Cairns to Cape York

From Undarra we drove to Cairns, almost 300km and a world of difference away. From dry dusty scrub we entered wet rain forest. The tortuously steep and twisty road down the Gillies range would presumably provide spectacular views on a clear day, but on the first wet day we had experienced since Easter all we could see was mist and rain. It was one of the most difficult days we have had towing the van, and we were very glad to arrive in Cairns in one piece.

Over the last few months we have debated whether we would go up Cape York Peninsula, as the unsealed rough roads are unsuitable for our caravan. We decided that we couldn't really claim to have 'done the lap' without including this iconic area of Australia, and while we were in Darwin we booked a 10 day camping tour of the Cape. We chose a caravan park here in Cairns that also offered storage, so on the day our tour started (with a 6:15am pick-up) all we had to do was lock the van and leave it and the car to be put into storage by the park, they then put it back on site on the day we returned and plugged it into the power ready for us to come home to a cold beer.

It was quite exciting to be heading off on our first 'holiday' since we started caravanning. After the early pick up we were taken to the Cairns airport for a flight to Horn Island, in the Torres Strait. We had a look through the Horn Island museum, which had displays on Islander history and the role of the island in the Second World War, when it hosted a US air base and played a major role in the Battle of the Coral Sea. After a lovely buffet lunch we were whisked off for a tour of WWII sites, then bundled on the ferry to Thursday Island. At TI (as the locals call it) we had to almost run to make the ferry connection to the the town of Seisia on the mainland, where we were greeted by the bus driver and cook for our tour. It turned out that there were 10 of us altogether, plus the 2 staff members, which was a comfortable number in the 17 seater bus, allowing us to spread out enough not to have our day packs under our feet. Our fellow passengers were mostly a similar age to us, and we made a congenial group.

On our first full day of the trip we went up to the tip of Cape York, mainland Australia's northernmost point. It was quite a thrill to stand on this rocky point and know that all of Australia lay southwards. That afternoon we visited around some of the plane crash sites in the area, most of which were during WWII. The wreckage of many such crashes still lies scattered in the bush even after all this time. In the photo at right you can also see our bus.

From Seisia we headed southwards (there wasn't any other way to go really), the next 2 nights we spent at Twin Falls in a remote national park camp site. Toilets and a tap were provided, but no showers, but with such beautiful swimming conditions it didn't matter. Besides, if no-one showers then you can't smell each other!

Other nights were spent at camp sites attached to old telegraph or cattle stations, with one other 'shower free' night at Lakefield National Park. Slightly more luxurious was a night at Weipa, a remote bauxite mining town on the eastern shores of the gulf of Carpentaria. We did the 'optional extra' mine tour in Weipa, the bauxite is found in a thin layer only a metre or two below the ground, mining is done by stripping off the layer of top soil and digging up the bauxite below, the top soil is moved to rehabilitate a previously mined area so there is surprisingly little evidence of the mining left behind. Our last night of the tour was spent in comparative luxury at Cooktown, with clean hot showers and well lit toilets.

The road up Cape York is unsealed and, in places, very corrugated. There were times when it felt like our teeth would be rattled out of our heads, and the bus could barely manage 30 kmh. We had several river crossings, fording across at a steady pace. The bus only became bogged once, it took us several hours to dig it out of a deep patch of soft sand in, of all things, the car park of a picnic spot where we had stopped for lunch.

The cape was dryer than we had expected, mainly covered in the ubiquitous Australian scrub. We were a bit disappointed that we didn't see more wildlife, although there were occasional lizards and wallabies, and a snake, turtle or two. There were also several frogs, usually lurking in dark toilet blocks waiting to leap out and startle the unwary.

On the last day of our trip we drove down the Bloomfield Track from Cooktown back to Cairns. Unlike most of the previous landscape this was through the lush tropical rain forest that we associate with far north Queensland, although we were a little disappointed to find that the notorious crossing across the Bloomfield River has now been updated to a bridge. However the road itself was still pretty hairy, with hills of up to 30 degrees slope. After a ferry crossing across the Daintree River we came to Cape Tribulation, which is the end of the sealed road from Cairns. All of a sudden we were back in civilisation, with huge numbers of back packers and families on school holidays enjoying the beautiful golden beach.

Of course, one of the things about a 'camping holiday' is that you sleep in a tent. The tour company provided tents, inflatable mattresses and sleeping bags, and by the end of 10 days we were quite expert at setting up our sleeping quarters. However, the experience certainly made us appreciate the comparative luxury of our caravan!