Weipa to Kurrimine Beach

The last 20 Km into Weipa was probably the most corrugated road that we have been on.  Apparently there is some dispute between council and Rio Tinto over maintenance.  Weipa is a mining town and has all the sporting and educational stuff.  However, it is isolated with great beaches and crocodiles (no swimming).  It's the first place we have been to where people were actually catching fish.

croc on lagoon bank

After a couple of days it was back over the corrugations to Musgrave roadhouse for an overnight stop and then on to Lakefield National Park where we had booked a couple of nights at Kalpower crossing.  Lakefield is full of swamps , lagoons, birds and crocodiles.  There are also the ruins of some cattle stations and out stations.  I was a bit disappointed that we had missed the red lilies in red lily lagoon, it would have been spectacular.

Donna Cave

We needed to go to Cairns at some stage to pick up our Solar panel.  Inquiries to jaycar indicated that the panel had not yet returned from Sydney.  They were going to chase it up so we decided to kill some time and head out to Chillagoe.  It's a small town with  a shop a Caravan Park and 2 pubs.  It also has the ruins of an old smelter and some great caves.  We did a guided  tour of Donna Cave, it was pretty spectacular.


Keeping with the underground theme we headed to Undarra where you can access some sections of the longest Lava tube system in the world.  Access is only by guided tour, so I had my normal misgivings.  We went to 3 sections of the tube and it was an interesting and scenic tour.

Information on the solar panels was getting a bit vague.  It seemed that they were lost.  Jaycar advised that they would give us a replacement.  We headed for the tablelands and the rain started.  We eventually found a campsite at Malanda and went into Cairns the next day to pick up the solar panel.  It turned out that our panel had been in the back of the shop for the past 5 weeks and had been sent nowhere.  Anyway we now have a new panel.

The tableands have beautiful, lakes, waterfalls and plenty of rain.  Malanda is supposed to be the best place to catch sight of Tree Kangaroos.  No sightings were made, perhaps they don't like rain.

"etty"

After a week of constant rain we thought we would try our luck on the coast.  We had been told by a couple from Innisvale that Etty bay was a great spot, so we headed there.  The rain continued for the 4 days that we spent there.  A pity as it has a nice little surf beach surrounded by rain forest.  It is also home to Cassowarys.  "Etty" a female is known to walk along the beach and through the park.  We saw her a couple of times and also another couple and some chicks on the road verge.

Pickers at work

The weather had to improves so we decided to move about 50K down the road to Kurrimine Beach, another beachfront park with the added bonus of an on site hotel (just in case the rain continued).  This park is right on the waters edge and about 400m off shore is king reef.  You can walk out to it at low tide.  Finally a couple of warm sunny days, although the forecast for the next week or so looks a bit grim.  The only upside of the rain  is that it isn't cold with temperatures around the mid 20's.  This area is the biggest banana producing area in Australia and Cath and I were invited to have a look at a small ,50 acre, Banana Plantation.  Its hard work 365 days a year and a good portion of the crop (anything with a blemish) is discarded and used as cattle feed.

We are going to slowly work our way down to Townsville, our next stop is Forrest Beach near Ingham.

Some more photos

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