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 11th June 2026: awoke early to be at Junction Engineering at 7 am. We then had a coffee and returned to the caravan park and made bookings for Punsand Caravan park and made arrangements to get to TI from Seisia where it is no longer safe to leave a caravan or car. Chris did a wonderful job cleaning up the old stability leg and making a new handle for it and installing it for us! However, he also noticed that the tyres were badly worn on very inside rims so we made a trip straight away to Tyre Power, who can fit 2 new tyres tomorrow am at 7am! However he noticed that one of the arms of the shock absorbers was hanging loose, so this necessitated a trip to Repco where another Chris fixed our suspension! We made it back to the Caravan park in time for our 12.30 Weipa Town and Mine tour, where our guide was Brett a bulldozer driver and trainer of heavy vehicle drivers for Rio Tinto. He runs the tours as a private business sideline. The tour was great! Brett explained the history of dif...
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 10th June 2026: Left Coen early to head to Weipa travelling along the Peninsula Development Road, 290km away. We stopped at Archer River, possibly because of the name. We had a dreadful cup of coffee for $9.00, and an even worse muffin! We didn’t purchase any diesel at $2.94. The road alternated between bitumen and gravel, with the gravel sections having some steep dips with water at the bottom of them but not as challenging as the Lakefield Road. The main issue was corrugations, such that sometimes we went on the outside of the reflector posts, many of which had been knocked down. We saw our 3rd largish lizard crossing the road and we managed to avoid hitting him. There were cattle mainly Drought Master and Brahmin. The termite mounds were different again to yesterday- this time pointy but fat.  We headed straight to Mitre 10, but they did not stock leg stabilisers. However they recommended 2 places to try. The first Steady Contracting who couldn’t help either so we headed t...
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 9th June 2026: Left Laura heading for Coen via Rinyirru ( Lakefield) National Park, as per Stuart, owner of the Laura Hotel recommended. We travelled on gravel road initially through rain forest with gum trees and fan palms as understory. Along the way there were lagoons with white water lilies and lots of intermediate egrets ( yellow bills). There were lots of steep dips and shallow river crossings which Nic handled very well, or so we thought at the time! The forest thinned out and there were large numbers of termite mounds narrow in one plane and all facing east west  south with longitudinal axis facing north south ! We then saw a huge flock of red tailed black cockatoos, perhaps a 100 birds! We pulled over to admire them through binoculars!  The narrow termite mounds ceased and there were grass trees in the understory. We then saw a wonderful sight by the side of the road-a Brolga! Subsequent termite mounds were bulky in all directions so must belong to a different t...
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 June 8th 2026: met up with Roy Banjo at 8.30 am at the Quinkan cultural centre and were joined by Allessandro, an Italian Bonds lawyer working in London. We went to Split Rock along a well marked track with handrails and steep steps. Our guide Roy helped rangers and Percy Trezise build the walking track in the 1980’s. Roy explained the meaning of each painting, the oldest of which is apparently 14,000 years from carbon dating charcoal in a fireplace made inside an ant-hill. There were the bad spirits-the Imjim and the good spirits the Tamara  plus men and women and animals fish birds reptiles. We then went up to further sites with more paintings. Roy then offered to take us to the top of the escarpment via a closed off much rougher track with large rock steps then clambering over rocks and through a low rock passageway and we came out on top of the escarpment with spectacular views! On the way up he pointed our various flowers- kangaroo paw, kapok trees in flower, the bush cl...
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