Laura is just a small town at the end of the bitumen so we stayed one night and headed north along the roughest road we have been on, severe corrugations and steep creek crossings. Cars without a caravan can travel fast over the corrugations but we have to travel much slower, sometimes down to 20 kph, but our average speed has been generally about 50 kph.

We camped overnight at a nice camp site beside a river at Coen with new friends whom we met on the road.

230 km later we camped at Bramwell Station with 300 of our closest friends – the camp site is huge so it didn’t feel crowded. A great meal and an entertaining singer made an enjoyable evening.

The road keeps getting rougher but the car and caravan are coping well. The access and exit from the Jardine River ferry were very steep but our van is high enough not to be troubled by it.

There are lots of crocodiles here but we didn’t see any. 50 km later we set up camp at Loyalty Beach, near Bamaga. It is a huge “bush camp” beside the beach, with wide open camp sites, shady trees, toilets and showers plus power and water. It’s not luxurious but it’s comfortable and quiet. Unfortunately the risk of crocodiles here is too high to chance a swim.

From Loyalty Beach we drove about 30 km along a sandy track, then a recently graded road, then another sandy track, through beautiful rain forest, to the parking area near the tip of Cape York. A 15 minute walk on a rocky, hilly track brought us to the Tip, the most northerly point of the Australian continent. We drove 5000 kms over 3.5 weeks to get here and it felt pretty good. The land behind us in an island.

Yesterday we caught a ferry to Thursday Island (TI) and Horn Island. TI, with 3000 inhabitants, is the administrative centre of the Torres Strait region. Horn Is. is much larger but has only 700 inhabitants. Both islands have a strong Islander culture and an interesting military history, dating back as far as the late 1800’s. We met a warrior chief who had been a great head hunter before converting to Christianity, saw a WW2 plane wreck that is soon to be excavated and artillery guns installed in 1890.

Today is R-and-R; laundry, filling water tanks, emptying the toilet cassette – exciting!

In a couple of days we will start going south again. We could do the trip in 4 days but we’ll take it slowly and take 2 weeks.

Bye from the Tip of Australia