We were told by our friendly travel agent in Byron that if we were going to Cape Tribulation we simply must go the long way round and see the Tablelands, and I am very glad that we did. The 'Atherton Tablelands' is the collective name given to an area inland from the coast, which is home to some of the most beautiful scenery and natural features we've seen in Australia thus far. As James described it, “it's like the English countryside on steroids: everything's bigger and greener.” The site of Australia's most recently active volcano (which last erupted some 10,000 years ago), the geography here is quite different to most of what we've seen in recent weeks, and it was a pleasant change not to be surrounded by sugar cane fields!

As a result of the volcano, the Tablelands boast a spectacular array of mountains, waterfalls and crater lakes – every 5 miles or so there's another brown tourist sign (they're the same as in the UK) inviting you to turn off and admire another natural feature. We were quite spoiled in the two days we spent there. We started with the 'Falls Circuit' near Millaa Millaa, on a whistle-stop tour of 3 sets of waterfalls, each more impressive than the last. You can actually go swimming in the pool at the bottom of Millaa Millaa, the biggest of the 3, but as the sun was setting as we reached it, we decided to give it a miss. Instead we opted for a dip the following morning in Lake Eacham, part of the Crater Lakes National Park. It was pretty chilly, but the brevity of our swim was more the result of an irrational fear about there being crocodiles in the water, when in fact the most dangerous animal we actually saw was a baby turtle.

We visited a 500 year old fig tree, known locally as the Curtain Fig (because it vaguely resembles a curtain). Figs have a nasty habit of latching on to the trees around them and gradually killing them off (hence the name, Strangler Figs) but the results are pretty spectacular – long tendrils of branch snaking in every direction.

Best of all the natural features we saw was Mossman Gorge, even though I thought a gorge was a mountain, and so was expecting to see something completely different! The Mossman River tumbles its way over and around huge granite boulders that line the gorge, creating freshwater swimming holes. It's a great place for sunbathing and swimming.

As well as the plethora of natural features, there are also a number of villages in the area. Some of them are barely more than a couple of houses either side of a single street, but others have a bit more to them. Atherton, the 'capital' of the Tablelands, is home to the Crystal Caves, an underground cavern showcasing the mineral collection of a Frenchman and his family, featuring crystals from all over the world. We didn't actually visit owing to the exorbitant entrance fee, but I imagine it would be a pretty surreal experience, featuring as it does the 'Magic Spheres' exhibition (“NEW for 2010, the Magic Spheres presents rare minerals in a totally new and mesmerising way”). Instead, we did do the tourist thing in Mareeba, the most commercial of the Tablelands' centres [and the closest to Cairns – no coincidence there] visiting both a coffee factory / museum (“the only one of its kind in the world!”) and a mango wine producer. We weren't too impressed with either – the mango winery was charging $5 for every taste which didn't result in a purchase, so I can't tell you what it's like – but the free chocolate samples at Coffee World were pretty good. Much more enjoyable was the Mungalli Creek Dairy, a biodynamic cheese and yoghurt producer. I still don't know what biodynamic production actually is but their chai yoghurt with honey was delicious – and has since been very good with muesli of a morning.