4/11/2013

Picking up where I left off – we spent a few days in Cooktown before moving on towards our next destination – Weipa to visit my cousin. Pretty standard affair by now – load up and hit the road. We had decided to take Battlecamp road, which was quite rough and corrugated for the first section but well worth it. Once we made it past the corrugations a steady 100-110km/h was possible on the hardpack dirt sections – a good chance to catch up on listening to some audio books as I could hear them clearly again. I’m working my way through Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series – I’ve just finished The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and have now started So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. But I digress, onwards with some pictures!

I made a quick stop over on the way up to Hann Crossing – Old Laura homestead. Leased in 1879 for a cost of 8 pounds 15 shillings for 50 square miles (12,800ha) by Irish immigrant Fergus O’Beirne and after changing owners a few times was abandoned in 1966. It now serves as a reminder of pioneering life in far north Queensland and is a conservation site listed on the Queensland Heritage Register.

The homestead

An old truck – thanks to the time spent at the museum near Mareeba I knew this was a Chevy-built Blitz truck, probably bought sometime after WW2.

Onwards to Musgrave..

Rangers station – incidentally there have been quite a few very old petrol bowsers standing as remnants of an era gone by (pictured in foreground here) – I guess there is no reason or incentive to remove them as effort is better spent elsewhere.

This is how the XR and DR look most of the time.

Camping at Hann Crossing for the night.

My Tracks link

-Brogan.