Crater Lakes National Park

Since we have become retirees, our weeks seem to blend from one to the other.  Not that it is a bad thing but Philip will often ask me what day of the week it is.  I usually know, but if he were to ask me the date I would have to go and look it up on the calendar.  One thing that we have to do more often is treat our weekends more like week days, and by that I mean a work day, and treat mid-week, for example Tuesday and Wednesday like a weekend.  A good example was today......Sunday.  We had talked earlier in the week about taking the kayak to Lake Eucham. We rose bright eyed and bushy tailed after an early night and made the hour long journey to Yungaburra and then on to Lake Eucham.
It is a lovely place and perfect for a picnic lunch.  We should have not been surprised that at least fifty other people thought the same thing!  It is a smallish picnic area and it was packed.  If we had come here in the middle of the week we would have probably had the lake to ourselves. We will try to remember this for next time.

Paddling our way around the circumference of the crater lake was pure bliss.  Our orange kayak and colourful life jackets had a Ulysses Butterfly hovering around us for quite awhile but still too fast for me to pull out the camera and take a photo.  There were hundreds of other varieties of butterflies also fluttering around and lots of birdlife.  We spotted a little turtle in the extremely clear blue waters of the lake and lots of little fish.  We paddled in and out of places hidden by reeds and marvelled at the lush rainforest that surrounded the lake.

Giant trees soured above us and we had to be careful of the ones partially submerged in the, thankfully, crystal clear waters.

This submerged log was about 4 metres underwater.  The water is crystal clear..

Lake Eucham and the more commercialised Lake Barrine are part of the Crater Lakes National Park.  Lake Eucham is a volcanic crater formed by massive explosions from the superheating of groundwater.  The crater has filled with water forming a lake 65m deep!
We paddled for over an hour before making our way back to the picnic area where we had a snack of empanadas and fruit salad.

I thought I would be clever and add frozen berries to my fruit salad.  Little did I realise that the fruit salad would turn pink! Didn't affect the taste thankfully!

We didn't stay very long....you know....the crowd!  So it was a quick pack up and back to Yungaburra to enjoy Coffee and Custard filled Canoli at the Whistlestop Cafe.  It was very delicious and decadent.

We were home by 1.30 pm and glad because the sky has really closed in and we are getting intermittent showers that, looking at the radar, are also right across the Tablelands. It is a good time to curl up on the lounge with the weekend paper!