Today was a quiet day but we did manage to venture to Mossman Gorge. It is a lovely part of the world however we did think it looked a lot like many other nice rivers in both Australia and New Zealand but was a welcome outing for the day as we were all going a bit stir crazy.
Thursday 24 July 2014
Mostly recovered, we headed out to the closest servo to fill up all available fuel containers, (90 LPG tank, 90 litre fuel tank, and 4 x 20l jerry cans). We did get told off for filling up the jerry cans on the roof rather than removing them to fill up! Some hundreds of dollars poorer, although prices here were very reasonable, we started the next part of our journey into territories unknown (almost, as we’d been to Cape Tribulation a few years ago on a wonderful (larger) family holiday for Richards Dads birthday)
Before we got to Cape Trib. though, we did have to stop for an ice cream at the Daintree Ice Cream Company (Wattleseed, Pineapple, Raspberry and Yellow Sapote were flavours of the day), the obligatory photo at Noah Beach and (Trish’s favourite) an insect museum/collection. The insect collection was very impressive and the man who had made it had wandered the planet collecting bugs to bring them back to display them in his small museum of which he had made all of the displays and shelving from timbers in the area.
We had done a beach walk at Cape Trib. on our previous visit and we did try again however there was no parking for trailers so we kept on heading north on roads not yet travelled. The track past Cape Trib. is four wheel drive only and did prove to be so. It’s called the Bloomfield track and while much of it is passable by two wheel drive, there are a number of river crossing and some very steep sections both up and down. One of the ups did stump CJ and Richard had to do a very nasty change from high to low range on the fly which did thankfully work out (and there weren’t a bunch of gears left on the road!). Needless to say he was much more cautious on future ascents.
We drove on to one of the more famous outback pubs called the Lions Den. Many of the pubs have camping available out the back and usually have amenities although often fairly basic. It had been mentioned to us the pizzas here was good so after a couple of cold ales and a couple of pizzas it was time to crash.
Friday 25 July
The day started with us playing at skimming stones in the river next to the campground. Crocodile free, thankfully! Its a selling-point for campgrounds to have a swimming river as so many aren’t ok for swimming.
Today we drove into Cooktown for a visit which was very interesting. The info centre was quite interesting also housing a small museum so learnt even more info about crocs and termites. There are three types of termites up here and they all build very different, distinct mounds. We then had a walk along the main drag as there are points of interest and info about when Cook landed and why. There is a very cool playground which has a boat made of plastic tubes that you can play music on – think Blue Man Group type music. After a quick visit to the lighthouse on the hill and a visit to the servo to see if they had LPG in (truck with LPG was supposed to be in on Tuesday, then on Thursday) we headed back to the Lions Den.
Saturday 26 July
We headed back into Cooktown to refuel and saw there was a market on and Trish can’t pass up a good market so we had a wander down the street. It was all but over though and didn’t look that interesting anyway.
The LPG truck had been to the servo so after topping up with LPG (using this as the emergency) and fuel, we headed off for a fairly long drive to Hann Crossing in Lakefield National Park. This was our first taste of the red dust and while driving we saw many termite mounds of different types, a couple of fires along the side of the road (fairly common around here) and managed to run over a long snake (long enough that it wouldn’t fit between the front wheels but did manage to run over only it’s tail rather than it’s head but I bet it’s still not happy if alive).
Hann Crossing was also on the river and was a fair distance from the toilets so required a drive for the girls. This was our first taste of more remote camping although there were about 12 other campsites along the river but each site was several hundred metres from each other so was fine. The biggest problem was there were crocs in the river and while no one saw any, we were very conscious of being “croc aware”. The stars that night were amazing and one of Didge’s favourite things so far. There was so many to see that it all blended into a fuzzy light and we also saw some shooting stars. After dinner (cooked on the fire followed by some smores ) we decided to turn in and as it was also very warm, around 22 degrees, we left the side window up to see the sun come up in the morning.
Sunday 27 July
Sunday was Emily’s friend, Freyas' birthday and Emily was a bit sad she couldn't ring her as we didn’t have any phone coverage. We had been talking to some folk at the Lions Den who mentioned a 4WD track which bypassed much of the Peninsula Development Road (PDR – the road to the Cape) and came out on the Port Stewart road so we thought we’d give that a go. While we were expecting it to be slower, we didn’t expect it to be as slow as it actually was. We ended up taking around 7 hours to do about 300km of which around 100km was proper 4wd track with around 11 river crossings. Richard was having fun as there were 2 quite challenging crossings, not so much for the car, but more so for the trailer which isn’t a “proper” offroad trailer. There are now a couple of bent bolts beneath the tool box and there was a moment there after dropping off a steep bank he thought the tow ball hitch might have snapped off but after crawling around underneath for a bit it looked to be ok.
Once on the Port Stewart road it was much quicker however getting onto the PDR slowed us down a bit as the corrugations were pretty severe and we often couldn’t travel much faster than 50-60kph and even then we lost half our fillings. We nearly stopped at Coen where you could camp at the Exchange Hotel however everyone thought we should push on the next 60 odd km to the Archer River Roadhouse as the burgers were supposed to be very good. We arrived in the dark, set the camper up and headed to the Roadhouse and had a proper burger the likes of which you could get 30 years ago at your local takeaway shop before they disappeared.
Monday 28 July
Today we made the decision (on the back of the previous days 4wd track expedition) to leave the trailer at Bramwell Junction rather than take it on more corrugations and 4wd tracks. This meant organising the car to be self sufficient which took a bit of time but the more we did, the more we thought it was the right decision as it then gave us the option to look at some more tracks and also not risk any more damage to the trailer. It was still a fairly long day however as we still had over 160km of rough road and corrugations to travel before dropping the trailer at Bramwell and then a further 90km to travel including some of the infamous Telegraph Track before arriving at the Eliot Falls camp ground. It all went without hitch although there was one river crossing (very muddy water and couldn’t see the bottom) which had us stumped until someone came through and we saw the line they took so wasn’t a problem after that. Eliot Falls was a fantastic campsite and is Trish’s favourite so far. We went for a swim here and it was warm enough for Trish to get in which tells you it must have been warm indeed! There were some great rocks to jump off and everyone had a good time here.
Tuesday 29 July
After breakfast we packed up and headed down to swim in one of the falls further upstream called the Saucepan. This ended up being a very nice swimming hole although the rocks weren’t as challenging as the previous day. We headed off further up the Tele track and came across the first river crossing which was indeed very gnarly. The river, while not that deep, had some very deep holes and Richard was wondering what he’d got himself into. So, after walking through and scoping out what he thought was the best lines, he dived in. All was going fairly well, made it across the river had to make a sharp right, then across some bumps and off to the left again. The last part proved to be tricky as there wasn’t enough lock to get around to the left so had to have a couple of goes at it and the fact the tow bar was digging into the ground was making it very difficult too. We did make it out and Richard was thinking to himself if the rest of the track looked like this he wasn’t so sure it was going to be that much fun! We stopped and took stock as we hadn’t actually finished this bit when we saw some other cars coming in the other direction. It just so happens, we’d wandered off the main track and had gone off and done the “fun 4wd stuff” off to the side and there was a much easier track off to the left! We had all got out of the car and Didge had got her jandal (thong for you Aussies!) stuck in the mud and had completely lost it. So, after fishing around for about 20min in the mud we eventually found it and so carried on in one piece very happy we had dropped the trailer the previous day.
We then carried on the variable red road towards the Jardine River ferry. Once across the ferry we experienced some of the worst corrugations but also some of the smoothest roads to date. We really couldn’t work out how to deal with the corrugations, fast , slow, it didn’t make much difference and it was easier to opt for the slow (second gear) as at least you could still talk or hear the radio. Extremely happy to have put the Lovells springs and Bilstein shocks combination in as well as replacing all bushes as I think that helped a lot. The smoothest road was because there were a couple of sections the graders were working on and we were the first folk through so was wonderful.
We arrived into Bamaga and headed straight for the wreckers. Last year this wrecker pulled 62 writeoffs out of some sections of the Telegraph track and he’s up to 30 this year having pulled out 3 just last week (one being a 100k plus 3 week old Landcruiser). The drivers window control had stopped working and Richard had hoped he would have one but not to be. After refuelling and a quick top up on bread and essentials, we headed on to Loyalty Beach camp ground where we enjoyed a beer and watched the sun go down.
Wednesday 30 July 2014
Today we drove to Punsand Bay where there is another campground and had a wander around there. It did have a much nicer feel to it, the restaurant and bar looked a bit nicer and the beach was much nicer although you still couldn’t swim there. It was also a bit more expensive than where we were staying .
We saw there was a 4wd track which was a short cut to the main road to the tip of mainland Australia so thought we’d head out onto this track. It did prove to be a “proper” 4wd track and we were almost digging ourselves out of a bog. However (thankfully!) we were able to reverse out of it and attempt another track to the side which worked out ok. As it turned out though, the reversing did rip the undercover protection off the LPG tank which we only found out later that evening.
We drove to the end of the road, parked and had some lunch before donning hats and sunscreen for the walk to the end of the mainland. It was very warm and also very windy which meant we weren’t able to wear hats but after clambering over a couple of rocky hills we had made it. After taking the obligatory photos, we headed back to the car to visit the site of a couple of crashed planes from WWII. There is quite a bit of the planes left to see as they were built from mostly aluminium. There are also many aviation gas fuel drums left scattered through the bush also.
We had collected firewood during our 4wd adventure so had a fire cooking toasty pies (jaffles) for dinner.
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