12 August 2011 - Lakeland Raintrees Caravan Park, Queensland

It is still early afternoon and the frenzy of the morning’s packing up has slowed down, reduced to highlighted entries on a “Yet to do” list. The breeze has come up which is just as well, because the temperature in the bathroom is just short of thirty degrees, far short of what it must be out here under the awning. And this is the middle of winter!

The reality of stripping everything out of the cruiser this morning and repacking with all of the paraphernalia to be taken on this camping expedition has left me exhausted before we have even left the camp. When one considers how many weeks it took to become super organized with all of our worldly (Australian) possessions in an 18 and a half foot caravan, it should not be difficult to imagine how chaotic it was to disassemble this. At one point a fellow camper passed by and asked if we were stock taking. This could have had something to do with the fact that the many slabs of canned food were spread out on the ground. Whatever the reason, it was kinder than asking if we were about to hold a garage sale, which it resembled more.

Last night we purchased an excellent travel guide to the Cape from the camp office, and on further reading, found it exceeded our expectations. I am sure we will find it absolutely essential if we stray from the Peninsula Development Road, which we are already considering doing in a rather modest way. We also spent a couple of hours gob smacked watching a DVD lent to us by the camp proprietors about 4WD up the Telegraph Road. About ten years ago, our friends Neil and Pauline were eying up Kedron caravans and subsequently had one built for them. The Kedron crew gave them this amazing DVD about the trip up the Gibb Road in Western Australia. That was mind boggling; the river crossings, the collapsed bridges, the rocky banks, but all of that had absolutely nothing on this one we watched last night. The caravan survived, but was scratched with the awning ripped off and probably ended up in the scrap heap on return after having played its part in the adventure. The moral of the story was initially, don’t take your caravan up the Telegraph Road, and if you are going in just your 4WD, go with someone else and check every part of the road carefully, expecting to have done well if you cover twenty kilometres in one day. We were taken with some of the delightful creeks and waterfalls that are not too far off the main road, and so will probably poke our noses cautiously up the alternative road. However we will talk to the locals first.


Chris is also interested to consider taking the alternate route straight across to the PDR from the Weipa road, rather than retracing our route all the way back to the turnoff.

At dusk yesterday there were half a dozen wallabies grazing just a few metres from the caravan, and when Chris went across to the amenities after night fall, he startled half a dozen cane toads, the first either of us have come across live. Speaking of live or otherwise, we have in the past few days come across several wild boar lying dead on the side of the road. It makes a change from the roos and wallabies which are still as numerous as road kill up this way, as anywhere else away from the cities.