Blogs from Cape York, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 4

A lot has happened since our last blog, we spent a night just north of Coen by a little stream where i fixed a few minor damages to the car. The road turned nasty just after Musgrave Roadhouse with corrugations 300mm apart and about 150mm high we thought the car was going to fall apart i have never seen anything like it. The camp near Coen was free and very nice and the plan was to travel to a cattle station for the following night and then on to Weipa. We pulled in to Merluna Cattle Station at lunch time and the car gave us its first sign of bad things to come, problems getting it to start but it wasnt till we went to leave the next day that the true extent of the problem ... read more

Thursday 28th July – Musgrave Roadhouse to Cooktown via Lakefield NP This is actually part 2 of this day's trip, so I can put more photos up with it. Somewhere after the 2nd Lakefield water crossing we hit a few bumps and holes and managed to dislodge a plug lead(!) which (not surprisingly) caused a lot of difficulty in running. Phil promptly replaced the lead, and we limped along for a while, gradually losing drive although the engine was still (sort of) running. We ended up on the end of a tow rope from Phil's car and crawled to the ranger station where we could get off the road and have a proper look. The rangers at the station were somewhat sniffy about us being out here in these old cars, but became more friendly when ... read more

Tuesday 26th July – Coming Back South Some mornings, you head out on the road and it looks like it’s going on forever (like this photo). There has been a little bit of rain around here, and it’s greyish looking today but probably won’t amount to much. Or we hope not, as our cars haven’t had a “wet” test yet! ... read more

Sunday 24th July Cape York - To The Tip Part 2 Cape York is a populous place these days, with a well-worn trail to get there, quite unlike our Peugeot trip of 2009 when on the Tanami Track in particular, we didn’t see many other people. After the Tip, we drove to Somerset Beach for lunch, past the site of the Somerset homestead – nothing left there now. Somerset Beach is very pretty, and has an interesting “message post” where over the years people have marked their presence with all kinds of items – we didn’t leave anything! ... read more

Friday 22nd July 2011 Eliot Falls to Seisia Left Eliot Falls about 9:30 – it was practically deserted at that time. We backtracked through the exciting water crossing, past Fruit Bat Falls, and then back on to the Bamaga Road. The corrugations seem to get worse the further north you go although they are actually doing quite a bit of road work on this section. We had lunch on the northern side of the Jardine River ferry. Even though this northern part of the Cape is alcohol restricted and a quarantine area, no-one has stopped us to check anything! Arrived at Seisia soon after lunch to be once more re-united with the entire group, who had that day been to “the Tip” which is not the rubbish tip, but the northern tip of the Australian mainland. ... read more