Cape York Report August 2012

[Brett1979 Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close Brett1979]

A person was killed by a crocodile in the Jardine River in this very spot on Christmas Eve in 1993.
Casey Bond, his wife and daughter traveled from New Mapoon to meet relatives from Cairns at the Jardine River ferry crossing. The ferry broke down in the middle of the river and Bond volunteered to drive to Bamaga for spare parts. When he returned, he then volunteered to swim out to the stricken vessel with the spare parts to help get it started. He never made it. A crocodile took him and the desperate man could only scream 'help me' before disappearing under the water. Passengers on the ferry could only hear bumping noises underneath it as the crocodile rolled with the victim in its jaws. His body was found two hours later in shallow water.

Bond's wife, Mary, suffered a similar tragedy in 1980 when her father, Ken Savo, was taken by a crocodile in the same river.

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When it was a few minutes before 1pm, the ferry operator came out of the house and made his way onto the ferry and signaled for cars to make their way on.

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The PDR north of the Jardine.

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More of the PDR north of the Jardine. The currugations got severe in parts again & there was increased traffic along this stretch.

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My friend was following 2kms behind me to stay out of the dust. It's a great way to keep your air filter cleaner as I didn't bother taking a spare one and when checking mine after we got back it wasn't too dusty. Cleaner than I thought it'd be.

And then we hit bitumen when we got closer to Bamaga. I've never taken a smooth road for granted so much before.

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As we got closer to Bamaga there were wild horses everywhere on the side of the road grazing. This went on for kilometers.

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We passed through Bamaga and we headed towards Seisia which was only a couple of minutes away. We saw the turn off to the north with a sign advertising the Loyalty Beach camping area which was 2km away. It was our original plan to stay there but passed the turn off as I couldn't stop in time and had a few cars following closely, so we continued into Seisia itsef just down the road and pulled into the Seisia camping area car park which couldn't be missed.

After paying for our two nights stay we were led to our campsite by the owner on his quad bike. He took us straight to a water front site which was very nice. And there were even wold horses wandering past on the beach.

We had a close-up view of Red Island from our camp chairs and Prince of Wales Island could be seen in the distance.
I've also included a photo which was our view from the inside of our tent when we woke up in the morning.



2km north up the beach you could see where Loyalty Beach was. There was also a raging bush fire between us and Loyalty Beach making its way closer our way over the course of an afternoon on our 2nd day there. Everybody was out on the beach looking at it at some stage during the afternoon. We could here it crackling pretty loud even from 500m away. The owner was zipping around here there and everywhere on his quad for a couple of hours but didn't issue any formal warning or procedure should the fire threaten the camgrounds. None of the campers were overly concerned though. I got chatting to a bloke on the beach who frequents the Cape and he said bush fires are a common site up this way. He put it down to bored kids mostly. He also mentioned there was no rural fire brigade either and fires threatening homes and businesses have to be fought with buckets of sand and garden hoses, otherwise the locals just let the fires run their course and eventually burn out.

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100 meters down the beach from our camp site was where the helicopter tours were ran. There were three choppers, a yellow, red and burgundy one running hot all day long with scenic flights. When the bush fire was raging they were flying over that first to give people a bird's eye view of it.



After we set-up camp and relaxed for a couple of hours, we went for a walk to the Seisia Supermarket for an ice cream and then went to the markets at the Seisia Fishing Club. The fishing club was a nice little place that sold all kinds of popular alcohol and the prices were reasonable too. The actual markets weren't anything to write home about as they consisted of 5 smallish tables in total, but to sit down and enjoy a drink at a table on the green lawn at the back was quite nice. A handful of the locals were playing bocce near us and having a great time. The only thing missing was the Hawaiian island music to really set the scene. There were quite a few people there and most people were sitting down with their group, drinking alcohol & sharing a laugh. You could see this place was really going to kick off later & if you hung around long enough you'd probably end up having conversations with 3/4 of the people in the place as it was a very friendly atmosphere.

Old mate then wandered in having a look around and we spotted him. He came over for a chat and we all talked about where we'd been and where we'll be headed in the coming days. He said he was heading to Nolans tomorrow for a look to see what the fuss was all about and maybe spend the night. We told him we were staying in Seisia for two nights, then camping on the Jardine River for a night, then heading to Nolans after that. When we parted ways we told each other we'll keep an eye out for one another on the tracks.

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The next morning we made our way up to the tip, stopped in at the croc tent and checked out some of the WW2 plane wrecks.

There was a bit of water over the road near the tip which we weren't expecting.
The road was also heavily potholed so you have to choose your line as not to drop a wheel in one.

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The car park wasn't too busy when we arrived & it was already 10:30am.
We found this sign pretty interesting too.

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When we got out of the car we were impressed with how beautiful the beach looked. It's one of those beaches you could uninterruptedly look at for a while. But it was time to take the final steps of our pilgrimage. This is ultimately what we came here for. We were so close to the tip of the Australian continent and only a short walk would get us there. When we were out on the beach we were trying to work out which way was the correct way to go because it was diffictult to tell from our angle, and then we saw some people heading up the hill, so we walked in their direction.

The 1st picture is looking back down at the beach we just came up from.

The 2nd picture is of these man made piles of rocks called a "cairn." They were everywhere on the way to the tip. All the piles varied in size. At first they instantly reminded me of the movie Blair Witch haha.

The 3rd picture is of a geographical dial that was even up there (if that's what they're called).

The 4th picture was of our view to the north of as we descended towards the tip.
The 360 degree views were all amazing and it was actually hard to believe I was looking at these things. I never knew where to look because my head was always turning to look in a different direction. It was interesting too that all the rock up here was volcanic rock.

[KJA Member Find all posts View Profile Close KJA]

Brett
Have enjoyed reading your report. I did the OTT with a tag along group in August as well so it has been great to hear of your issues and thoughts. We had a short wheel based Mitsubishi that took the direct track at Sam creek and nearly came to grief. Thanks for time spent posting the photos and text


Ken Austin

[gumboot Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close gumboot]

Fantastic report Brett.
I would like to do the Cape next year. I am currently reading up on all the threads and info that I can.
Thanks for sharing your trip with us.
Cheers
Robert

[mackayvx Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close mackayvx]

Tehehe... sounds like you had fun as well brett!!!

[Brett1979 Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close Brett1979]

When we excitedly made our way down to the sign there were approx a dozen people there who had either already had their photos taken at the sign or were waiting for the sign to be free. However we didn't have to wait long before it was our turn. There were others sitting down on rocks who'd already had their photos taken and looked like they'd been there for a while. They were just soaking up the whole experience and good on em for doing so.
We stayed right up at the tip for 10 minutes to soak it up a bit too since we came all this way.