Home again!

Ahhh... How WONDERFUL to sleep in our own beds! By the time we left Weipa, we were over camping. We had set up and packed up the tent 6 times in 10 days and we were OVER it. It was rather windy on and off, and the on times seemed to correspond exactly with when we were trying to cook or fold the tent. Try keeping a flame alight in a wind, or holding something rather like a parachute and trying to get it to lay on the ground.

So after we left Weipa, we headed south as fast as we could. We'd done the mine tour before leaving, so weren't really sure how far we would be able to get that day. I was thinking Archer River Roadhouse, but we got there at about 2pm and that was waaaay too early to stop. So we kept on going, and got as far as the town of Coen. Coen actually has multiple stores, AND a pub and by this time, the thought of pitching the tent one more time was too much.  I suggested we shout ourselves a room at the hotel! Dunc didn't take much convincing, but sadly the pub was booked out. Fortunately there was a guest house just down the street, and we scored ourselves 4 beds in a room for the same price as the others were paying for their rooms. Admittedly, there were shared bathrooms, we had to move the daybed in from the lounge room, and Lexie used her sleeping bag, but hey... It was $160 for bed and breakfast for the 4 of us - we are NOT complaining!

We went all-out and had a meal at the pub too. Yum!

The next day we woke refreshed and well rested having slept on mattresses as opposed to air beds and were on the road at 9am, almost a record! Dunc drove and drove and drove and we got to Laura in time for a quick lunch stop before checking out the local Indigenous Rock Art. Somehow, having eavesdropped on every single other conversation Dunc and I have had in the last 2 weeks, the children didn't realise we were stopping and cracked it big time when they saw the paltry 300m hike. Lexie was completely crabby and Angus whining about his itchy bites and the end result was Dunc storming back to the car with them to medicate Angus. I went on to see the artwork before returning to give Dunc a turn. Bloody kids! They were both incredibly exhausted and everyone was looking forward to seeing Bertha and getting home again at Endeavor Falls.

The back short cut seemed to take a lot longer in reverse, and we didn't get home until well into the afternoon. And here we are and here I am! I've spent the day doing 6 loads of washing - everything that came with us, as well as the sheets that were left on the bed and got leaf litter all over them from the hatch. The children have had a chilled out day sleeping in, drawing, playing with Lego and are now in the pool. Dunc has washed the dust of Baby Bertha and checked her thoroughly for damage (VERY tired shock absorbers and some pitting from the stones near the back doors). Pretty good all up, I'd say. All I have to do now is sort out 14 posts worth of photos and I will be completely up to date!

Heading South - Weipa

We left our little patch of paradise and headed south. It was a little sad going back across the Jardine Ferry, though it did drive home the fact that we had done it - gotten to the tip, and beaten the wet season too.  We were heading to Fruitbat falls and hoping to get into Elliot/Twin falls as well as we had heard such wonderful things. We wanted to camp at Sam creek, but we were getting conflicting reports about whether Baby Bertha would make it through the 2 river crossings. Not having a snorkel fitted meant Dunc wasn't willing to attempt anything deeper than the wheels. We got down the Old Tele Track just in time to watch someone fly through the crossing and almost drown his Hilux. Yeah. We weren't going across there! There were a bunch of other people hanging around the crossing. "Going swimming?" asked one man. "Yeah ahhhh no! We won't try that!" replied Dunc. This man had just spent three hours drying out his engine after flooding it coming back in this direction. Too much for Baby Bertha!

We satisfied ourselves with another lunch and dip at Fruitbat Falls and headed on towards Weipa. We decided to camp at the entry point to the Old Tele Track in the hope that we would get some entertainment. We'd already stayed at Bramwell Station, the reviews on the roadhouse were average and we'd heard good things about this campsite. Sadly it was just too late in the season and no one passed us either that afternoon nor the next morning. What a shame! We had a lovely quiet night and a slow morning though and Dunc got to pretend that he'd driven more of the OTT than the 4km he really had.

Weipa was yet another town that was bigger and far more developed than we expected, with a shopping centre and all. There was one caravan park in town and it had a pool - woo hoo! Sadly, yet again, the pool was closed due to a fault and we had VERY grumpy children. We pitched the tent on yet another beachfront site and the boys went fishing once more. Angus had some luck this time and caught an undersized Queenfish that had to be thrown back. Apparently Dunc caught a fish too, but since there are no photos, I'm not sure I believe him!

Weipa is a big mining town, thanks to the massive bauxite deposits surrounding it. We hand a mine tour and I have to say it is the least invasive of all the mines we have been to. It used to be Comalco, but now it's a Rio Tinto mine, and this one is not an underground, nor an open-cut mine. Instead, the top 7m of soil is scraped off, the bauxite layer removed to turn into aluminium, and the top layers replaced. As we drove around the town, our guide pointed out places that had been mined previously and you really couldn't tell any difference from the areas leading into town. I wouldn't want to be trying to live in Weipa though. House and rental prices are insane! It's more expensive than in suburban Melbourne - a 3 bedroom house will sell for $850K. There's not much to the town, and as soon as the wet season hits, they are blocked off by road and have to fly in and out. They get two barges a week of deliveries to the stores, and once that stock is sold out, everyone has to wait until the next delivery. Apparently when the detention centre was nearby, they bought out all the chicken and there was not much left for the townspeople. How unfair is that?!

Another part of Paradise - Loyalty Beach

We packed up and left Punsand Bay, bidding farewell to Dwayne and co who had a long drive ahead of them. We had a very different drive - half an hour, which I think is one of our shortest distances yet!

To kill some time (there is air conditioning in the car and not in the tent...) we cruised through Bamaga and went to check out some more  WWII relics. Bamaga was an airfield and there are a few wrecks still hanging about. We stopped by a Bristol Beaufort Bomber and a DC3, both of whom crashed near the airfield and have been left in the jungle where they landed. This time there was rather a lot more to see, as these wrecks haven't been scavenged like the ones near Darwin. 

We also got to experience the unique wildlife of Bamaga. The entire town is populated with wild horses. It's hard to work out if they are feral, wild brumbies or pets, but they are EVERYWHERE, quite fearless and all look rather scrawny. There were signs up in the Loyalty Beach campground asking that we didn't feed the horses as they can bite, but I think they could all do with a damn good feed of some sort! They all just wander around: individually, in pairs, with foals or in whopping great herds. It's quite mesmerising at times, though also a little unsettling to be doing some laundry and have a horse wander up and stick its head in the trough!

We got a prime site at Loyalty Beach. Being there so late in the season, and getting there so early in the day, there were only 3 other sites taken. We got to have a huge shelter and it's electric light for the price of an unpowered site so we were all happy. Mind you, I think we used the light for all of 15 minutes each night. LOL. 

We were also very pleased to see Paul and Stephanie and to hear that they had been fully paid out for their "totalled" camper trailer. They had bought a tent and blow up mattress, were based here for a week or so and were intending on loading their car on the barge and going back to Cairns the easy way. What a good idea! They had driven from Fremantle across almost the whole of Australia via the "shortcut" and were all of 80km from the tip when they lost their trailer. How devastating for them. 

We had a relaxing couple of days chilling out. Dunc and Angus went fishing again and Lexie lay in the hammock and read another 2 or 3 books. I had loaded up her Kobo before we left, and we decided not to bring any physical books to cut down on packing. She seemed determined to get through the entire lot in the 2 weeks or so we had up here! I'd loaded up most of Jacqueline Wilson's books and James Patterson's Maximum Ride series and she is now mad keen on both. I'd also included Mathew Riley's "Hover Car Racer" which Dunc and I had both enjoyed. It took us DAYS to convince her to read it, and then she wouldn't put it down or listen to a word we said as soon as she started it. Typical kid!

I wrote all of the blog entries you've just been reading! My blog relationship is very fluid. I usually write in the mornings, and do pics and uploading at night. But if we have friends around, the nighttime chores get skipped. So when we were with Dwayne and Anna, not much was done. My Facebook updates increase and my blog updates decrease in a direct proportion! Right this very second, we are back down at Bertha and live on the blog the latest entry is about climbing Uluru! I didn't take either laptop (they need power) so used my iPad and have written 13 entries during the 2 weeks we were camping. Now I just need to sort and resize the photos and get somewhere where there is phone service to upload them all...

What's North of the Northernmost tip of Australia?

Why Thursday Island, of course! Did you know that there is actually a Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday Island too? I'd been intending to do a day trip out to Thursday Island from the next campground, but we were having so much fun with Dwayne and Anna and the kids, we decided to do it earlier. The ferry leaves from Seisia and costs $116 for an adult and $56 for a child, so it's not a cheap trip! It also leaves at 7.45am which meant leaving Punsand Bay at 7am. Eek. I had booked a tour of the island with a local guy named Dirk. He has a mini bus and meets you at the ferry and does tours for $25 an adult. He was really lovely, and our two families made a group of 9 which just about filled the bus. Another family we passed on the way up recommended him, and his cards were at  the campground.

The trip over was great - flat seas so Dunc felt fine. Our tour went for about an hour and a half and we saw all the sights including the museum. After the tour we popped into the Cultural Centre and Art Gallery and then headed to the pub for lunch.

We waited for the return ferry along the foreshore while the kids played on the rocks and hunted for crabs. 

It's interesting how different the islanders are from the aboriginal communities on the mainland. It's so close, yet culturally quite different, rather like the Tiwi Islands.  

I was amazed to learn that people on the mainland actually come over to TI to have their babies! The medical centre in Bamaga does not have a maternity ward, while the one on TI does. It caters to all the outlaying islands further out as well. Mothers from the 5 communities near Bamaga move over to TI for the last month of their pregnancies.  

It was a really interesting day, though I'm not entirely sure it was worth the $500 spent over the day. Nice to be able to say we have been there, though.

Having gone north of the tip by sea, we now got to go north of the tip by air! The campground did helicopter flights, and Angus was lucky enough to score a seat on one of the flights Dwayne booked. There are only 3 passenger seats, and Dwayne had 5 in his party, so he needed 2 flights. This resulted in a spare seat and rather than flip a coin for it, Lexie decided that Angus could go. Isn't she sweet?

Of course as soon as Dunc watched Angus fly up into the air, he wanted a go too, so the rest of us had our own flight a little later! It was rather bumpy up there, and Dunc had elected to go with "no doors" so for me, the best bit about the flight was when we had to weigh ourselves for the pilot. I got to have my 10kg weightloss since the flight over Wilpena Pound confirmed. Woo hoo! Dunc is down 12kg and looking very slim indeed!

Dunc and Lexie had a ball and I actually did enjoy myself. But we all forgot to take any photos of the tip itself. Whoops!