Queensland: Tropical Far North

In Australia they call it the TFN – the Tropical Far North. She’s an easy lifestyle up there, mate, always warm and friendly and offering some big surprises too. Why not roll on up there for a look-see?

Story: Lindsey Dawson

Plenty magazine: Winter 2006

New Zealanders love Queensland for its hot sunshine and clear skies. We fly there in plane loads every winter. But there’s more to the place than Surfers and Noosa. For instance, did you know it offers one of the world’s best train rides?

Start out by popping over to Brisbane. Increasingly smart and sassy, Queensland’s capital is now taking on enough urban allure to rival the big-smoke centres down south, so if you haven’t stopped there for a while, take in a day or two of river-city life. Then board The Sunlander train at Roma Street station to begin the long haul up through Queensland to the good old TFN. For top comfort there’s only one way to go – the premium-priced Queenslander Class, with bar car, dining car and on-board entertainment.

It’s a mighty pleasant way to do the big journey. And I do mean big. At around 1700km, it’s further from Brisbane to Cairns than it is from Brisbane to Melbourne. People don’t drive it unless they have to. But riding a luxury train, with your own sleeping compartment, turns the distance into a rare pleasure.

You leave at lunchtime and arrive in the evening of the next day. It’s 31 hours of time out from the world. No TV, no phones (unless you insist on taking your mobile). And outside the wide, double-glazed windows, Queensland’s vast expanse rolls by. You’ve got time to enjoy two mango-coloured sunsets and one silvery dawn.

The surreal peaks of the Glasshouse Mountains, lush rainforest, fields of sugar cane, ghostly gums, wetlands and swathes of grass roll to distant horizons in drifting shades of emerald, bamboo and bronze. You might spot the boing-boing bounce of kangaroos.

If you’re keen for company, order up a drink in the Canecutters’ Bar and listen to minstrel Steve Clausen singing Aussie ballads and golden oldies. Or – oh, such a tough choice – just relax in your own quiet compartment until you’re reminded it’s time to stroll along the red carpeted corridor to the dining car for high tea served on snowy linen. Or dinner. Or breakfast. Or lunch. Or a sunset-supper seafood platter.

It’s hard to think of a more relaxing way than this to cover big stretches of ground.

There’s something immensely soothing about long distance trains. In the age of jet travel, going by rail is a yesteryear sort of thing, oozing classic charm. And this is no bullet train. Its 50-year-old narrow-gauge carriages hum modestly along at between 80 and 100kph. But with friendly staff and fine food to enjoy, who cares about speed? Start dinner, for instance, with half a dozen oysters layered with melted Kingaroy brie and dressed with mango and tomato salsa. And then maybe move on to barramundi baked with a macadamia crust, served on a spinach and lemon risotto and ‘napped’ with a hollandaise sauce with just a hint of Cointreau.

Napping, as in snooze, comes easily after that. Once your daytime couch has been converted to a bed, you slip beneath a white ‘doonah’ and get gently rocked to sleep, only vaguely aware of the occasional soft wail of the train’s horn as it cruises through towns like Mackay in the wee, small hours.

Queensland Rail recently spent $A500 million upgrading the Cairns-Rockhampton section of track, so it’s very smooth. It needs to be, for it carries mountains of minerals and produce as well as passengers. Every now and again The Sunlander pauses on a siding to allow the mighty freight trains through. All the wealth of Australia rolls by – coal, iron ore, nickel, copper, sugar, wheat, cattle, and even, increasingly, local wine.

Now that really took me by surprise. Wine from Queensland? Far too tropical for grapes, isn’t it? Not in the south-east corner’s 1000-metre high Granite Belt, says Brisbane master of wine Andrew Corrigan. ‘Up there it’s really cold in winter – they can get frost and even snow. The climate is similar to the Rhone Valley.’ Queensland’s wine business is small, ‘just taking over from the state of Tasmania in terms of production’, but interesting. Its eight distinctive growing areas are turning out wines from grapes we never used to hear of in New Zealand – like Viognier and Verdelho – as well as classic varieties like Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc.

Listen to a Queenslander describe his favourite wines and you hear about an intriguing new range of smells and labels, like the ‘lychee/ginger aroma’ of Robert Shannon Verdelho, the ‘ripe white-peach richness’ of Symphony Hill Chardonnay or the ‘soft, round, chocolatey sweetness’ of Albert River Cabernet Shiraz Merlot. Sirromet Wines’ white Viognier (grown from grapes that thrive in the hills of Madeira, Portugal) recently scored a top award at a London wine show. Few ‘bubblies’ are made in Queensland but the railway has a light and pleasant version on its list of local wines. It comes from a vineyard at the top of the Great Dividing Range and is called Summit Sparkling Brut - ‘that’s what my wife sometimes calls me,’ says the waiter with a roguish smile.

Somehow the on-board catering crew manages to produce excellent fresh fare from their cramped galley. On my northward journey there was fresh news, too, bundles of morning papers thumping on board at dawn at the Proserpine station.

Of course, you can do the trip from north to south as well, as a whole or in sections, breaking the journey wherever you like for side trips. Aussies sometimes freight their cars on the train, thus avoiding the super-long driving distance but also having the advantage of toting a vehicle along to use at their destination.

Once a sleepy sugar town, Cairns is now a booming tourist centre with rooms for all budgets, but for real relaxation it pays to head 30 minutes north to a long, curving beach called Palm Cove. It’s not as well known as its northern neighbour, Port Douglas, but is becoming a stunning holiday village with seriously good hotels.

Book an Outrigger Palm Cove apartment, complete with kitchen, and you can cook for yourself, trying out nifty tropical fruits like mangosteens, rambutans and dragon fruit. Buy it fresh and gorgeous at Rusty’s bustling fruit market in Cairns (eight avocados for $2!). Or if making meals is no thrill – you’re on holiday, after all – simply saunter into one of the resort’s three different beachfront restaurants looking out to the Coral Sea.

The Outrigger, a beach club with first-class spa and a vast turquoise pool, is built in a grove of giant, paperbark gums. It’s an excellent base from which to take Great Barrier Reef cruises or to go day-trip driving on the Atherton Tableland – the great plateau that rears high up behind the flat coastal strip.

Up there: yet more surprises. The tableland’s rich volcanic soil and different micro-climates means almost anything will grow. Sure, you’d expect the tropical produce, like mangos, limes, macadamias and avocados but at its wetter (southern) end there are green hills that almost feel like New Zealand landscape, dotted with dairy cows. In the drier northern zone you’re into coffee country.

You can spend hours coffee-tasting at places like The Coffee Works (where there’s also a richly fragrant chocolate shop) and Skybury, The Australian Coffee Centre. Its owner, Ian MacLaughlin, is a man passionate about his trees and his Arabica beans. His advice for good coffee? Think fresh, fresh, fresh. ‘Don’t keep beans in the fridge, there’s no point. They start losing flavour about seven days after they’ve been roasted. And coffee needs drinking the same day it is ground.’ Since fleeing Zimbabwe long ago he has built a dream business, recently spending $A4 million on a new visitor centre and restaurant on a great granite outcrop, with views stretching to the hazy horizon.

If coffee’s not your thing there are fruit wines to sample at places like de Brueys Boutique Wines
(‘Japanese visitors love our Bush Cherry Wine with sushi,’ says Elaine de Brueys) or Mt Uncle Distillery, whose flagship liqueur is flavoured – very pleasantly, too – with ladyfinger bananas.

The far north’s also a great place for non-alcoholic fruit drinks. Bundaberg’s Horehound Beer sounds grunty but is a meek hops-and-herbs drink that is light and refreshing. And ginger – most famously from Buderim, north of Brisbane – is used to flavour all manner of gourmet ice creams, yoghurts and desserts.

There’s cheerful, no-nonsense character everywhere, too. The TFN is a long, long way from the bright lights of the south. Its tight-knit towns (some still working to repair damage caused by March’s massive Cyclone Larry) are home for good country folk with no time for big city airs.

And all those tropical flavours they delight in are worth a go, even (or especially) if it’s a fruit wine called Snakebite, described as ‘a collision of lime and chilli’. ‘My mum,’ confides a Cairns friend with a grin, ‘reckons it’s great poured over roast chook.’


Reprinted by permission. Copyright 2007 Plenty magazine Winter 2006 published for Hanover Group. Subscribe to Plenty today.

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