I had planned to replace the windscreen in charleville after we left Mike & Jill, but, we lobbed on show day, and, naturally, everthing was shut for the w/e. we arranged to have it done in Roma and headed off from there to Carnarvon Gorge, the campground at the national park is only openned during school holidays, so, we booked into the caravan park just out of the park, a little bit overpriced, but, it was the only game in town! we did the long walk out to the art gallery, with side trips to the moss garden and amphitheatre, i think it was about 16k all up, slept really well that night!

kookaburra on the awning, waiting for some tucker, he didnt get any!

starting up the gorge!

moss garden

ladder up to the entrance of the amphitheatre

inside the amphitheatre

we left carnarvon gorge to make our way north to head up cape york before the school holidays. we spent a w/e out at Cooktown before leaving the van at Lakeland to tent it up the cape and back. On the first attempt, we got about 100k up the track and got a puncture, after putting 4 plugs in it, and, the mongrel thing was still leaking, and the other spare still had the slow leak from Isa, it was back to Mareeba and fit 4 new tyres on! I knew the tyres were going to need replacing but had hoped to get up the cape and fit new ones when we got back. the road up was in really good nick, we passed the graders in couple of places putting the finishing touches to it for the school holidays in couple of weeks time.

finch bay, cooktown

cooktown

campsite at moreton telegraph

we had a fairly leasurely run north, we had been told the jardine ferry closes PROMPTLY at 5pm so took a detour into fruit bat falls had a good wander about got some piccies and off again. what we didnt know, was the ferry also closes for lunch 12-1, we lobbed and settled in to have lunch while we waited for the clock to tick over, the 40k north of the ferry was probably the worst bit of road we struck, but, it wasnt really rough, just not as good as the rest. we stayed at Loyalty Beach as we decided it was the best of the three we looked at.

fruit bat falls, old telegraph track

lunchtime, jardine ferry

our campsite loyalty beach

we did all the touristy bits and visited the WWII crash sites, the radar installation and of course, the trip to the tip! the ferry over to Thursday Island was booked so we had to wait around few extra days to get over there, weather was bit overcast and threatening to rain, but it held off till the morning we went to T.I., all cleared during the morning and was fine and sunny by lunchtime. we had lunch in the northen most pub in australia, more memorable for its location than the meal!

sunset from loyalty beach, looking towards T.I.

couldnt resist this one, no we didnt take the van down the telegraph track!