2010/10 Australia trip - Coen to Wenlock River |
|||
Coen turned out to be a major place, with four streets and two places available to buy diesel. We chose the one with super-long hoses that crossed the sidewalk to the street. It was next door to the Exchange Hotel, now widely known as the Sexchange Hotel, an aborigine joke. At that time its only patrons were aborigines carrying out cases of beer. 
We made tea at the Coen River, on the edge of town, keeping it in mind as a potential camping spot for the drive back. That day it was noisy there with a stream of road trains clattering over the bridge and feeding the road works just outside town.
We stopped at Coen’s Quarantine Station to pick up details of what we were allowed to bring back on our way home. The rules were still far from clear as they just gave us a list of the horrible bugs and diseases that we might be bringing in, so we concluded that all fresh fruits and veggies would be confiscated when we came back south.
We passed through a part of Mungkan Kandju national park, one of the wildest areas of the Cape, but staying there would have involved a rough fifty mile drive to the west to its campsites, so we kept driving. There were a lot of road trains ferrying sand between quarries and road work and we had little choice but to stop when we met one on the gravel sections as its dust just obliterated the view. Road trains can be 150 feet long and weigh many, many tons.
The next spot of interest was the Archer River Crossing, which used to be a very difficult place to cross before the 
concrete causeway was built. The picture shows the causeway and gives some idea of the breadth of the river. Early in the Dry the causeway can be an enormous waterfall, but it was dry for us. The Archer River still had pools and it’s a very popular swimming and drinking spot for the locals, including those who could drive but had trouble standing. One of them boxed us in when we stopped there for tea, and he politely offered to move for us, but I opted to back out around him rather than risk it.
North of there, the main Peninsular Developmental Road goes west to Weipa and the Comalco Mining
Area. The Old Telegraph Road continues north, though it’s a much narrower road with many rough and corrugated sections. For a long way it passes through property belonging to the Batavia cattle station and we weren’t allowed to leave the road for any reason. We saw some spectacular termite mounds and also this Australian bustard. It was interesting country, but there was nowhere to camp unless we’d already negotiated prior permission from the station.
We came to the Wenlock River and found a great camping spot just off the bridge, not as secluded as our last site, but there was little traffic on the road, just other travelers looking and wishing that they’d got there and claimed the spot before us. The Moreton Telegraph Station at the top of the hill has a campground but no interesting scenery.
We had visitors: wallabies, brush turkeys and some scrubfowl. This was another hot steamy evening, with bugs all over, and lots of rustlings around us. Down below us in the river we could hear splashing, and Sandie decided it was crocodiles. I disagreed and walked down the bank looking and my headlight revealed pairs of red eyes in the river. These were almost certainly crocs, but I had no idea of their 
size.
Saturday October 9th
In the morning Sandie was ready to use our shovel facilities again when a couple of guys showed up with a video camera. They’d been the ones cruising up and down late the previous night looking for a place to camp, eventually choosing a spot far across the river from us. Now they were taking turns videotaping each other driving over the bridge. One of them had a very loud voice and started almost every sentence with “Back in the good old days”. If they’d camped next to us the previous night then the crocs might have been fed a meal. The picture shows one of them crossing the Wenlock bridge, one of the few bridges in the Cape. He needed to keep his wheels straight as no one had thought to equip the bridge with any side barriers. Actually, I think the bridges are built that way so they can survive being submerged in the Wet.