Wednesday 28th July 2021
Another day in Queensland with unfortunately bad news for all our family and friends who are headed into another 4 weeks of lockdown. We are thinking of you all and feeling so sorry for this terrible situation.

Unfortunately after getting organised early to hike to Turtle Rock, a tough one in elevation and distance. When we arrived at the track it was closed for aerial burning. So lucky we are flexible, disappointed but flexible, if had we gone a bit harder the last couple of days we could have done the hike yesterday. Oh well, what will we do no? We could do the Lamb’s Range walk nearby but this is a 7 hour walk and quite tough, but also it is too close to Turtle Rock and we believe too risky if the wind changes or picks up with the back burning happening today.

Instead we do a little 2km loop walk of Davies Creek in the Davies Creek/Dinden National Park, which once again had a lovely view, beautiful waterfall and amazing trees. The walk was through lovely savanna bushland, a big difference to lush rainforests of the last week. This walk also had recently had burning in some areas.

Then on to Bunda Dibandji Rock Art in the Dinden National Park. This was a little 2km return walk uphill to some amazing rock art. At least we managed a 4km walk today, not as tough but it was pretty all the same.

Then with nothing else to do in the are we headed north towards Cooktown. We stopped at Rifle Creek Camp just north of Mareeba for lunch, this is a freebie ccamp on the main highway that you can stay for 48 hours. It was very crowded with mainly caravans and mobile homes.

We saw some spot fires in the distance from what we think is back burning, as we headed north past Mitchell Lake, cotton and sugar cane fields. It looked very beautiful with the foreground changes and the fire smoke in the mountain range. Showed us how dangerous it would have been to do the other hike we could have done on Lamb’s Range which was near Turtle Rock this morning.

We managed to secure a cabin at Cooktown for a couple of nights which we thought was not going to happen as there was no availability on booking.com in a motel anywhere. we were very lucky and a bonus it has its own bathroom. The ladies when we checked in were awesome and we are looking forward to the next couple of days at the most northern part of our travels this time. We think? Maybe, maybe not. Only time will tell.

Take care and stay safe everyone. We are thinking of you every day.