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Today we went searching for world war two relics and were disappointed with some sights on the map as they were not signed. We found a couple of cleared sites where there was, during the war, a telecommunications base and fuel storage depot. Around, bamaga, near the airport were 3 crashed plane relics, we could only find two a Beaufort bomber and Dakota dc3. We had to go bush bashing with an inaccurate mud map to find them and discovered hundreds of empty and rusted fuel drums in the middle of beautiful bush land. We also panicked when we came face to face with a fire burn off, it was pretty scary and we head tailed out of there at high speed. The airstrip was very impressive, planes come from the islands and it was the same airstrip used during the war, it used to be called "jacki jacki" after an aboriginal guide. We met up with the others and continued to the jardine river crossing. Mick and Kathy went south to morton telegraph station while we camped at jardine river so we could get an early start to the telegraph track in the morning and meet up with them tomorrow night.
We left jardine river around 9:00am and headed for the telegraph track. It was a different type of driving, challenging in parts with lots of dry and wet creek crossings. The track was very narrow and we had to pull off for oncoming traffic. The terrain and flora changed several times according to the altitude. There was a lot of decision making because the track was well worn and there were several choices of tracks to take luckily we made the right choices most of the time. There were many ruts to manoeuvre around and over and through, some made by traffic and others by water. Our winch worked well and got us out of a couple of situations! The 4 wheel drive was certainly put to the test and came up trumps.
Morton telegraph station.
We reached our rendezvous with Kathy and mick about 6pm, they were starting to get worried about us and had just bought a telephone card to ring our satellite phone when we pulled up.
Ah! Grass to park on not the usual red dirt. It was a nice park on the edge of wenlock river, quite a big river very picturesque. We camped under a very old mango tree. The parrots would eat half of a mango and it would fall to the ground and then the cows and brush turkeys would come along and eat the rest.
- comments
heather purcell wow, you are certainly covering a lot or ground and seeing some pretty impressive sights...take care..love from Heather & Rod