She'll be apples

Yellow route: Northern tip to Boulia - 3010 km

White route: Total so far - 34'690 km

From the northernmost point of the Australian continent it was a long drive back on the Peninsula Developmental Road to get onto bitumen roads and back to more densely populated areas. A good 480km back to Coen, which acts as the gateway to the northern Cape York Peninsula, another 400km to Cooktown and back to sealed roads. It took us 3 days of solid driving but time flew as we were listening (wherever corrugation did allow it) to another excellent audio book: Kings in Grass Castles, a classic by Mary Durack. This gave us more insight into the history of settlement of this vast country by some very enthusiastic, dedicated and fearless white men. Again we were able to find nice and quiet camping spots on the way. After crossing the Great Dividing Range in a spectacular drive through Lakefield national park we headed for the pleasant Elim Beach (20km north of Cooktown) where we gave Kasbah and ourselves a rest and stayed for two nights. Not doing much but enjoying the scenery with the coloured sands being particularly attractive.

Very smooth gravel road through rainforest in the very north of Cape York Peninsula

Fantastic camping at Elim Beach

Elim Beach and the coloured sands in the background

On a Sunday morning we got into sleepy Cooktown for an excellent coffee and magnificent views from the Grassy Hill lookout.

A monument to the Goldrush in the Cooktown area

View from Grassy Hill lookout in Cooktown

There are two good options to enter the northern Daintree area. The renowned Bloomfield track with extremely steep climbs and the notorious CREB track which had recently been reopened. The latter being definitely much more demanding. But having „failed“ on the Old Coach Road lately (see last blog) we were not yet ready for a new adventure. The challenge of Bloomfield didn’t make much impression neither on us nor on our truck, but the scenery of the rainforest was very much to our taste. This wonderful jungle tumbling right onto white-sand beaches continued after the overnight stay at Noah’s Beach. Next we spent half a day in the outstanding Daintree Discovery Centre, where we got to explore the rainforest at different vertical levels. Walking with an audio guide along different tracks from the very ground to the canopy of the trees. Only the icing on the cake, seeing a Cassowary in nature, was missing. A car ferry brought us across the Daintree River and back into agricultural land. The pricing of these kind of ferries across Australia is quite interesting: the eleven ferries which cross the Murray River in South Australia are all free of charge, crossing the Daintree River costs $13 (single-fair) and crossing the Jardine River up at Cape York is worth $98 (return). In terms of transport distance, there is not much difference!

Bloomfield falls

Lush rainforest in the Daintree

Crabs' work – the animals too shy to be photographed

Lookout in the Daintree

Thornton Beach, near Cape Tribulation

Green Tree Phyton

Boardwalk in the Daintree discovery centre

We chose Mareeba in the Tablelands to be our service town before the next stint into the Outback. Probably not the smartest of decisions as they didn’t have neither a car wash nor a laundry with good front loaders and to top it off: we inadvertently selected a campground with no showers. We worked around all this and still had a pleasant stay and a most interesting guided tour through the Jaques coffee farm.

Strolling through the Herberton Historic Village kept us busy for another half day. The exhibits (old houses either moved from other places in Australia or rebuilt) were carefully chosen, authentically furnished and splendidly equipped. The exclusive presentation of the machinery at a print-shop replica by an expert who has worked as a printer for his whole life, left a big impression on us and made us aware of the huge impact of the automated type-setting process on both literature and education.

Neat little shop in the Herberton Historic village

Print shop and David working now as tourist guide

Tedious type setting before automation

A leap in productivity in type setting: Intertype machine with 4000 moving parts

Printed on a manual printing press

In this shed there were beautifully maintained vintage cars

After another long driving day we enjoyed the lookout and gorge walk in the Porcupine national park as well as the overnighter at Pyramid campground.

Curious Rufous Betong visiting us at night (the animal is actually 50 cm tall)

Pyramid Gorge, Porcupine national park

The landscape got drier and drier as we drove south west. Our current goal is to be in Bedourie by Friday 11th for the last weekend of the Simpson Desert Carnival ("Birdsville races") with a rodeo, horse races and the Ute & Travellers Muster. There were many options to get there and regardless of how small these Outback towns are, they have a colourful flyer or magazine, advertising the „must-dos“ in their town. The lovely lady at the visitor centre in Hughenden made the choice for us. We went for Muttaburra, Aramac, Barcaldine, Longreach, Winton, Middleton and Boulia and didn’t regret it. Great scenery, a lot of remoteness and heaps of dead kangaroos along the roads. Also some very interesting history about the pioneering shearers strike in 1891 which indirectly led to the formation of the labour party and lots of friendly people in charming little towns. All the while we listened to the "soundtrack" of this important part of history: Evan McHugh’s latest audio book, The Shearers.

It's "shockingly dry" in the Outback, as the lady at the tourist information in Hughenden put it

Good example of a small Outback town – Aramac

Famous tree of knowledge in Barcaldine. Place where the meetings of the striking shearers took place

We mostly camped at rivers (both wet ones and dry ones) and some sunsets were spectacular

One of the several hotels in Winton

Statue of the legendary Banjo Paterson, composer of the song Walzing Matilda. Unfortunately the museum burnt down in June this year....

A big contrast to the monotony of some Outback roads was the stretch between Winton and Boulia. A magnificent scenery with colourful hills in dry flats — and suddenly the Cawnpore Lookout presented a jaw-dropping view of a series of rocky hills. Also not to be missed was a drink at the legendary Middleton Hotel bar, the only remaining building of the once-important Cobb&Co. mail service route between Boulia and Winton.

We haven’t decided yet how much more Outback there will be on our travel as it is bone dry. You’ll read in the next blog how we will spend the last weeks of our Grand Tour around Australia!

Middleton Hotel – truly in the middle of nowhere

Magnificent view from the Cawnpore Lookout

Yellow route: Townsville to the tip - 2180 km

White route: total so far - 31'680 km

We left Townsville fully stocked but with no defined travel plan. The direction was all we knew – North. Free camping along the coasts is fairly difficult – what we experienced in WA earlier during our travels is also true for Queensland. Nevertheless we found a pleasant beach-camping option with a lot of privacy at Crystal Creek, South of Ingham. Paluma national park offers excellent swimming opportunities but we both are wimps when it comes to chilly water. Hence we didn’t take the chance to dip. On the other hand we enjoyed exploring the Tyto Wetlands in Ingham in the afternoon heat even though there was not too much wildlife at this time of the day. Still, we were lucky enough to observe some Crimson Finches and a Azure Kingfisher which is an absolute beauty.

Swimming hole in Paluma national park

The excellent Tyto Wetlands information centre

More hiking was to come in Girringun national park with the Wallaman Falls, the longest single-drop waterfall in Australia at 305m and lots of water torrenting down into the gorge. Cardwell, the pleasant beach town and departure point for Hinchinbrook Island, was hit badly by hurricane Yasi in 2011. And so was probably the 26km forest drive to several waterholes in the area , which turned out not to be worth doing under these circumstances.

Wallaman Falls

Cardwell beach with Hinchinbrook Island in the background

Innisfail has a few historic buildings in Art Deco style which are beautifully restored. We enjoyed the architectural walk through this small town. It is rather a town where people work and live than a tourist place. From there we spontaneously deviated from the coast to the Atherton Tablelands to meet up with a lovely family from Newcastle we met in March in Southern WA. Kristen, Julian, Sam and James spent a few days in Malanda and we were grateful that they invited us to come their way. Not only were we spoilt with a first-class BBQ dinner and excellent company but got to explore a wonderful lush green countryside and numerous waterfalls in the tropical rainforest. The landscape is picturesque with „normal“ cows like Holsteins amongst other milk cattle and reminded us in parts of Gippsland in Victoria and New Zealand. A welcoming change to all the skinny Zebu cattle we passed in the last 4 months. The lushness of the meadows was a result of regular, significant rains in the previous 6 weeks. In fact, we seemed to have timed it perfectly with the sun being back in this area. The nights up in the tablelands (approx. 600-800 metres above sea level) were quite chilly (6-8°C).

Although a big tourist attraction we had to go and see two most impressive fig trees (Curtain Fig, Cathedral Fig) and did a pleasant drive along Lake Tinaroo with very peaceful camping apart from the early morning fright I got in the toilet block, being watched by a thick and almost 4 metres long python!

Driving down from the tablelands was very scenic. Next we hiked a „real“ mountain for a change: after close to 1000 vertical metres to the top of Walshs Pyramid we were rewarded by stunning views of the Cairns region and the Tablelands.

Art Deco architecture in Innisfail

Atherton Tablelands

Johnston River lookout

One of many waterfalls in the Tablelands

Very impressive curtain fig tree

Camping at Lake Tinaroo

Python in the amenities – fortunately not venomous

Magnificent views from the summit of Walshs Pyramid

We stopped for a night in Cairns to catch up with Kate and Lindsay, another Aussie couple we met on the Gibb River Road when our radiator leaked for the first time (Lindsay was the one who offered us the putty to repair the radiator, which lasted for about 8’000 km). They were on their way back from Cape York and gave us the latest „tips on the Tip“. Again, it was a very pleasant evening.

The next 4 days we stayed in Port Douglas and got ourselves into a different challenge: we had booked a speech trainer and took private lessons with the goal to sound a bit less Swiss (especially me) when we speak English. At the same time we broadened our knowledge of typical Australian expressions, behaviour, life style and tropical delicacies. After four days we also found our favourite cafe which not only served decent coffee but nice muffins and light lunches – Cafe Ecco. This was heaven and we enjoyed it even more knowing that on our way to the top there would not be too many places like this…..

Doing homework at the campground in Port Douglas

Port Douglas – beach

As a run-up for the OTT (see below) we attacked the Old Coach road in the Palmer River Goldfields that runs between the gold mining ghost town of Maytown and the township of Laura. It sounded interesting although rated as difficult in our Hema 4WD Adventures book. We assumed that it can’t be too demanding as it was built and used by horse-drawn coaches in the early days. In Maytown itself there was not much to see as people took everything with them when they left the place in 1945. The drive in, 80km West off the Peninsula Development road was quite hilly and scenic. After crossing a dry riverbed the track started to get really tricky: steep climbs on rocky surface onto a ridge; on the downhills we had to deal with big rock steps and awkward off-camber situations. It was very slow going and when a young guy stopped us to tell that he tipped over his camper trailer twice on the Northern part we had to reconsider. The next passage also didn’t look promising, so we set camp and called it a day. The next morning we decided to turn back and accompanied the somehow traumatised young couple in finding an alternative route out of this „playground“. Sometimes it’s more difficult to say „stop“ than to say „go“ but it certainly was the right decision.

This is all what remains from the Palmer River Goldfields capital – Maytown

Steep up and down-hills

The couple wich would have wished to travel without the camper trailer......

We backtracked and made our way through Laura, the magnificent Split Rock Aboriginal rock art and the scenic Lakefield national park with wonderful wildlife (first opportunity to observe a long neck turtle at length) up to the Bramwell Roadhouse Junction, the southern end of the Old Telegraph Track (OTT).

Split rock – impressive Aboriginal rock art

very long neck.....

This legendary 4WD experience starts with one of the most challenging crossings, Palm Creek, if not for the deep water but for the very steep entry and exit banks. We consider this being a good thing as it sets the mark and it’s then up to each driver to weigh up whether his skills and vehicle are up for this or not. Already two kilometres later, at Ducie Creek, we got a dilemma whether we should walk the long waterhole, filled with brown murky water or not. Following the 4WD rules it’s a YES of course but then the owner of Archer River Roadhouse reminded us that there are crocodiles („salties“) up there and we should definitely only walk through clear water – hence a NO without doubt. We slowly drove through and fortunately there were no big holes or rocks the water level was moderate and the ground was firm. We set camp at the charming Dulhunty River for a quiet night. The next day we didn’t even attempt to drive Gunshot Creek, but took the Bypass road and drove the 5km back (very narrow for Kasbah) to this legendary — and infamous — spot where we just missed the big action. A group of – let’s call them The Hooligans – with rough cars (one even without windows) had used the area as a playground. It must have been quite a spectacle when they came down the sheer walls! They were now ahead of us, so we got a taste of their driving and behaviour further up. This is the reason why we dare calling them The Hooligans. They met every single cliché (don’t want to go into details here) but were still friendly.

Palm Creek crossing, the first challenge on the OTT

Walk through or rather not ?

Always. Is the answer for some fearless people

A Hooligan car

A Hooligan couple – it's 10am and already beer o'clock

Looking at the slopes and drops at Gunshot it is not quite inconceivable how one can drive this. Amazingly scary!

Gunshot Creek entry slopes – different options, all scary!

The water level of Cockatoo Creek was not very high and the water clear, so it was easy to walk the crossing and investigate the best line. After that we were very glad for The Hooligans to walk through a long deepish and brown waterhole. We watched four different ways of doing the crossing and chose the best one for ourselves. The famous and pretty Fruit Bat Falls were a very welcoming swimming opportunity for our tense bodies. The crossings of course are demanding but for us most of the stretches between those were challenging and asked for full-on concentration as Kasbah is higher and wider than most vehicles on this track and is also more sensitive to off-camber situations. We camped at Canal Creek, an obviously very popular overnight stop. The next morning it was drizzling when we had a look at the picturesque Eliot and Twin Falls. From here the track got even more challenging, the banks steeper, the crossings deeper but luckily with clear water. The entrance into Canal Creek was rather rough, steep and off-camber again and Oliver did some adjustment to the ramp with the showel and so it never got dangerous at any point in time. After a scary log bridge (no weight limit declared…) a rather shallow crossing (with no name). After this we got a bit nervous for Nolan’s Brook as some people advised us not to attempt it with Kasbah. To turn back and take the bypass road would have meant to do four of the just passed crossings in the opposite direction which would have been more than challenging if not impossible without a winch. Kasbah showed the many spectators that Nolan’s Brook was a piece of cake!

The spot with its swimming holes was so nice that we set up camp shortly after lunch and in the evening we cheered with some lovely people we met on the track for completing the legendary OTT — we made it!

After that it was in parts a very heavily corrugated road to the tip of Cape York where we enjoyed the beautiful landscape and the remoteness at Cable Beach for two nights.