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 27th June 2026: It rained a lot over night and we left Daintree  and headed for Cape Tribulations in light but steady rain! We caught the ferry across the Daintree -capable of taking 25 vehicles apparently! Everything is on a larger scale than I remember it! We made our way up then down a windy narrow road towards the Cape through beautiful rainforest, with a lot of hidden development along the way. Nic drove cautiously and well!  We wanted to visit the Daintree Discovery centre but there was nowhere we could park the caravan despite us doing an entire loop of the area. We will have to come back without the caravan. We made our way to the Cape Tribulation Camping Ground, where, fortunately because of the weather, we had booked a powered site. We set up the van and then travelled North to the beginning of the Bloomfield track where the road really began to deteriorate. We retired to Cape Tribulation, or rather Kulka parking area from where we walked to Cape Tribulation be...
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   26th June 2026: we had a slowish  start to the day and changed plans to go to Daintree not Mount Carbine next. Nic reinflated all our tyres from 29psi in the Prado to 39psi in front tyres and 42psi in the back tyres  and from 35psi to 45 psi in the caravan as we expect bitumen from now on. We also filled up with water We went to say goodbye to Stuart  only to find he had gone fishing in Lakefield National Park.We chatted to the new owners of the Peninsula Hotel  up from Canberra ( Waramanga) We travelled along the Peninsula Development Road until we reached the Mulligan Highway route 81 at Lakeland where we never did find the BP servo..We stopped for diesel at Palmer River and continued through Mount Carbine turning off the highway before Mt Molloy and going via Julatten to Mossman descending  down some very windy curves in the road with a lot of roadworks repairing erosions on the down side of the road. We then went to Daintree Village where we wer...
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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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