Betty's day off

Yesterday was Betty’s day- she had a good wash, a new windscreen and a full service. She passed with flying colours, the engineer said that she is in excellent condition after her 2500km trip up the Cape, and ready for the next challenge.

All this takes time, and while she was off the road we spent an hour or two in Mereeba, a pleasant town about 60kms inland from Cairns. While there we met two lads in their twenties, who are doing what we are- but on bikes! They had already gone from Sydney, south to Melbourne and Adelaide and west to Perth, north to Broome and through the Gibb River, then across here. What a feat! They cycled about 100kms a day on average, stopped wherever,   and are now nearing the end. One of the lads said he would like to cycle home to the UK, and was considering it.

They are raising money for Cancer Research, and we made a contribution, we have his facebook page and will look them up as soon as we can.

We spent an hour in the local museum, very good, an old rail ambulance was on show, as well as many pioneer exhibits. I was particularly taken with an old Post Office and telephone exchange, and an exhibit about tobacco growing and manufacture in the are.

We met Judie for lunch, she is a lady we met up Cape York and spent a bit of time with her and her husband. He has just gone off to the UK for a couple of weeks to visit his parents, so she is alone at the moment. The time passed quickly and soon we were to pick up Betty again.

Preparations then for our next adventure- the

Savannah Way

. Revictualling and refueling this morning, we set off West towards the Gulf of Carpenteria, some 800kms across the base of Cape York Peninsula. (See Map attached).

We stopped for lunch at the Millstream Falls, reputedly the widest falls in Australia, (they like their superlatives here!) and we came across a very cheeky Laughing Kookaburra.

 I put my sandwich down for a second and she was down and stole the ham from it. Not interested in the bread- just the meat! She sat around us until we had finished, we made sure she couldn’t get any more by hanging on tight.

Tonight we are Undarra, in a weird “swag tent” as there was no other accommodation left, not even a camp site. It is school holidays here at the moment so everywhere is pretty full. We enjoyed a campfire sing song with a guy called Sreve Case, he plays guitar and harmonica rather well and we had a pleasant hour there before bed.

We are here because there are massive lava tubes nearby, and tomorrow at dawn we are to be guided on a two hour walk. Watch this space!