Day 78 to 81 Cape York to Cooktown via Weipa

It was time to face reality again... we had to leave paradise behind and face the long drive back towards Cooktown. We took a little detour on Cape York to have a look at an old plane crash site. This detour made us miss the the last ferry before lunch break. This meant waiting an hour. Bummer!

The drive back was as before; boring, dusty and bumpy. It was that bumpy that the door step let loose and Sander had to get the whole thing off. Oh well, just a minor problem luckily!

By now our whole car was covered in orange dust (from the in- and outside). Being Dutch we normally have no problems with that particular color but by now we were pretty over it.

We camped at Moreton Telegraph Station again as we really liked their setting.

From there we took the turn to Weipa. Weipa is a little outback town on the west coast of the Peninsula. Although its population is over 3500 you can only reach it on unsealed road. They are also still hundreds of kilometres away from anything. The reason so many people life here is the simple fact that the worlds largest bauxite mine is situated here (bauxite is the ore which is used to make aluminum).

Curious about life here we wanted to check it out.

Just before arriving into town we were amazed to find traffic lights!! Soon we found out they are used to give way to the massive mining trucks.

We booked ourselves into the only campsite in town and drove around town for a bit. It wasn't a big town but all looked very neat and organised. There even was a big Woolworths (supermarket). 

The next morning we got up early. After breakfast we packed up. parked our car and went on the mine tour we had booked ourselves into.It was a very interesting tour that not only gave us access to the mine (which is quite unique) but also told us everything about the town.

After the tour we continued our trip downwards again and stayed the night at a free campsite just outside the little town of Coen.

The next day we had about 400 km to drive and after 250 km we were relieved to be back in Laura on sealed road. Our happiness only lasted a few minutes because during lunch Sander heard a soft hissing sound. He quickly learned it wasn't the sound of me frying toasties, it was another punctured tyre. Not again!! Ah well, at least it happened back in civilization and before I had finished my toasty the man from the general store had already fixed our tyre again!

From here the drive to Cooktown was a bit longer then we expected but it was a nice drive with some spectacular views over the tropic environment (there's heaps of sugar cane and banana farms around). We passed Black Mountain (a strange rock formation) and finally made it to Cooktown. The weather started to get bad so we quickly set up camp in a tiny little caravan park in the middle of town. It became extremely windy that night. The lady from the caravan park said that was pretty normal for this time of year but we thought it was already pretty intense. As they just had a cyclone here we could only imagine what that must have been like!!

Above you can the see what a corrugated road looks like (trust me it got much worse than this).