Suzanne & Nic Outback Caravan Trip 2025

 5th June 2026: Nic’s 76th birthday! We headed into town to the Cooktown History museum where we read all about Cooktown starting with the Gold rush in the 1870’s, including from an indigenous perspective. Two elderly women volunteers chatted with me about what Cooktown was like 45 years ago when I was there and filled me in on some people I knew then. We then visited Des Hill at his surgery. He was a resident at Cairns Base Hospital when I was there as a registrar in 1981. He has been a GP in Cooktown since 1983 but sold his practice last week and he is to work in his old surgery until the end of the year. He turns 70 in September. We then went in search of the old Cooktown Hospital where I used to work. It was sold to Jehovah’s Witnesses after been saved from demolition and moved to a new site in town. We were able to go inside the building via an unlocked back door. I found it unrecognisable. We went upstairs where there was a photographic record of the hospital being moved. We ...

 4th June 2026 : left Innot Springs heading up the Kennedy Hwy via Ravenshoe and  travelling through farmland on the Atherton Tableland to and through Atherton  to junction of the Mulligan Highway just before Mareeba. We stopped at Mareeba to refuel (Ampol Premium Diesel $2. 12/l) and have a coffee and orange muffin with passion fruit icing at the Pug Cafe. We continued on to Cooktown via a winding road through hills with a viewpoint over forest with mountains in the background. We got into Cooktown about 3.30pm, settled into a nice campsite at the Peninsula Caravan Park, backing onto a stream and then drove into town along Charlotte St - totally changed waterfront to my memory of 45 years ago when trees on the foreshore all grew in one direction due to the prevailing winds. A lot of development has taken place. We then drove up to Grassy Hill and the Lighthouse- now with a viewing platform built in 2007. We decided to eat at the RSL club- Coral trout fish and chips for N...

3rd June 2026: got off to a reasonably early start and looked at the many buildings tastefully restored to their 1880’s appearance when Charters Towers was a wealthy gold rich town. We drove out of town on the Gregory Developmental Road and then the Kennedy developmental road, both roads in good order with light traffic of trucks and caravans in both directions. As we travel north the vegetation is changing to semi- tropical with vines clinging to trees like furniture coverings in a dryish eucalyptus forest, with many trees showing epiphytic growth after fires. We saw our first wedge-tailed Eagle for the trip - a single one- and then a new bird for me- the pheasant coucal by the side of the road. We saw a second one a distance further on . We reached Mt Garnet and saw the race track made famous by the Picnic Races. About 20km further on we came to Innot Hot Springs where we were booked into the caravan park. We set up on our unpowered site and then went to bathe in the pools of various...

 2nd June 2026: Awoke to a golden morning light on the gum trees and the sweet notes of the butcherbirds. We packed up and turned  on the Kennedy Development road in the direction of Hughenden. We visited the Lookout over porcupine Gorge downstream of Pyramid Rock and it was far more spectacular as the Porcupine Creek ran along the bottom of high sandstone gorge walls 120 million years old with a layer of basalt on top. We then took a Google directed shortcut to Prairie but had to turn back when we came to a place where the road across the Flinders River was entirely washed away. We backtracked and had to go via Hughenden along the Flinders Way to Charters Towers. It was a town filled with some attractive building left over from when CT was in its heyday gold mining days. We filled up with diesel and had a large shop at Woolworths before heading to the Charters Towers Tourist Park for a drive-thru site. I cooked a vegetables and salmon and pasta in cheese sauce affair with a g...

 1sr June 2026: Today we walked down into Porcupine Gorge with its most prominent landmark Pyramid rock at one end with a network of pools at the base at the end of a river running down the centre of the gorge. We reached Pyramid Rock and then crossed to the other side of the river across rocks where Nic got his feet wet. We made our way back up the far side of the gorge walking over rocks then scrambling down some more until we reached a place where we could cross the river back to the campsite side. This time it was my turn to get wet feet! We continued walking upstream, (after a delay for me to empty my shoes of water and wring out my socks)-and found a lunch spot under a shady tree. We kept walking as far as we could in search of an elusive waterfall at the end of the gorge, but we couldn’t progress any further without taking to the water, so we turned back. Nic made great progress, with me bringing up the rear by quite a long way as we climbed up the many steps out of the gorg...

 31st May 2026: We left Winton after an unsuccessful attempt to visit the Chinese vegetable garden of Willie Mae. We headed out to Hughenden, a 3.5 hour trip. The land was pretty dry without much vegetation or signs of animal life! We saw lots of kites- black and whistling and then groups of Drought master cattle. We stopped in Hughenden at the Flinders Discovery Centre- the only thing on offer in this very small town! We saw more dinosaur bones, read about sheep and quickly passed over more memorabilia! We headed to Porcupine Gorge National Park where I had booked us a camping site, some distance from other campers. We walked to the Gorge and back (2.7km) just as the sun was setting. I successfully set up Starlink on the caravan roof then made a sort of vegetable hot pot stir fry using the carrots, parsnip zucchini, capsicum, onions and mushrooms I had on hand, together with a tin of salmon each with pasta. It is so nice to be in a National park rather than a caravan park!  W...