Weipa

Here we are finally experiencing tropical Queensland at Weipa - the temperature is 30+ and for the first time it's humid. We haven't struck any mosquitoes or sand flies yet but I am armed with lavender oil which they tell me is a good repellant.  We are quite sweaty after setting up and thinking of a quick dip in the pool. Unfortunately the lovely looking beach is off limits due to those pesky crocs!! 

          

The trip here was very interesting - they keep you on your toes by mixing up the road surface from lovely bitumen to not bad gravel to terrible gravel! Tops is yet to determine how many broken plates she has but Darryl unfortunately has had his mirror nearly fall off travelling over the corregated bits!  Dennis will probably post a photo asking guess which car didn't lose it's mirror! Darryl and Dennis are now investigating how to fix it!  Wonder if it might mean a new Ranger??

           

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However, I think overall we all thought the road wasn't  as bad as we'd imagined - I suppose we are used to dirt roads at home too. We haven't even struck many stones and the precautionary cardboard on the back window hasn't been necessary - but we aren't there yet!  

           

You can probably imagine the dust which is everywhere except in our camper - it really is dust proof! The scenery is much different to what I expected as it's not barren but very pretty with undulations, creek beds, lovely trees and the usual Brahman cattle wandering around. I think Dusty thinks we are just going around in circles as the photos posted today and yesterday look similar! This map will give you an idea of where we are going and where we are. We were at Coen last night and Weipa now.

      

                            

Yesterday we came across Old Laura Station Homestead and Darryl couldn't resist test driving this Ford!

        

We had a free camp site at Coen alongside the creek last night which was pretty good - especially as Dennis could finally get out his shower gear! It's amazing how good a shower like that can be after a bit of dust! And I only used 1/3 of a bucket of water too!  

         

This is the beautiful Archer River north of Coen. In the wet season this would be a huge river! 

Weipa is a typical mining town and the only place to camp is in this huge park where we are in an unpowered site - along with lots and lots of others! It's very interesting seeing the number of different campers, caravans, roof top campers, utes and tents. It's nice and shady and quite pleasant here under the shade as a breeze has sprung up. 

  

                      

We are going to explore the town, maybe do a tour of the mine, catch up with last washing, get supplies and then head off to the top which will probably take us another 2 days. Once there, if we find a good spot think we'll set up for several days to relax and savour the achievement of travelling so far - all up I think it will be well over 4,000kms - then we have to get home again! 

 We are terribly saddened by the tradegy at home and we can imagine how the whole community must be in turmoil.  Our thoughts and love go to the families involved. 

Till our next blog, we send our love Xxxxxxxxx