Our drive to the tip continued with a mix of bitumen and dirt roads. We notice how the roadside plants on one side are caked in red dirt as the dust gets blown then settles to one side of the road. Everything is red tinged.

The usual driving hazards face us with graders continually trying to keep roads in good condition in different sections. We see a few dead feral pigs on the side of the roads too. Huge roadworks are underway at Archer River with a new bridge being built and it’s here at the Archer River Roadhouse where you’ll find a memorial to ‘Toots’, a woman who not only drove trucks in these toughest of conditions in the 1980s, but serviced and loaded her own truck by hand, then drove for days to deliver freight to the tip of Australia. As her memoir states, she was a woman in a man’s world.

As we drive on, huge termite mounds appear in the scrub, looking like tombstones in some places where they extend as far as the eye can see. Soon we are upon a roadsign that gives you the choice to drive straight on towards Weipa or take another road to Cape York (Pajinka). We will visit Weipa on the way back so we turn onto the Telegraph Road, aiming for Pajinka.

Little wallabies and big black feral pigs continue to cross our path occasionally as we drive and the landscape keeps on changing around us, now with some incredibly bright green and lush tree ferns in some places. It’s here on this section of road to what will be our next stop for the night at Bramwell Station, that we will have the worst of corrugations to drive on, in the whole trip. They are so bad that as we rattle and bump our way along, our dash camera falls off its mount on the windscreen, followed soon after by our rear vision mirror.

We finally get to the turn off into Bramwell Station and back onto a beautifully graded dirt road for a little over 6 kilometres into our campsite for the night.  Happy to finally get out of the car, we put aside all the bits shaken off and meet the station owner, Ken Godfrey, who takes our money for a site, dinner and a show and tells us to park and set up wherever we like.

We find a shelter that we can set our tent up underneath, and take a wander around to see the other areas of the campground. As the day rolls on, many more campers, caravans and camper trailers roll in. This is another spot where caravanners park up and leave their vans in storage rather than take all the way to the tip, but they have already been through some pretty horrendous road conditions and you can hear some squeaking and groaning as they roll in, and people making minor (and major) repairs.

Bramwell Station is well known for the dinner and entertainment they put on every night during tourist season from May to September, and we had a fantastic night. Happy hour starts from 5.30pm and it’s cash only (another reason to carry cash). The evening starts with Ken giving a brief talk about this northern most cattle station and its early history and he explains how the night will run.

Our entertainment for the night was a guitarist/singer, Kerry Kennedy, a guy with a great voice and repertoire of songs that by the end of the night had people up dancing and having fun.  He was also joined by another part time musician seated at our table, Bruce Newman. Bruce and his wife Judy were also travelling to the tip and he just happened to have his guitar with him, so he joined Kerry on stage for a fair bit of the night.  We were to run into Bruce and Judy on a few more occasions during our trip!

As for the dinner, well there was plenty to go around. You are handed a tin plate and line up to be served bbq meat, cottage pie, salad and vegetables and Ken is there again, helping to serve the food. When the meals are all finished, plates are whisked away (again Ken is pitching in to help) and then later serves of hot apple pie and icecream are brought around for everyone.

The crowd is well fed, well entertained and there was audience participation to get everyone involved and having a roaring good night.

By the next morning we were glad to have chosen to pitch our tent under a shelter because it rained overnight and luckily we only had to pour off a pool of water from the car awning.

We move on and at Bramwell Roadhouse we pay the most for diesel that we will on this whole trip, at $2.70 per litre. It’s from here that you can choose to take the Old Telegraph Track, if you dare. We stick to the PDR and there are more terrible road corrugations to contend with and we see a couple of caravans coming from the north, crawling along the road trying to take it easy on their vans  – Crazy!

At around 117 kilometres from the roadhouse, we turn off to look at Fruit Bat Falls. These falls are a natural weir of shelf rocks which are a cool spot to wash off the dust in croc free (so they say) waters and there is a huge amount of people doing just that and taking a dip in the deep pools. We keep moving and make our way to the Jardine Ferry.

You hear stories of people having to line up for hours to cross this ferry over the Jardine River, depending on the amount of vehicles wanting to cross, but on the day and time we arrive, we buy our ticket and are the only ones on the ferry, straight on and across in minutes. There is a scale of charges for using the ferry but for a single car, we pay $121. The ferry fee also entitles you to camp in designated areas in the traditionally owned lands of this Northern Peninsula Region.

Now that you are on lands owned by traditional owners, alcohol restrictions also apply and you can’t carry more than 2 litres of wine and 1 carton of 30 beer cans or 1 carton of 24 pre-mix spirit cans. Huge fines apply if you are found with more than the allowed amount.

Around an hour after crossing the Jardine River we arrive and Bamaga and head to our furthest most camping spot at Punsand Bay another 28 kilometres on, and the closest campground to the tip.

When we arrive we have a mini celebration at the campground’s bar, aptly named ‘the Corrugation Bar’, feeling pretty elated that we have made it this far and there’s only a small amount of driving left to get to the Tip!

To be continued…

Glenys