Mareeba (Ringers Rest campground) QLD

About Mareeba

Mareeba, an important regional service centre, is the largest town on the Atherton Tablelands. It lies at the heart of the tableland’s agricultural activities and is surrounded by coffee plantations, mango and paw paw farms, avocado farms, macadamia nut plantations as well as sugar cane fields and orchards specialising in pineapples, bananas and cashews (sourced from the Aussie Towns website – click for more).

After the big clean-up of our car in Cooktown it was off to the town of Mareeba and checking into a farm stay called Ringers Rest for a few days.

Ringers Rest

Ringers Rest is an absolutely top spot to camp for a few nights. Only $10 per night to stay – no power or water, but we’re pretty self sufficient anyway. Located about 6kms SE from Mareeba it’s easy to find (maplink)

Dave, who ran the place, was an absolute blast. He was a true bushman and had so many stories; like…

  • the time he broke his leg saving a young girl from being trampled by a runaway bull. He fixed it by wrapping it tightly with heaps of gladwrap
  • he was bitten by a Taipan snake and he sucked the poison out and survived
  • he has survived out in the bush for so long, living on bush tucker, that he is basically immuned to anesthetics and wakes up during surgery, even after having 7 doses
  • … and the stories went on for about 30 minutes – and we were only checking in at the gate LOL

Here’s some photos from around the Ringers Rest camp…

The sunsets at Ringers Rest were pretty cool too…

Mareeba Museum

Behind the Mareeba Visitor Centre is a pretty cool Heritage Museum about the town and it’s history. It’s worth taking an hour or two to check it out.

Granite Gorge Park

About 17kms SW of Mareeba (maplink) is a park by the name of Granite Gorge. If I were coming through this way again it would be a toss-up between here and Ringers Rest to camp for a few days. $13 per head to enter and explore the park.

Summing up…

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