Dulhunty River to Jardine River, Cape York, Queensland
A slow day, as we're on the narrow bits of the Overland Telegraph Track on our way north up Cape York. We do stop at Fruit Bat Falls for lunch and a wonderful swim, as well as the very pretty Twin Falls and Elliot (Indianhead) Falls, before making it to the Jardine River just as the sun sets. And there are a few car problems with other folks cars in the convoy...
We were glad to leave the Dulhunty River. It never really cooled off at night, it just stayed humid and warm all through. Chris and I didn't even bother with sleeping bags, we just slept on the vinyl stretcher cots we had, which led to a small case of vinyl burn on my shoulders. Ow! I was sweating by 7:45am, so I took a quick cooling dip right below the falls before we took off for the day.
There were a couple of somewhat interesting creek crossings immediately after the campsite--first was the Dulhunty, which wasn't too hard, then another just 1km farther. But the most interesting was Cockatoo Creek--it was deep and wide and moving moderately fast. Other cars had to fit their blinds on their fronts, but we didn't. [This of course requires an explanation. When a 4WD car goes through a water crossing, it will push water in front of it. This water will push against the fan, and can push the fan right into the radiator, making a mess of things. The blind prevents this. On diesel Landcruisers, though, like ours, the fan is sufficiently far away so that we don't have to worry about fitting a blind at water crossings.] Chris drove across, and did fine.
Our lunch stop was at Fruit Bat Falls, up the road a bit. This is a great set of falls, where a wide river goes over a 2 meter high shelf into a wide, sandy pool that's deep enough to stand in. We just relaxed, swimming and having a good time. I also amused myself by looking at plants, and spotted some sundews and some more pitcher plants. Under one of the lids on a pitcher, I spotted a praying-mantis like insect hanging out--no doubt waiting to grab any insect before it's lured into the pitcher. I thought that was great! What I didn't find so great was that twenty minutes later I spotted another tourist at that same pitcher, poking into it. I told him 'the lid only closes when it rains' and he said 'oh, no, mate, I'm just poking this bug, this spider down in it.' Of course, it wasn't a spider, it was that opportunistic insect I spotted earlier. He left, and I poked a stick down for the bug to crawl up, then put it on another pitcher a bit further way from the track. Jeez. Some people just don't understand how things work, but they'll mess with it anyway.
In fact, that's one point that's worth noting: the number of people here. While Cape York is remote, it's not off the beaten track at all. We've never been the only people around at anyplace we've stopped. These waterfalls today are a good example: there's always at least another dozen or two people that aren't with us around. While it's nice to see these places, they are certainly well known. I think I was expecting a bit more wilderness on this trip, but no worries... I'm glad I'm doing it. If I didn't', I'd certainly regret not knowing what was up here!
The next stop was at Twin Falls and Elliot Falls, where we took many pictures and had a swim. On the way back, though, we had two problems. Bill had misplaced his key when swimming, so trusty mechanic Wayne had to take off his side window to get to his spare. And Chris D. was having an odd problem with his Nissan Patrol--the glowplug light wouldn't go out, so it wouldn't start. After some jiggling of a 100 amp fuse (what needs that, I wonder), it started, so he turned it off and waited for Bill to get his spare key. Bad idea, because it wouldn't start again. So it became time for another meeting of Secret Men's Business, where the males gathered around Chris D's engine and speculated that it might be electrical or it might be the fuel solenoid or something. Some guess fixes were tried, but didn't work... and then a few minutes later, the Patrol did start. I reckon it was just one of those problems where you have to wait ten minutes and it'll fix itself.
Both of those problems--the lost key and the non-starting Patrol--put us about an hour or more back from schedule, so we hustled back to the Northern Bypass road. A bit later, DB stopped the convoy for a most peculiar site--two black snakes mating in the middle of the road! They were spiraled around each other, wriggling furiously, occasionally with their heads off the ground in a cobra like pose. They went at it for quite a while, a good ten minutes or so, before one slinked off to the bushes for a cigarette and the other just sat there dazed for a minute, before joining its mate in the bushes too. It was a cool thing to watch.
The sun was setting, so we hustled to the Jardine River and hurried to set up the tent. Sadly, we'd missed the official odometer rollover--the next morning we saw it had gone to 103009 on the far side of the ferry. Oh well. As darkness fell, so did Chris D's second problem of the day. He discovered he had a flat tire, so he replaced it with his spare in the dim light and left it to fix the next day.
With all that done, we had a quick uninteresting dinner (yes, sandwiches again) and went to bed. Though we didn't drive far, we had a long day.