Atherton Tableland
— — rainforest air, with the coast left behind.
Not only on a wall.
“A volcanic plateau west of Cairns, climbing to about a thousand metres above the Coral Sea. The air is cooler than the coast and the country rolls between rainforest and dairy paddock. Crater lakes hold cold water in old vents; the Curtain Fig drops a wall of roots beside the road; Millaa Millaa Falls runs all year.
Atherton Tableland, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Atherton Tableland sits on the Great Dividing Range in Far North Queensland, west and south-west of Cairns, with elevations from about 500 to 1280 metres. The plateau is volcanic in origin and several maar lakes mark old eruption vents, including Lake Eacham and Lake Barrine inside Crater Lakes National Park. Much of the surrounding rainforest lies within the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area, inscribed in 1988. Towns on the tableland include Atherton, Mareeba, Malanda and Ravenshoe; the country mixes rainforest with dairy and tropical fruit.
The tableland is laced with waterfalls fed by reliable highland rain. Millaa Millaa, Zillie and Ellinjaa form the Waterfall Circuit south of Millaa Millaa town. Josephine Falls runs through the granite of Wooroonooran National Park, and the Barron River drops more than 250 metres at Barron Falls above Kuranda. The crater lakes themselves are spring-fed and cold through the year; Lake Eacham is about 65 metres deep and used for swimming in the warmer months.
The plateau's elevation gives it a cooler, wetter climate than coastal Cairns about an hour's drive east. Average summer maximums in Atherton town sit in the high twenties Celsius, and overnight winter lows can drop near freezing on the higher ground around Ravenshoe. The rainforest holds the air heavy and green; cassowaries and Lumholtz's tree-kangaroos live in the surviving pockets of Wet Tropics canopy, and the dawn chorus carries down off the ridges into the dairy paddocks below.