Busy Camping

“Go West” (like the Village People)

After finally leaving Cairns, we headed up the range and into Mareeba. This is where Australian coffee is grown, and we decided we had to drop back into Coffee Works. This was to have a quick coffee of course, as well as top up on our ground coffee which we had picked up on our way through last time. It was too good an opportunity to miss, and the restock of the lovely coffee was important for the next few months.

From there, we drove on to Chilligoe. This was a significant area in the early 1900’s for mining, and various mines were dotted all throughout the area. Chilligoe also had an historic, living museum with various old smelters still standing. They use to process the ore from surrounding mines, and produced gold, copper, etc. At the time it was quite advanced in its technology. We did a quick skim of these smelters, then went out to the local rodeo grounds, which doubled as a campground. It was basically a large open paddock with some basic facilities. Suited us fine!

Our general path to the west was to be by following the Savannah Way, a road network from Cairns to Broome. Our Savannah wasn’t particularly named after this route, but was a nice irony to be on it. From Mareeba, you can follow the bitumen to Normanton, however we picked the slightly more out of the way path, that being via Chilligoe, and the Bourke Development Road. This is a 540km dirt road which passes through some spectacular country, along the South West part of Cape York. It crosses quite a number of creeks and rivers, but after multiple checks, we found it to be open and fully passable.

The other thing that Chilligoe is well known for is the impressive limestone caves in the area. There are various guided tours through the most impressive ones, but with the kids and a timeframe, the next morning we decided to only do one of the self guided walks through one of the caves. This ended up suiting us perfectly, as the girls had a great time looking through the cave – and it was not too long and drawn out.

After an early lunch, we started the drive towards Normanton. The countryside was more of the semi-arid bush we absolutely love, and strangely, a feeling of being more ‘at home’ hit both of us. We loved the beach type areas, but it’s pretty clear this is where we love.

We made for the Lynd River, and found a spectacular camping spot, 800 metres off the road, perched high on the bank overlooking the river. Wow, this was perfect for us!!!

We really were in our paradise. In the bush, camped by ourselves, sensational view, and lovely warm weather. The girls had a ball running around and riding their bikes, and we kicked back with some cheese, crackers, and a beer / wine or two. Does it get any better?

Cairns

From Cooktown, we made the run down to Cairns, this time via the bitumen rather than the Bloomfield Track. It was an easy run, and passed by a favourite bit of coastline, that between Port Douglas and Cairns.

We knew it was going to be a very busy time in Cairns. We were catching up with a very good friend of ours, Jayne, who was flying up from Melbourne for 4 days. Her Dad and partner were staying in one of the caravan parks, which is where we were all going to congregate. Apart from our social obligations, we had a list as long as your arm to do. This was a major spot of us to re-set ourselves, re-stock, and get ready for the run west.

As an idea, these were some of the jobs we had on our list;

· Clean Slim & camper

· Get Jess checked at doctors to ensure infection had gone

· Service Slim – Engine, diffs, gearbox, and transfer oils

· Service Camper – repack wheel bearings

· Clean air filters

· Pickup items that had been sent to us at Post office, including 2 dozen wine

· Amy’s beautification (didn’t take long) J

· Buy beer

· Buy 3 – 4 weeks of groceries

· Get 3 – 4 weeks of meat vacuum sealed

· By fresh fruit and vegies

· Get Savannah’s eye’s re-checked to ensure glasses are ok

· Rotate tyres

· Pay numerous bills

· Fix UHF that had been playing up

Needless to say, it was no holiday!!! (feeling sad for us yet????)

We scored a campsite right next to the camp kitchen, which was just across the road from Jayne’s Dad’s caravan. It was perfect for us, we could not only use the camp kitchen, but all our socializing (and there was a lot of it) at night could be done there, whilst still being able to hear the girls sleeping.

We had some great chats, not only to Jayne when she arrived, but also her Dad (Alan) and Carol, and their mates who were at the park as well. One particular guy, Stoney, was a fellow Vietnam Vet, as was Alan. This meant for some fascinating war stories. The funniest we can remember was of recent history, when Stoney went over to New Zealand for a veterans reunion. At a dinner they were all attending, Stoney stood up in front of the large gathering, and announced he’d received a letter informing him that he was to receive a belated Victorian Cross. Everyone murmured and asked for what? “For saving the battalion” he replied. “What, how did you save the battalion” was asked. “I shot the cook” he beamed in response. All but the ‘top brass’ laughed apparently.

Alan and Carol are a bit of an institution around the caravan park, and so by association, we got to know quite a few people. We also bumped into others we had seen up the Cape, as well as one of Amy’s other good friends parents. It was a social mecca!!!

On one of the nights, Alan had arranged for Amy, Glenn and Jayne all to go out for dinner. Jayne was having a significant birthday come up soon, and so he thought it would be nice if we all went out. Alan and Carol took up the babysitting duties for the night, and we had a fantastic Balinese meal in town. A huge luxury for us, and extremely nice for the 3 of us to do dinner again. It has been a LOOONNNGGGG time since we’d done that.

We managed to work through most of our jobs, with a lot of running around and fitting things in. We also stayed an extra day after Glenn noticed some grease on the front left inner hub, and then a slightly loose wheel bearing. This was important to get fixed, so we shot it back to the mechanic to suss it out, and tweak it. All good, and a very worthwhile preventative maintenance step.

On leaving day, we packed up, and ended up collecting a very impressive leaving party. We had friends parents, their friends, friends the girls had made, friends we’d made at the camp kitchen, and even one of the main workers at the park, Terry, who had grown quite fond of us. The goodbyes were quite long, and very humbling.