries and the towns/locations named by him still remind us of his great journey to date even after more than two centuries.

To appreciate fully the beauty of the Town of 1770, taking a scenic flight would be the best option but I preferred shooting on land from a high vantage point for economical reasons. Although the locals had advised me a few locations, the scenes didn't match my preference - to include extensive mud bars in low tide as part of the beach. After wandering the residential zone extensively, a vacant property offered the best view and I managed to grab a few shots from the open backyard. Almost at the same time, a backpacker tour with at least a dozen of people arrived and the place seemed to be a hotspot for local scenic view.

Mangrove, a common kind of Queensland coastal tree that can survive magically with salt water

We had originally planned a 3-day overnight tour to Fraser Island but were told that it wasn't available until Sunday. It was obvious that spending four days in Hervey Bay would have affected the whole schedule so we were struggling to make a decision. We couldn't make up our mind until the last minute. Instead of giving Fraser Island a miss or losing two days, we decided to take a 1-day tour.

The programme of the day tour was quite rich and compact although it appeared to be more suitable for the general public than photographers. First of all, the road was very rough (dependent on whether you can manage a roller coaster ride) and the tour guide warned everybody three times of this before departure. The guide also reminded us of how important fastening our seat belts was and this had to be done as soon as a seat was occupied. Driving on such kind of narrow and sand based road was certainly dangerous and every turn could have been a disaster. I have to admit that the driver / tour guide had done a very good job to avoid any uncomfortable bumps by giving advance notices to his passengers. In addition to his driving role, he also acted as our chef and storyteller. As long as the 4WD was moving, his stories related to Fraser Island came one after one. His local knowledge appeared to be endless, from natural plants to Fraser Island history. Although we haven't got much time to take photographs, his commentaries were definitely a valuable compensation. However, if you are a keen photographer, this kind of 5-minute-for-a-spot tour may not be your best option. Without having your own / rental 4WD on the Fraser island, ideally for multiple days, the chance of getting many good photographs would be very limited.

The highlight of the tour - watching small turtles swimming in Lake Allom

How far is Hervey Bay from Melbourne? If you can walk 5km/hour, it would take you 400 walking hours or roughly 16 days (24-hour non-stop) to complete your journey to Hervey Bay from Melbourne. In simple arithmetic, it means 2,000kms in total. It took Kelly and me roughly three days to get to the starting point of our Queensland adventure.

The first day was the worst one as we had started late (midday) and didn't get to our first stop, Parkes, until 10:30pm. We didn't see much in Parkes and also visited nowhere in Toowoomba, our second stop. We thought the third day would have been easier as the travel distance was the shortest among the three days but still couldn't get to Hervey Bay until mid afternoon. Our hostess in Hervey Bay, Pam Thomas, welcomed us at her home. A few hours later, I conducted my fifth public presentation of "Fast Track to Landscape Photography" for the local camera club. It was fun and the attendants were also very supportive. I was told afterwards everybody had learned something from my session. So did I.

Kelly and I would like to sincerely thank Pam for her invitation and hospitality - Pam, the satay chicken was very tasty.