Farewell Pajinka

Part 3 Weipa, Chilli Beach & broken donuts.

Alas, it was time to move on. We had pre-booked a campsite at Cairns anticipating our return date to be May 29th…we had to push that ahead to June 3rd. 

So, leaving Seisia, with no problems getting over the Jardine River. Magic stop for a swim at Fruit Bat Falls, not far from Eliot Falls which we’d stayed at earlier. A bus load of tourists stopped by at the same time, most carried their striped fold up chairs down to watch the Falls…what a pity for them. Refreshed, we ground on through hundreds of kilometres of the red dust, stopped briefly at Bramwell Junction for lunch, then continued to Weipa on the west coast. The caravan park was quite full but we managed to get in. It was the first time I’d felt that the annual nomad mob had arrived at the Top End. 

We asked about a mine tour but alas, it was not happening on the sunday. Disappointment. But wait…a lovely young lady, named Megan, wandered in to our campsite asking if anyone wanted to do a mine tour tomorrow, she had 5 places left. What luck, right place right time. We said yes of course. George was happy to do his own thing for the morning.

Weipa Mine & Town Tour was very interesting, not only did we drive through the bauxite mine in full operation, but we also had a tour around the town, along the coast to learn about the birds and fish, into a pristine piece of bush to learn something about bush tucker, and of course a lot about the settlement history, the fact that Rio Tinto manages the town along with an indigenous representative and that there’s no Council. Rio builds everything the town needs in order to keep workers happily living here. It seems to work.

The sunsets over Weipa are awesome. After the sun disappears, there’s about half an hour of the sky turning a deeper and deeper red, extending it’s magnificence far longer than expected.

Time to move south, actually from Weipa, as the bird flies, we were in a straight line east by the end of the day. But it took us 300km of dust, river crossings, potholes, and corrugations before we reached Chilli Beach. The country was beautiful with grass trees dotted through the bush, small mountain peaks, rocky outcrops, and termite mounds. I’m intrigued by these, they’re like sentinels standing in the bush, often in red ochre colours, among spindly black and white trunks of hundreds of gums. The more I looked the more I saw human forms, like statues of Mary with robes spreading down to the earth. Some very large mounds looked like Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, which I would imagine was inspired by nature. They also reminded me of free-form honeycomb. What else can a passenger do but imagine things when travelling all day? Having months ahead of passing more termite mounds than I can fathom, who knows what I’ll see in them next!

Anyway, Chilli beach is remote, always windy. In 2019, cyclone Trevor pounded the coast, the devastation is still obvious. Massive trees were uprooted, palm roots were undermined leaving groups of them precariously hanging on to the shore. We had a campsite well protected from the never stopping winds. Bush Turkeys proved great assets for games of bullseye. The boys climbed palms to get coconuts and Marilyn made scones for morning tea. Dinner on the second of our 3 nights was roast pork…under the stars. 

We did a quick trip to Portland Roads, a lovely little fishing village that had been a military base during the war…no evidence of that now, even the jetty had been dismantled. But sadly the Cafe wasn’t opening for another week or so.

Lockhart River. This town is an Aboriginal settlement with all the services anyone needs. Fuel was $2.85! By now we were accustomed to paying $7 for 2 litres of milk, so how the locals manage such high costs, I do not know. We found the art gallery where we could peruse the original artworks easily but found it difficult to find someone to serve us. The standard was not great – the best we’ve seen in a gallery so far were at Port Douglas. I could easily have purchased any of the paintings there, if I had a rich benefactor. The other claim to fame for Lockhart River was it’s prominence in WW2. Americans were based in the military base there with the Aussies. There’s a very impressive airstrip, some good interpretive signs and a canon. Loved the outdoor waiting lounge for the current airport passengers. We had our picnic lunch by the sea where large lichen covered rocks lined the shoreline. The drive back to camp (40km) through thick rainforest and savannah grasslands was always interesting, although we saw very few animals. The kangas here are small pale grey, like little wallabies. Next morning we headed off south again.

Crunch time – literally. Driving the 185km of red gravel, potholes, river crossings can become tedious…we were cruising at the front of the group at about 60kmh when crunch, we hit the deepest culvert with the sharpest edge, hard. Smashed the side mirror but annihilated the back passenger side tyre. Roadside stop and quick swap over, but also filled the horrible hole with shrubbery, then found the yellow sign that should have warned us, chucked in the bush nearby. So replaced that in the hole also. But regarding our car, that’s just the beginning….Nick can write next.

Just after wrecking the tyre by putting a slash in the side wall, I noticed that the Tachometer had stopped working, it is driven electronically off the the back of the alternator, then I noticed that the battery light was on as well and the voltmeter was not the usual 13.5 volts. We continued on the minor road from Chilli beach and out to the Peninsula Development Road and headed south to Musgrave Station. By the time we got there the voltmeter was reading 8.5 volts with the car still running. My right hand man Andy and myself set about rigging up a solar panel to charge the battery, we isolated the primary battery from all of the ancillary stuff, cable tied the panel to the roof and hey presto we have charge to the main battery. A hybrid car. We drove about 800 km without the alternator working back to Cairns. Going up a steep hill north of Mareeba the rubber universal joint on the rear tail shaft destroyed itself and had to be replaced. Loosely referred to as the donut, this is the second one we’ve had to replace, so will carry plenty of spares for the next leg of the trip. Back to Jen.

It was at Laura that the boys rigged up the solar panels to our roof rack, but we needed a tow to jump start the car – hence the picture of George’s car with the tow rope. I had to sacrifice a visit to the Quinkan Cultural Centre and  gallery in Laura due to car issues, but I wasn’t going to miss the rock art at Split Rock. Walking up was hot, steep high steps, all to see these ancient paintings on the rocks in caves, but so so worthwhile. The Quinkans by the way are the spirit people. The interpretive signs were great, as we didn’t have time to go with a guide.

So off we headed, a long slow 139km to Musgrave without enough power to use the a/c, so open windows and dust was our lot. At 5.00pm we set up camp in a big paddock behind the old Musgrave telegraph station – it was actually good there. Almost full moon, clear starry sky, warm, quiet, showers & loo nearby. Stocked up on one bottle of wine and $7 bottle of milk. (Wine $30)

Mareeba next before going down to Cairns. Mareeba campsite was run by a German couple, who George seems to attract. In the morning she came over with cup cakes for his 79th birthday.

Sadly, farewelled our travelling buddies for the past month…might see them again in WA!

Cairns – a time to regroup for us, maintenance on the car, wash clothes and sheets and car and Swifty. Catch up on calls to family, get out this blog using the caravan park internet. The Rhodes are doing their own car maintenance in Atherton. Nights with tropical rain, days with humidity…gotta love Cairns!

Thanks for reading all 3 blogs, if you did! Who knows where we are going next…westwards anyway.

Love & cheers. Am loving your comments.
Jen & Nick