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 25th June: visited Roy Banjo at the Cultural centre and he told us that the access road to the  2nd lot of cave paintings was still impassable, so we headed to the first day of the Laura Rodeo, a huge affair with 5000 visitors expected all camping in the show grounds. We strolled around chatting to various people, some of whom approached us. The Rodeo has been happening since 1977 with the Laura Races component since 1887! The Campdraft has been happening along with the Rodeo since 1977. This consists of riders mustering one cow from a herd and mustering her around poles and through a gate in a certain order! We met one man who said he used to take part in the Rodeo when he was young but still comes every year from Ravenshoe to be part of it and see his mates. This year he bought a bus for $2000 to sleep in! We met another organiser of the event who has been coming since age 15 years. He told us this year the Musgrave River flooded the racecourse and a lot of the infrastructu...
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 24th June 2026: had a relaxing start to the day then decided to go on the afternoon tour of Fairview Station in a large bus-like 4 WD, led by a guy who has a good driver but didn’t seem to know a whole lot about the place. There were only 4 of us on the tour, and I volunteered to open the gates we had to go through. This involved getting out and into the vehicle without an extra stepping stool and opening a variety of fastenings on a number of gates , only one being a padlock! Fortunately I could do it! The Station is 1,000,000 acres and home to 10,000 to 20,000 cattle Brahmans and a type of Red beef breed. At each muster, the cattle are first spotted by helicopter. They are never able to round up more than 70% of the herd at one time. They don’t use cattle dogs because they bite the cattle’s leg or nibble their ear and then that particular animal can’t be sold once it has bite masks. The cattle mainly go to cattle sales in Mareeba, with a few sold locally. We didn’t see much wild...
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 23rd June 2026: Today was a day of unanticipated events! We set off at 8.30 am from Bramwell Station Tourist park to head to Fairview Station 19km north of Laura, a 415 km trip. We joined the Old Telegraph Road which was pretty rough, but it got worse after the Batavia Downs Road turnoff. Along the way we saw another lace monitor lizard and a black snake on the road. We came to an unexpected un-signposted big dip with a river crossing at the bottom, giving us quite a jolt. We then came to a section where they were re-grading the road, and, in an unavoidable position in the middle of a narrow road, there was a large rock which we hit. When we could, we pulled over to find that our one shock-absorber on the driver’s side was now hanging loose!! We proceeded cautiously to Archer River where we asked for a mechanic. Glyn the bush mechanic who lives at the back of the roadhouse provided a bolt and re-attached the shock absorber, saying that it would last until Coen where there was a me...
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 22nd June 2026: We awoke to find that we were camped very close to the Old Telegraph Road, as oldish 4WD’s driven by youngish males at speed raced by our van! We made our way along the very corrugated road to Bramwell Station. The road passed through some patches of rainforest and we saw Brush Turkeys. We then passed through forest with grass trees and buttressed termite mounds. At Bramwell, we visited their museum with the history of the station up to the present day. We then went for a walk and saw brush turkeys and several what I think were Agile wallabies with a white chest and white stripe on their thighs. We then set about solving the issue of our Trüma hot water heater showing an error message! We could not identify the features Google suggested manipulating, but I remembered that we had been given a spare fuse, so we replaced the fuse and this must have rebooted the whole system and amazingly we then had hot water! We had a Vegie omelette for dinner and an early night- Fai...
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21st June 2026: Left  Punsand , coping with the water crossings and the corrugations  thanks to Nic’s excellent driving. We went into Bamaga to go to the IBIS supermarket, surprisingly well stocked, and even more surprising was the “Queensland freight discount”of $21 taken off a $128 total bill! We topped up with diesel, and fresh water at the BP service station and headed for the Jardine ferry, arriving at lunchtime for the ferrymen of course. We then proceeded to Fruit Bat Falls where we unhitched the caravan and just took the Prado down the Falls road(2.7 km). The Falls were an inviting place to swim which we did, despite some light rain falling at the time. We then drove the 6.7 km to Eliot and Twin Falls on Eliot Creek, which flows into the Jardine River. The underlying sandstone fissured in such a way to create the Eliot Falls and the Twin Falls, in a manner I have never seen before. Of great interest was the Pitcher plants along the way into each Falls. On the way out a...
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