Days 57 - 70

We left Cairns, slightly disheartened, as we had only managed to collect 200 litres of WVO. To get across to Darwin along the Gulf Track, we would need nearly 600 litres of WVO and we knew that we would have to stop at every roadhouse, hotel and takeaway that we came across to try and get oil. On the plus side, the Barnacle had been mended and we restocked on meat, tins, fruit and veg for the next leg of our journey, as we had been told that the Gulf Track is a fairly desolate place with fresh food places few and far between.

About 200 kms into our journey, the cars started to thin out and we saw a car about every hour. The roads were sealed from Cairns to Normanton but from Normanton, the roads were unsealed the whole way to Mataranka. Although the unsealed roads and the creek crossings were no where near as rough as the roads we experienced in Cape York, the roads were generally loose gravel/rocks and we came across a number of travellers who had damaged their vehicles on these rocks.

Driving along the Gulf Track itself was unbelievably beautiful. Once we left the mountainous scenery of the stunning Atherton Tablelands behind, we encountered huge open plains from Normanton to Borroloola that carried on for miles and miles, with trees so far away in the distance that they appeared as if they were floating on water. The roads were also incredibly long and straight and all you could see in the distance was a mirage of the road. From Borroloola onwards, the scenery became scrubby with rocky outcrops, which was in stark contrast to what we had been experiencing up until this point. Some of the 4WDrive tracks we took went through cattle stations. Once again, I was amazed at the vastness of Australia for the one cattle station we travelled through went on for the whole day. As we were travelling through cattle stations, we would have to stop now and again to open and close gates. As Gerard and I take the driving in 2 hour shifts each, when it was my turn to open the gate, I got the gate that was labelled "the Bull Tank"! Needless to say, I did not hang around in that field as I was wearing a red vest top!

We covered about 400 kms each day for the first five days and although we were arriving at the bush camps around sunset, the advantage of this was the wildlife that we saw on the side of the road in the late afternoon. Once the day had cooled off a little, the animals would come from the plains onto the track and we ended up seeing hundreds of kangaroos, cattle, emus, water buffalo, brumbies (wild horses) and wild pigs. The bird life was incredible also. We managed to see birds of prey, mainly Kites, but at times, we were fortunate enough to see both black and brown Eagles. They were huge in comparison to the Kites. The circumstances where we saw a large amount of birds of prey was generally where there was roadkill. At one point, there was a roadkill every 30 seconds and not just poor Skippy and his friends, but also cattle and birds. With road trains coming screaming towards you carrying four carriages behind them (about 56 metres long), it is not surprising that there was so much road kill around.

Along the Gulf Track, the opportunity for bush camping is plentiful and we seized upon this. We ended up camping a lot of the time along the banks of creeks, lagoons and rivers and having a fire meters away from the water. The days were hot (averaging 33 degrees) without a cloud in the sky which meant the stars at night were plentiful and bright. We were also lucky enough to have a full moon for nearer enough the whole time of our trip and the natural light you got from the moon out in the bush was incredible.

Each morning, we would wake up, start the fire again and have breakfast watching the bird life on the creeks and rivers – it really was camping at its best. In some places, we had the entire river to ourselves but in others, there were a couple of other campers. Bush camping with other people around brings about a few “personal” problems! When nature calls, you take with you a shovel and try to walk as inconspicuously as possible to a large tree to give you some privacy, pretending that you are not actually carrying a shovel. I have seen some people whistling along carrying their shovel, pretending to use it as a walking stick! The most embarrassing time is when you come out from behind your tree and hurriedly walk back to your camp to bump into someone else walking in your direction also with a shovel. You just sort of knowingly nod to that person and hope they don’t dig in your “area”!!

Camping so close to the creeks and rivers gave us the opportunity to fish and when we didn't have any success with that (which was every night!), we would throw our crab nets in and excitedly check them each morning to see what we had caught the previous night. We mainly caught Cherapins (a freshwater prawn) which were fantastic eating for breakfast with a bit of garlic butter!

You will be pleased to hear that we did not just drive and fish for the whole time! We hired canoes in each of Lawn Hill National Park and Katherine Gorge, where we spent the days exploring the gorges and waterfalls. We also stopped off at Mataranka and went to the thermal spas at Bitter Springs and Mataranka Homestead, which was heaven after the long and dusty drive we had encountered. The water is naturally 34 degrees in these thermal spas and we spent a day snorkeling in the crystal clear waters where we saw turtles and tropical fish.

We took a detour from the track and went to see the Western Lost City, just outside Borroloola. The stone formations were pretty incredible and we spent a long time guessing what each rock looked like (I have included a picture of some of the rock formations so you can also have a guessing game!).

We crossed another state border, which was not very momentous, but it means we are now well and truly in Mick Dundee country!!! The Northern Territory is 30 minutes behind New South Wales and Queensland time which theoretically meant you could have an extra 30 minutes in bed but unfortunately for us, the sun and the birds do not follow this logic!

We also met some great people along the track. Barry and Helen, whose car brakes had broken so were using their hand adjusted caravan brakes to stop them when needed down the many steep dips; Richard and Macca, who we met in Roper Bar and whom were generous enough to supply us with beer and vodka when we had ran out (in return for their generosity, I baked them some blueberry muffins as a thank you. When I returned from giving them the muffins, I found the remaining muffin tins completely empty and on the floor and a fat kangaroo hopping off!); and Robbie and pals from South Australia.

We are now in Katherine and struggling to get used to the amount of cars and tourists we are seeing in comparison to the Gulf Track! We have managed to find more WVO here which means we will make it the whole way to Darwin from Cairns on WVO. Before we get to Darwin, we are heading to Litchfield National Park and after this to Kakadu National Park, where Croc Dundee was filmed, so as you can imagine, I am EXTREMELY excited!

I have included some photos of the scenery of the Gulf Track, the gorges of Lawn Hill, the rock formations at the Western Lost city, Gerard catching his first Cherapin, an eagle watching over his road kill, some pelicans in the morning on a lagoon and some of the bush camps we stayed in.

I would like to say a massive thank you to all those who have emailed and blogged us, it is so nice to hear your news and we hope you are all well.

We will blog next after I have met Mick, Wally, Donk and friends at the pub in walkabout creek!!

Rach and Ged x

Days 30 - 56

After 26 days, 106 creek crossings, 5 snake sightings and 1 crocodile sighting, we are very proud to say that we are back in Cairns after making it to the Tip, the most northern part of Australia, and back. Boy, have we, the very dirty Battered Fish and slightly damaged mud splattered Barnacle, had an adventure. We have travelled on almost every driving surface possible – mud, clay, water, gravel, tar, grass and sand – and endured some of the worst corrugations and wash outs we could have imagined on so called ‘roads’! The bush camping has been unbelievably beautiful and tranquil and the scenery outstanding.

We have also met some fantastic people on our trip – Phil and Carole from Sorrento, Victoria, who kept our spirits high during the never ending wind and rain at Chilli Beach (more on that later!), and the lovely Dunlop Family from Gunnadah, NSW, whom we ended up travelling with for 10 days along the more difficult sections of the trip (again, more on them later!).

We left for our adventure on 13 June 2008 with 400 litres of filtered WVO – a record amount of oil we have collected and filtered in one place. We ended up having to collect oil on our journey as we used 560 litres of WVO in total and travelled 2,898 kms to the Tip and back – again, we had vastly underestimated the distances we would travel and the road conditions, which had a big effect on our kms per litre.

You will be pleased to hear that I have not set out every day or place that we visited in this post but have included some of the highlights/low lights of our trip to the Tip. Be warned, it is still a rather long post!

We travelled along the very steep Bloomfield Track and stopped for a night each in Cape Tribulation and Cooktown before heading to an Aboriginal Settlement called Hope Vale. The area of Hope Vale, like several other areas in the Cape, is an alcohol restricted area and each vehicle is not allowed to take more than 2 litres of wine and 24 cans of light beer with them. There were signs setting out the restrictions with steep penalties being imposed for breaching this – first offence fine $37,500, second offence, up to $75,000 and up to18 month’s imprisonment! We were not taking any chances. We arrived at the camp ground, Elim Beach, and could not have wished for a better setting. It was right on the beachfront amongst the palm trees with fantastic views and only two other campers. One camper was a guy from Nimbin who kept on saying “eh” after each sentence, such as “youze travelled far eh” or “nice spot eh”. At times, I did not know if his chat were questions or sentences so I usually answered all sentences as questions to save any embarrassment on my part! On arrival, we asked the indigenous owner, a fantastic guy called Eddie, about crocodiles (this became our standard question to everyone along the trip – we sometimes even tried to jazz up the question to make it appear as if we weren’t scared witless of crocodiles such as “seen any snappy handbags recently” and some other equally embarrassing sentences). When we asked Eddie about crocs, he told us that there were some “big buggers” out there, but he had not seen any since one chased him along the beach a few months ago!!!! We were not taking any chances and on our walks, I kept on thinking I saw two eyes and two nostrils staring at me from the mangroves!

The drive through Lakefield National Park was another highlight. The road was a bit corrugated (we were to experience far worse corrugations the further North we got!), but it was absolutely stunning. The roads turned from grey to orange dust and we were surrounded by green forest. The contrast of the blue sky, the green trees and the orange road was really something. The landscape then opened up into grassy plains with hundreds of termite hills on. We were also lucky enough to see a goanna, about 5ft long, in the middle of the road. We drove up to it and at first, I thought it was a large log. I then realised it was a goanna and thought I may have to do a Croc Dundee manoeuvre to get it out of the road, (like what Mick Dundee did with the buffalo!), but luckily for the goanna, it moved when we get up close to it. In Lakefield, we saw our first and only croc sighting - a freshwater crocodile sunbathing on rocks. It was much smaller than I thought it would be and to my surprise, I did not feel nervous about seeing a croc for the first time (perhaps because these were the non-man eating variety!).

The next part of our trip, the Overland Telegraph Line (“OTL”), was where the real challenge of the trip came for us and again, it was a major highlight of the trip. The OTL is well spoken about by travellers and the state of the creek crossings and the tracks themselves are legendary. After listening to many travellers accounts of the OTL, Gerard and I were pretty scarred of what we were going to find ahead us but we kept telling ourselves that if the track was too difficult, there was a bypass road that we could take instead. Even getting to the first creek caused us problems – the track was badly washed out in some places and the difference between this track and the “main road” became apparent from the very beginning. We eventually got through the wash outs and arrived at Palm Creek, where we found 3 cars winching each other out of the creek because of the steepness of its banks. Not a good sign for us! When they had finished winching each other out, two hired cars appeared behind them, who would also need winching out (the hired cars did not have a winch themselves). The people in front of them packed away their winches very quickly and did not offer to winch these people out – very un-Australian I am told! After several attempts by the hired cars to get out of the creek, it became clear to us that these people would not be able to get up the creek and if we wanted to get to the other side, we would have to winch them out ourselves. That was all well and good as we had a winch but how you used it was another matter – why isn’t there a manual that comes with these things! A lovely family called the Dunlop’s, who were also about to start the OTL, said that they would show us how to use our winch and help us winch the people out. The Battered Fish proved very successful, winching two cars out without a problem. Well, we did find a slight problem in that the handbrake on the Battered Fish failed and I had to sit in the car with my foot firmly on the brake whilst we were winching the cars out! Once the path was clear, we could then cross the creek. I looked at the creek - there was an extremely steep drop at the beginning of the creek, followed by huge rocks beneath this so placement of the wheels was everything. The Dunlop family crossed the creek first without any problems which then left us to cross. I looked at Gerard and thought he may be in a better state to do this than me – I was very anxious and an absolute bag of nerves! He started off and dropped down the steep section fine. He then took his foot off the brake and slid down the remaining part of the creek, just about missing the rocks on the way down. At one point, he had two wheels in the air and the trailer at a 90 degree angle to the car. I was terrified but Gerard got out the car on the other side with a huge smile on his face claiming “no worries”.

We decided to team up with the Dunlop’s and carry on with them for the rest of the OTL. We are so glad that we did as not only were they great company but they provided us the confidence we needed to do the remaining 12 creeks of the OTL. We even did the legendary Gunshot Creek, a creek that had a log bridge over it and a creek crossing where the water came up to the cars bonnet.

After smugly completing the OTL, we drove to the Tip of Australia. We checked in at Punsund Bay, another beautiful camping spot, unpacked and went to the Tip for sunset. Before we left, we asked our new camping neighbours how far it was to walk to the Tip from the car park - they replied "three beers!". I am not sure what I was expecting but when we arrived at the car park of the Tip, there was no one else around and no signposts pointing the way to “the Tip”! We walked along the beach and then started to climb up some rocks. After about 5 minutes of climbing North (where else would the Northern most point be we thought!), we came to the end of a rocky outcrop where we saw in the distance a signpost. The sign read “you are standing at the most Northern part of Australia”. We had made it! After several pictures and cracking open a bottle, we enjoyed the sunset.

A final highlight of our trip was the last few days we spent with the Dunlops at Vrilya Point. The road into the point, even compared to the OTL, was extremely corrugated and washed out – even the sand patches along the track were corrugated! When we arrived, we were so glad that we had roughed the road conditions as the setting was absolutely stunning. You were allowed to camp anywhere on the long sweep of beach amongst the trees for shades. We camped in a spot pointing directly North, where we could watch both the sunrise and the sunset from our camper trailers, with the water surrounding us (the water at high tide was literally lapping 5 metres away from the fire place) – it was superb. On our last night with the Dunlops, Scott and his son Tim went off spear-fishing (these waters are croc infested but this did not seem to put them off!). They came back (no croc marks on them you will be pleased to hear!) with 5 fish, 3 huge scallops and oysters. We had a fantastic seafood feast that night watching a gorgeous sunset to the West – this really is the life we thought.

Those green monsters amongst you will be pleased to hear that the Trip was not without some low moments. Even though we enjoyed immensely the company of Phil and Carole, Chilli Beach was one of those moments! The drive to Chilli Beach was a good 3 hours from the “main road”, or orange corrugated track as we called it, going through dip after dip and 24 creek crossings. Everyone had warned us about the wind at Chilli Beach as you are on the East side of Australia. We wished we had listened as the wind blew and blew for the whole time we were there. On the first night, we lay in bed listening to the wind. The rain then started and we felt as if we were some clothes in a washing machine, as the camper trailer rocked from side to side in the wind. The wind and rain pounded against the trailer so hard that we were really worried that it was going to blow away. As if that was not bad enough, throughout the night we heard a woman ranting and raving about something. The shouting started to get nearer to the tent and I thought for a good hour that this mad woman would be coming to pay Gerard and I a visit. Alas, she did not and we woke up, still to the sound of wind and rain, but unharmed! For the whole of the next day and night, the wind and the rain did not stop and we ended up leaving a day earlier than planned. It was a shame as Chilli Beach had so much potential to be a really special place - the beach itself really was stunning, a long stretch of sand with fringing coconut trees, and great camping tucked into the scrub.

Phil and Carol also shared with me some of my scary animal moments. We were sitting around the camp fire on the first night when I put a piece of timber on the fire. After about 30 minutes, I shone my torch on the timber as I saw something moving on it. To my absolute horror, there were scorpions coming out of the timber! That same day, I encountered my first snake sighting, which scarred the living daylights out of me. I was taking a walk in the afternoon up to the road and suddenly a snake slithered across my path just in front of me. I did completely the wrong thing and screamed and ran backwards. I think I gave the snake a bit of a scare as it then raised its head and spun round and round very quickly before scurrying back into the bush. There were also lots of green ants and huge spiders in their webs in the trees behind our camp, which Gerard had a huge amount of delight in showing me. I am slowly getting used to all these creatures and know it is something I should expect being out in the bush but it is still pretty daunting the first time you meet these things!

Due to the state of the roads, the Battered Fish and the Barnacle have not come out of our little trip unscathed. The Battered Fish has a cracked headlight and small crack in the windscreen from the stones. The Barnacle has a few more problems and he will be going to see a welder tomorrow! The frame that holds the gas cylinder onto the trailer completely snapped off, leaving the car behind us to pick up the gas cylinder. Where the gas cylinder snapped off, not only do we have a dented cylinder but that side of the trailer has cracks appearing. It really did get a good bash along the tracks.

We are now back in Cairns collecting oil once again. We have truly had a fantastic time in the Cape and our looking forward to our next adventure West across the Gulf Track to Darwin.

I have included quite a few photos in this blog. They are of the sunset at Vrilya Point, some of the Creek crossings on the OTL, the wash outs on the OTL, the scenery through Lakefield National Park, the beautiful but windswept beach at Chilli Beach, Gerard and I at the Tip, a signpost in the outback, a roadtrain coming screaming at us and our camp spot at Elim Beach.

If anyone is still reading this post, we hope you are well and keep us updated with your comments and news.

Rach and Ged x