213 km
As we spent two nights at this camp we had a day to explore.
Christo and I had originally hoped to get to Cape Melville. However on further reading, checking out maps, our amount of diesel and need or want for 4WD we decided against that. The track gets very technical, ultra slow and would take us many hours to complete and have no hours to enjoy the scenery.
We thus decided to head to Bathurst Heads…or more specifically… Princess Charlotte Bay. This was supposed to be half the distance and much easier drive. We all had out swim wear on and hoped for some beach time.
We had an exciting start to the day – Lara spotted 2 good sized pythons , sunning themselves on the road. The one python was nearly roadkill as we came around the corner and it just lay there… so we moved it along so that it could live!
We also saw more Brolga- Cranes.
The road conditions were actually pretty good and no traffic. Good sign this!! Until…we got to a locked gate and couldn’t go any further. This was disappointing as nowhere had we read that there was a permit required or that there would be a locked gate.
It was on the road in, near a large dam that Lara spotted a whole family of wild pigs!! Including some six or so piglets!
We thus decided to continue down the Cape Melville Track… but the track turn bad pretty quickly after reaching Wakooka. After approx. 30min and not much progress we decided to follow another short track along Wakooka Creek. This lead us to a river, where Johan and Christo did some fishing but caught nothing! What a shame!
We returned home and did some star watching after dinner…with nearly no moon and a cloudless night…this was indeed the perfect night for it.