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Camping in Australia is totally different to experiences I have had in the UK. We packed up our swags (thick self inflating mattresses), cooking gear, clothes and food onto the back of James' Ute and headed off. We drove for about half an hour before reaching an off road section on private property, the track was pretty precarious at times, with the Ute fully loaded, four people and a trailer attached with a Quad bike we were surprised we got up some of the hills. We pulled up to an area covered in long grass and James told us this would be our campsite… at the time I couldn't see the potential, then James ran over it a few times on his Quad. We spent some time setting up camp and then explored the area.
Walking through the bush behind the camp we emerged onto a beach, long white sand stretched to the left and right. James brought the Quad bike down onto the beach and one by one we had a go at sitting on the back and speeding along the beach, with the top speed reached on Abi's turn, 100 kph! We then piled all four of us onto the Quad, one sat on the front, two on the seat and one on the back. We headed inland, all having to help with weight distribution by leaning forward to help push the Quad up the hills and leaning as far back as possible on the downhills so we didn't end up rolling head over heels down the hill. We found a creek that was waist deep with dark water so the bottom couldn't be seen; James assured us that there were no crocodiles in this creek so we headed in. James went in first followed by Kieran, sinking in shin deep mud to enter the creek. I didn't fancy that as much so waited till Kieran found some sand and I headed in that way instead. Flo (German we are travelling with) decided he would just sit on the side and watch! We had a bit of a wash and when it started to get dark headed back to camp. We lit a fire and cooked some sausages for dinner. The rest of the evening was chilled, sitting around the fire with a few drinks.
In the morning we had breakfast and a walk along the beach then took down camp and headed back. En route James had a call to say he did not need to work on Monday so we headed 2 and a half hours drive north to Cape Flattery for another night camping. This is where the four wheel drive option on the Ute came in really handy. We traversed waist deep pools of water, slided up and down sand dunes then raced the tide along the beach to make it to the camp before full tide. This time our camp was right on the beach. We set up and went looking for bait and crabs. James caught a mud crab which tasted great fresh. Once it was dark and the tide had gone out we headed to the rocks to look for oysters, all the while scanning the area with our torches to make sure we couldn't see any crocs nearby. We took our haul of oysters back to camp and cooked them up on the fire.
The next morning we could see loads of solider crabs scuttling in groups along the sand. Kieran and Flo took a bucket and caught 20 or so to use as bait. We hiked along the rocks to a spot where the ocean drops off from the rocks and put out a few lines but again we had no luck catching any fish. I did see a small shark swim by though! We took down camp and headed back through the dunes and water. James stopped at a spring on the beach where the water was bubbling up through the sand creating quicksand. In the centre of the area Kieran sank down to above his knees! Around 25 km from Cooktown stopped at Endeavour falls for lunch and to look at the waterfall.
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