15 - 21 September

Monday 15th

Fred and Jude took off to pick up Troopy from Hughendon at 4am and arrived back here at around 3pm.

We spent the day packing the 4WD - man it's hard to condense everything down and try and decide what to take and what to leave!! We finally got the worst of it packed anyway so we should be right to head off in the morning!!

Tuesday 16th

We got away at about 9am and spent a big day travelling. It was great to finally be on the road. The difference in the countryside between Ayr upwards and the countryside between Bowen and Ayr is remarkable. It has been so lush and green since we left Ayr, whereas before that it was very dry and arid and desert-like. We pushed through to Townsville and stopped at Bear and Christiane's place in Machans Beach - what a lovely spot. We camped overnight in their driveway after having a BBQ tea with them. We went for a walk down to the beach at sunset as it is only a couple of blocks away from their house. Their house is a converted fishing shack that is just fantastic - loved it!

Wednesday 17

We spent a lovely day today. We went up to Kuranda to see the markets in the morning. The drive up is lovely, through rainforest, lovely lookouts. Christiane has a lovely little clothing/bric a brac shop so we went and had a look at it and Jude brought some stuff. There was a great museum and heaps of other great shops there too. After that we moved along up the road and had lunch at the café at Mt Molloy – it’s a little mexican café and they serve the hugest, bestest hamburgers in the world (maybe a little exaggeration).

We ended spending the night at Lakeland Caravan park which is a great little spot considering the desert we seem to be in the middle of. The landscape keeps changing so rapidly around here its incredible.

Thursday 18th

We spent a lovely night at the caravan park at Lakelands, played cards, chatted to some neighbours, and took off at about 9.30. Only a few k’s out of town the roads turned to dirt, then bitumen, then dirt, then bitumen … and so on. I have no idea why there were so many little patches of bitumen in among all the dirt roads, but we decided after several of these that they were there purely to annoy us – you just got used to the fact that you were back on bitumen and 500m later its dirt again!! VERY dusty. At some stages we couldn’t see a thing if a few vehicles were coming the other way. Also a lot of corrugations which made the ride very bumpy, but all in all it was a pretty good trip – well until Fred and Jude broke another windscreen passing a truck! We reckon it broke because Jude took photos of sacred aboriginal art when she shouldn’t have and they were cursed!! We stopped to go for a bit of a stroll (uphill in very hot weather) to look at Quinkan aboriginal art at Split Rock north of Lakelands.

The guy at the Lakelands caravan park told us we had to camp at Charlie’s 4 U 2 C camp spot just shy of Coen. We pulled in at about 3pm and we found a very interesting camp site in the middle of nowhere. Charlie, as it turns out is a very eccentric Maltese guy who has a very interesting house and old mine site come camping spot (but not an official campsite). He used to mine gold here years ago, but it has all been filled in now and he just lives out here by himself and has little “projects”. (see website for photos) His house has beer bottle walls and it’s extremely interesting to look at – great little campsite too and all you have to do is leave a voluntary donation for the use of it. It even has hot showers and a laundry. One word of warning though, if you do decide to camp there and do some washing – keep an eye on the water colour! We were happily filling the tub and happened to look down and the water had gone black! For some reason that we couldn’t quite fathom, the water kept going from clear to black so we had to keep a good eye on it – not good for whites! There is also a free campsite next to the river just on the other side of Coen.

Well, we have certainly gotten into the Cape area now, the countryside changes constantly and people are few and far between, and we are absolutely loving it. We got the camp oven out for the first time tonight so we are really camping now, though we did still have hot showers and laundry J. We had our first really good look at the stars tonight, as it’s the first time we have been far enough away from civilization that there were no other lights around – I tell you what, it’s worth the trip just to see the stars! Magnificent!! I had forgotten how great the night sky could look.

The weather is just fantastic. It does get rather hot during the day – around the mid 30s, but there are virtually no insects and the nights are lovely and cool. We haven’t had to use insect repellant yet and we can sleep with all the doors open and get a lovely cool breeze in the car – it’s just glorious – wouldn’t be dead for quids!

We met a lovely young couple when we stopped for lunch today and they told us to go camping at Pennefather Creek just north of Weipa because the fishing was fantastic and it was a paradise on earth, so we are going to aim to camp there tomorrow night.

Friday 19th

We took off pretty early this morning and hit Weipa by about 11:30 and we went shopping and then went looking for somewhere to get Troopy’s windscreen fixed. There was a panelbeater in town that apparently did windscreens but they were shut for lunch, so we went and had lunch on the beach which was just fantastic – there was no sand but there were tiny round red rocks, which we think may have been bauxite, they were great to walk on – massaged the feet, they looked a bit like red rice bubbles! We went back to the panelbeaters but they were still closed so we gave it up for a bad job and headed off to Pennefather Creek for a look.

The drive to Pennefather Creek was the roughest we have encountered so far, there was a whole heap of really rough dirt roads, followed by a run along a magnificent beach where Troopy nearly came to grief in a particularly bad stretch of sand. It was about that time we decided to stop and deflate the tyres a little before we kept going. We eventually reached this beautiful looking lagoon, which was our destination and thought we were in paradise. However, we stopped and talked to the Ranger and he told us: You can’t swim here because of the crocs. It's aboriginal tirbal land. There are absolutely no amenities. The fishing wasn’t so great at the moment. It was going to cost us about $50.00 + each just to spend the night. Hmm…we went for a drive to see what we could see, and decided, yes, it was a lovely spot, but not worth $50.00 + each, so we turned around (about 4:30 pm) and went back to Weipa (arrived at sundown) and spent the night in the caravan park there for $24.00 each that had toilets, laundry, swimming pool, and was right on the beach – we reckon we got a bargain!

Well, we were looking to do some serious 4WDing and we certainly found that today. We had a great day but were really worn out by the time we settled down for the night. It was certainly a great experience.

Saturday 20th

We took off from Weipa at about 8:15 am this morning, went back down the way we came into Weipa and then cut across a 4WD track (Batavia Downs) to meet back up with the main road heading up to the cape and when we hit the crossroads where the Old Telegraph Road leaves the main road, and of course we took the Old Telegraph Road for a bit of a challenge! We were only about 10 minutes down the track when we came to the first creek crossing and it was a doozey (well for us inexperienced 4WDers anyway). In the end it looked worse than it was and none of us had any problem getting through, but we did manage to pick up some extra friends who came through at the same time, so we ended up going in a convoy with the 4 4WDs. One of the 4WDs was a Landcruiser with Vic and Jan and believe it or not, Ross knows Vic because he used to work near him when he worked in Brisbane about 15 or 20 years ago. The others were in a Nissan Navara and they are Darby and Jamie (his 5 year old son). They have come from NT and have been on the road for 2 weeks and have another 3 weeks to go. We had a fantastic day with heaps of challenges as far as 4WDing goes. Heaps of creek crossings and ruts and corrugations, etc, etc.

An hour or so into the Old Telegraph Road Troopy decided that he didn’t want to carry Fred’s luggage on his roof any more, so he dumped it off in the middle of the road without letting Fred and Jude know, so they were blissfully unaware driving down the road until we stopped for lunch and looked up and noticed it was gone – Fred’s underwear was scattered all over the Old Telegraph Road! Luckily Vic and Jan were behind them and decided to stop and rescue it for them and wandered into the luchspot with a decidedly scraggly looking box with Fred’s clothes in it.

We ended up staying overnight at Eliot and Twin falls camping area, which is a fantastic spot with beautiful swimming holes and waterfalls – just glorious. We apparently are only 98.5 kilometers from the tip, so we will have another swim in the morning and then head off to make the tip tomorrow sometime.

Sunday 21st

Well, this is the day we have been waiting for, but we couldn’t leave Eliot Falls without one more swim in the glorious water. We got underway at about 9:30 am and had a great creek crossing first thing leaving Eliot Falls. We stuck to the Old Telegraph Road for most of the way and crossed the Jardine River on the ferry ($88.00 per car – including camping permits). We stopped at the Croc Tent on the way to Punsands Bay where they gave us free maps and great info about the local area including where to camp, fish, etc. We then moved onto Punsands Bay down a pretty rough 4WD track and our Disco ended up airborne over a particularly big dip in the road, but we stayed intact and made it to our destination where we stopped for a lovely Barra and chips lunch and caught up again with Darby and Jamie. We all moved on together to the cape down another rough track and got the beach just shy of the tip where we drove our cars out onto the beach (low tide) and took photos showing the spot that’s the furthest you can drive your car, then we headed up the rocks to the tip (about 15 minutes walk) and finally made it to the very tip of Australia!! It was REALLY windy and the weather came over a bit nasty, but it was just fantastic to finally get there. We got lots of photos and added our rocks to the piles of other rocks that other people have been piling up there as a memento of getting to the tip.

After that we decided to head back to Punsands Camp Area to camp for the night, and I finally had a chance to throw a line in! There is a great beach there and I ended up catching a couple of toad fish and nothing else, but it was lovely just sitting on the beach and relaxing. Fred cooked a great curry for tea and Darby and Jamie joined us. We are again sitting in paradise and having happy hour and having a great time.