11 August 2011 - Lakeland Raintrees Caravan Park, Queensland

We left Mareeba by check out time this morning, after bidding farewell and safe journeys to Kate and Graeme as they drove out past us, heading for Townsville, and Ray and Bernie who were still packing up before heading in a westerly direction.

The road north crossed flat wooded pastoral lands, soon leaving any sugar cane fields behind, and then rose up and over a number of ranges as we headed for Mount Molloy. There the road branches with the eastern road continuing on to Mossman and Port Douglas on the coast, and the Mulligan Highway continuing north west on toward the Cape. At the junction we noticed an excellent rest area and stored it in our memory banks for future reference, but carried on, through Mount Molloy where there is a camp which stores one’s caravan for free providing you stay the days before and after your caravanless adventure. While this sounds tempting, especially to one who is forever chasing a bargain, it would mean that we would have to travel the extra distance to collect it again if we were to enjoy Cooktown in the luxury of our own home. And so we carried on through until we reached the Palmer River Roadhouse, a pub on the northern banks of a river made famous for the gold discovered further downstream at Maytown, now a ghost town. The roadhouse offers pub style refreshments and camping together with a tiny free museum and of course the welcome loos. We spent perhaps half an hour reading through the stories in the museum room, taking particular note of the fact that there had been at one time 17,000 Chinese on the Palmer River Goldfields, many of whom were ostracized and expelled when the white Australia policies were enforced early in the twentieth century. I was particularly interested in the story of a pioneer who had been speared by marauding aborigines in the later nineteenth century and had found his way to Cooktown and safety, courtesy of a brave black gin (servant woman), his wife who traveled through dangerous territory, the doctor and others.


We lunched out in the car park before preceding further, winding our way over several large ranges with excellent lookouts, and then finally down to Lakeland (named after a chap called Lakeland not the fact the land might or might not have lakes).

The camp here is like a little oasis, situated in this very small settlement on the crossroads to Cooktown to the east and on toward Laura and the Cape to the north west. The camp is run by a couple from Whakatane, once upon a time. They have been here for so many years, I guess it is unfair to call them Kiwis. Here we will pack the cruiser, and then store the caravan down the back of the park, as we head off once again to enjoy a more simple style of travel.

The weather remains clear and sunny, the roads so far have been excellent, however I do know that tomorrow when we reach Laura, they will turn to dirt, and we will have a thousand or more kilometres of dust to eat. We noted the number of rust coloured vehicles and trailers returning south today as we drove north. As confirmation that we are indeed doing the right thing leaving our caravan here, parked beside us is a Jayco Discovery caravan of over 20 foot, dust covered and rescued from the tip by a breakdown truck. There is nothing wrong with the van; the driver just could not face the return journey on the dusty corrugations and cares too much for his investment to subject it to the return trip. He should have thought of that before he left here!