Blogs from Cape York, Queensland, Australia, Oceania - page 9

Endeavour River Escape - Lakelands - Musgrave Roadhouse - Coen Day 204 Friday, September14, 2007 Finally off to the Cape! Travelling via the Peninsular Developmental road (everything up here is a “something” Developmental Road - perhaps QLD needs to move on). The road initially has stretches of gravel of varying quality interspersed with brilliant sections of bitumen that are spaced at variable intervals and sometimes seem to be placed for no apparent reason. I’m sure there is some logic in there somewhere but its not immediately apparent to us. We were not too interested in this first section as we had covered it previously on our way back from Lakefield NP as far as Musgrave Roadhouse. We passed a reasonable amount of traffic heading south so hopefully we will cover what we need to see before ... read more

Punsand Bay - The Tip Day 210 Thursday, 20 September 2007 - Lazed around camp walking along the beach, sussed out about fishing charters and the trip to Thursday Island. A large charter vessel called the “Lady M” was anchored in the bay and in the morning the occupants came to the beach. As we were directly in front of where they landed we spoke with them and they were all from Mandurah!!! Apparently this group was one which initially formed as a mothers group many moons ago and they had all kept in touch and regularly went on holidays together. Interestingly though they didn’t know what the name of the place was as they reckoned they only had maritime charts which didn’t show land based features. Weird. You would reckon they would have a basic ... read more

The following day we traveled out to Weipa the road greatly improving due to its up-keep by the Comalco mine. We joined a mine tour the following day through the bauxite mining process (which involves taking off the top soil, loading 1-9 metres of ore into trucks and then onto ships finishing with land rehabilitation that somehow overcomes a decline in altitude of up to 9m) and took plenty of photos of huge trucks (belly-dumpers) and other machinery. That night we were treated to mining-town locals at their best (admittedly it was state-of-origin) involving plenty of loud males bellowing but a great night never-the-less and after a good first half by NSW and plenty of cheering by JA going home with tail between legs. Keen for some fishing we decided to take a few days ... read more

After a great night with Bruce in Coen we began our drive to the top. Coen is a little town just about in the middle of the Cape which services nearby cattle stations and travelers. It is sometimes called the capital of the Cape which is a tribute to how little civilization there is up here because there isn’t much in Coen. We crossed the Archer and Wenlock rivers on our first day without any problems, traveling through open savannah country on a pretty good road (the main road up the Cape to Weipa was in great condition, more like a dirt highway and freshly graded) where we could sometimes open the Hilux up to its lightning fast top speed of 100km/hr! Our plan for the day was to make a start on the Old ... read more

Well on the 27th we are off again (January that is!!) California here we come (Mark and I of course....) Hope you will keep an eye out for our blogs friends!! Cheers The Pitts... read more