Halfway between Cairns and The Tip

We took a punt on the weather clearing further north from Lake Tinaroo . . . well, actually, we looked at the radar images for the peninsula on our iPhones . . . and left the miserable drizzle for much sunnier climes. It looked wonderful there, through the rain, so we know where to go another time when it’s finer.

John contemplates the steep scramble we'd had on
our way to the Aboriginal rock art galleries.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable run through the northern Atherton Tablelands and on to Lakelands, a wonderfully fertile flat area between mountains and hills that are quite lovely. We had sort of expected the whole run north to Cape York to be through fairly flat bushland, so we found those mountains a great surprise.

That night we plotted our route further north and thought we’d get to Musgrave for our next campsite. However, even after spending an hour or so at the Split Rock Aboriginal rock art galleries just south of Laura, we decided to keep going after Musgrave and finally pulled into Coen, recognised as halfway between Cairns and the tip of Cape York, around 3pm . . . an ideal time to find a place to stay.

The Coen pub, complete with extra consonant.

This is at the camping ground behind the local store, almost opposite the local pub, officially called the Exchange Hotel, but someone’s added an extra ‘S’ to the start of the name. It’s apparently a bit of a bloodhouse so we shan’t be giving it our patronage.

When we were at Lakelands, two elderly Victorian couples told us they were leaving their caravans there and making a dash for the Cape in one of their 4WDs, taking tents for accommodation. They’ve turned up here, in the store campground, shaded with giant old African mahogany trees, and are trying to put up tents they’ve never used before. One of the blokes has already begged a hammer from John as they have nothing with which to drive in the tent pegs!



The Morehead River beside which we lunched.

We’re sitting here having afternoon drinkies and trying not to laugh.

We’ve thawed some of the barramundi we bought at Karumba lat week and that’s destined for our evening meal.



We know we’re really in the tropical north now as it’s quite humid, and the vegetation along the sides of the road is featuring more and more grass trees and pandanus palms. The road north from Laura has been mostly gravel and in some places very, very corrugated, but nothing worse than we’ve driven over in western Queensland. Many of the creek and river crossing bear a warning about crocodiles, but the only animal life we’ve seen in our 300km today were cattle, the odd wallaby and kangaroo, some red-tailed black cockatoos, and a stately jabiru looking for fish in a river beside which we had lunch.