Round Australia by bike - Day 010 - Cairns to Mount Garnet

Day:	010
Date:	26 May 2008
Start	Cairns
Finish	Mount Garnet + 67km
Daily Distance:	259km
Daily Speed:	n.a.
Relative to Schedule:	-146km
Daily Podcasts:	Here
GPS Track	Here
Journal:	I was late getting away despite rising at 3am because the internet connection that wasn’t working the previous evening now was.  I did my internet chores and left about 4:30am quickly cycling through the sleeping Cairns out to where Highway 1 turns inland to begin the climb to the Atherton Tableland.  It was dark, lightly drizzling and busy, but I made reasonable progress on the winding narrow road as it climbed through the dark rainforest. Near Kuranda there was a spectacular view over the darkened Cairns with the first daylight appearing through the offshore clouds.  The road then leveled out a bit although it was always climbing as it crossed the Tableland, with the odd frustrating descent (because you knew you would have to recover any lost elevation).  The Tableland is a very fertile area with many different kinds of fruit and vegetables grown, not to mention coffee, tea and nuts, all available at frequent farm gate stalls.  There was also lush dairy pasture and, in pockets, dense rainforest which lined the road like an impenetrable green wall, but through which, you could glimpse vines, deep leafy floors and all manner of trees and shrubs. I stopped in the busy little town of Atherton and had a big brekky as well as buying a couple more tyre tubes and a new rear vision mirror (the last just dropped off for no reason),  The road continued to climb higher and higher across the Tableland and the headwind and rain became stronger.  It got cold. I finally reached the huge wind turbines that mark the southern edge of the Tableland and turned westwards, looking forward to some downhill along with warmth and dryness as I headed to The Outback.  I reached Mount Garnet around 4pm and had an early dinner of sausages and masses of baked vegetables at a roadhouse, fitted my mirror and headed into road train country.  I had been hoping to get 300km up today, but there was too much climbing and headwind to have any hope of that. I decided to ride until about 9pm and then camp by the road, which I did.  I wore quite a few clothes and wrapped myself in a space blanket in my one-man tent and it was OK, although a bit cool.