Week 12 July 29th – Aug 4th
Still at Captain Billy Landing, we woke to the day being Harry’s 12th birthday. We were well out of phone range so wished Harry happy birthday in the sand. The wind was still up but the day was perfect, we strolled the beach, then I sat under the shade of the Pandanus palms while John did a bit of fishing. The wind blew all day and night.
Wednesday we packed up and headed for Coen River, where we had camped on the way up. Today would be tough all those corrugations that we passed over on the way up would all now have to be repeated. We past Bramwell Station, Moreton Station and got into Archer River Roadhouse around 11.30am which was perfect timing for one of their famous Archer River Hamburgers. Twelve dollars for a burger with the lot and that takes two to consume for lunch. We got into Coen River around 2.00pm and “would you believe the same camp spot as last time it was great”.
Thursday was going to be a bit of an unknown day. “Do we bite the bullet and do 500km back to the van in one day, or do we break the trip up and have one more night in the tent”. We were unsure of where we were heading, at 100kms down we past Musgrave Station, another 60kms down and we were at Hann River Roadhouse. We stopped for coffee and fuel. Another 200kms on and we decided to have one more night in the tent.
We had found Archer Point on our trip to Cooktown late last month and remembered a perfect paradise setting, crossed our fingers that the place would not be crowded and headed in. “It was great there was only one other camp”. We picked a site between the palm trees right on the beach, just a special spot and all for free. With the tide out once again we strolled the beach, watched the sun go down behind the islands that were just in front of the camp allowing the palm trees to silhouette. As the sunset a small dingo came around to see what she may be able to get for dinner.
So Friday saw us roll onto our knees, grab the tent pole and pull ourselves up just as we had started 20 days earlier. It was a little sad, our old setup had worked well. We turned into Mt Carbine CP around 11.am to see our van just as we had left it. We booked in, moved the van to a site and then the fun began. It took the next few days to clean the car out and repack the car for the canoe and trip home.
Monday we moved on to Cairns, we had booked into the Cool Waters CP. It was about 30 years since we were in Cairns so it will be interesting to see the changes.