Blue Tigers and a Castle at Paradise

“first one to spot pink tape gets a hug”........... but there was no rush to find pink tape – does that mean nobody wanted that hug ?

Wilfred was leader – he didn’t know that until the walk notice was published. He queried El Prezidento “didn’t know I was leading”, to which the response was “yeah, I tossed a coin, you lost – it was an honest toss too”. Wilfred responded “honest coin toss my arse!”.

Started walking to Paradise Beach at 0810, cross country, a new route, within national park boundary. Easy cross country walking, until a gully, what looked like the first ahead, we angle upstream. WK says “first one to spot pink tape gets a hug”. Gets a bit rough, there was no sign of enthusiastic searching for pick tape, guess nobody wanted that hug. Dyso decides time to check GPSr, cheerfully announces, “wrong gully, need to go 600 mr that way”. Yeah, whilst those rocks up high looked familiar, the gully just didn’t look quite right down here. We get to the right gully, find the old route, and WK is first to spot pink tape so there is no hug after all. Traverse over the first cape, down to Brays Beach for a nice break at this lovely beach and great coastal cliff scenery along the coast.

Going up the next hill, in this gully we encounter a magical fantasy scene, Blue Tigers (butterflies) swarming en masse, all around us. It was an amazing sight. Thousands would be an under-estimate. We stopped to admire this amazing sight, surrounded by Blue Tigers, and also another butterfly type unknown (crow family?). Cross over the saddle and down to Paradise Beach, a lovely area. We point out the imposing Castle Rock high above at the north end, which drew looks of trepidation “what, up there we go ..?”. Walk along the beach, our leaders discuss which route to Castle Rock – the original way, short but very steep and hard and scungy, or the mid route, steep and hard and bit scungy, or a route similar to the home route from the lighthouse hike “a longer but gentle slope and less scungy”. Decide to try the “gentle slope”.

A gentle slope – well, except for that first bit which was straight up “Mel’s hill”. That got people puffing, and legs protesting. There were protestations about “gentle slope” not being accurate. But after that first bit, it was a gentle slope (kinda) in and around boulders, high up, great views. Arriving at Castle Rock, we scramble on top of the Castle. Superb views all around, over Paradise Beach, in the distance the Burdekin area and maybe Cape Upstart, to the west Magnetic Island and Townsville. The surrounding scenery is an impressive landscape of granite outcrops and boulders.

The wind was howling up top though. A quick lunch break, and time to go home the route we came in on. At Blue Tiger gully, we stopped for a while, enclosed by swarming mass of Blue Tigers – magical. Back at the cars at 1645. A great coastal day walk, and a good prelude to the upcoming Cape Cleveland lighthouse walk (today was half of that walk).

Total ascent 979 mr, distance 18.2 km.

Oh, and that walk description of “medium hard”, most felt that was an understatement :)

KD