Lakefield National Park - 4th – 5th July 2009
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| From Lakefield National Park |
We left Cooktown with supplies and fuel and made our way up Battle Camp Road (Another 4x4 dirt track – as they all are from now, goodbye bitumen) to Lakefield NP. We travelled in convoy and the UHF radio really came into it’s own. First we just used it to tell the person behind (travelling with reduced visibility in the dust!) that there was a hazard coming up - e.g. a car, pothole, DIP!! ROCK!! But then general chat started to creep in as we got to know each other more.
Lakefield is a vast wetland area and much like Kakadu it is home to many birds and other wildlife (including Crocs!). In the wet season it is impossible to get in here, in the dry it is a very green and pretty place full of dry river beds. We stopped off at a nice spot by a lake for lunch before heading to Old Laura Homestead – an abandoned, corrugated iron farming property. It was a very interesting little place with lots of history.
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| From Lakefield National Park |
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| From Lakefield National Park |
Along this road we realised that the fridge has stopped working again and this time we did not have any 240V to plug it in to. We were a little disappointed but now had to think of a plan to get us through the next couple of weeks back to Cairns. The food we decided would be good for now as long as we didn’t open the fridge too much. Sandy and Elliott also had some room in theirs so we could put the meat in there.
Mid afternoon we stopped to make camp at a very quiet spot by a river called Kennedy Bend. Mid afternoon was a little earlier than we had become used to with all the kilometres we had been pushing and it was so nice to stop at that time and relax. It was here that Heidi and I got out first ever taste of fishing. I know we are 30 years old and have never fished before! Sandy and Elliott taught us how to cast with a rod and how to use a hand line.
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| From Lakefield National Park |
We had a few bites but we did not catch anything, as Sandy said it doesn’t matter if you catch anything or whether you are doing it ‘right’ as long as you have fun. This was so true and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
The following day we headed out of Lakefield through a vast treeless plain. The only things you could see standing was 1000’s of termite mounds – a very strange site.
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| From Lakefield National Park |
We also caught site of the rare Magpie Goose (See pic) sitting in the top of a tree and a wild buffalo – not native to Australia; that is the same for all hoofed animals, all of them were shipped into Oz at one time or another.
