It’s hard to come to grips with the fact that we’ve now spent 3 months on the road. On the one hand, when I was working I would have loved a 3 month holiday, which would have seemed like forever (I did take a 2 month sabbatical at one point which was absolutely amazing). On the other hand, upon writing this closer to the 4 month mark, I’ve only just stopped having dreams about work (about being in meetings, mainly, or rushing to meet a deadline), wondering how various projects are going, missing things about working life etc…all that has finally left me, and it is starting to feel now…

We had four nights left to make it the rest of the way to Darwin, and we decided to split those up between two National Parks along the way: Nitmiluk and Litchfield. Nitmiluk was our first stop (better known to most Aussies as Katherine, but I’m trying to put the Traditional Owner names first as much as possible). Here’s a map of our route previous to this post (in red), and what’ll be covered in the post that follows (in green). We travelled this way between the 12th to the 16th of September. You can always find our current location at our Garmin MapShare, which is pinged frequently by our…

We thought we’d try something different with the next few blog posts: we’re going to try putting the map up at the top of the post, to orient you to the area we’re writing about, before getting into it. Let us know what you think if you feel strongly about it one way or the other! This post covers the 10th of September through to the 12th of September 2018. Here’s a map of the area in this post (in green), the red line is what we’ve covered previously: You can also stalk us, err I mean check up on us, via our live map from our satellite device which…

After gorging ourselves on the local prawns at Karumba and stocking up on some local barramundi, we were off. We had to make it to Darwin, some 2200km away, in ten days so that we could celebrate my birthday in style (more on that in a later post). Luckily, we were back in an area of the country where the attractions and sights are pretty far apart, so it was no dramas to be able to achieve the ~220km required in driving per day. Our first stop out of Karumba was to check out a bit of Aussie history, by way of Burke & Wills Camp 119. Burke and Wills…

We loved our time up on the Cape York Peninsula and especially at the tip, and could have spent more time there. We missed out on a couple of our wish list items – Ussher Point and Chilli Beach (now on the Next Time List!) – but with the onset of the wet season looming, we needed to get our butts in gear and move on. The wet season was one of our few real “deadlines” for this trip, as when the rains start up north where most of the roads are fine red dirt and feature numerous creek crossings, attempting to travel in “the wet” is risking getting bogged…

We’d made it to the top of the Old Telegraph Track, but there was still a little farther to go to the very top of Australia, and a few adventures to be had before we headed back down and west to start the next part of our Big Lap around Australia. At the end of the last post we had camped up at Alau Beach, and celebrated our victory over the OTT with a few drinks and some sunset spectating at the beach. After a fantastic sleep we woke up with the ocean in view from our tent, excited to explore what the Tip had to offer. Our primary objective…

Ready or not (don’t worry to our moms, we were very ready) today was the day for us to tackle one of the most legendary Australian four wheel drive tracks, the Old Telegraph Track, starting from Bramwell Junction and travelling 200km north over corrugated and washed out sections of dirt road and through too many creek crossings to count (yes, some croc-infested and unwalkable!), to the very northernmost tip of Australia. Here are the always-excellent Hema Maps overviews of the track: OTT South and OTT North. I love what they say about the beginning of the track: “marked by a small wooden sign and the smell of anticipation in the…

For the last few days we kept running into another couple in a Mitsubishi Challenger with yellow jerry cans on the roof. We first saw them at Roaring Meg on the CREB, then camped near them at Lion’s Den (and Nick had a chat about 4wd’s), camped near them again at Elim Beach, saw them in Coen, and finally had burgers & chips together at Archer. They were on a shorter trip than ours (Brisbane to the Tip and back again) but had all the same things on their checklist – and so we all decided to convoy together up to the Tip. The conversation over Archer Burgers was pretty…

Cape York has been huge on our list of destinations for a long time. It’s home to a few epic 4wd tracks including the (in)famous Old Telegraph Track, the northernmost tip of Cape York is the northernmost tip of Australia, there are beautiful waterfalls and swimming holes, turquoise seas, world-class fishing, and lots of wildlife including some creatures that are endemic to Cape York alone. It’s such an epic trip I think this’ll be a three or four part post – this post will cover the following: Cairns -> Daintree -> CREB Track -> Lion’s Den Hotel -> Cooktown -> Elim Beach -> Rinyirru (Lakefield) National Park -> Coen ->…

The Atherton Tablelands is an area just west inland of the Cassowary Coast, where there are rolling green hills and big blue skies, lots of flourishing farmland, cows, fruit trees, coffee plantations, small towns boasting b&bs, cafes, and fish & chip shops, and the big draw for us – cheese, coffee, and chocolate shops selling wares all crafted from local cows and locally grown produce and cocoa and coffee. As if that wasn’t enough there are also countless waterfalls, freshwater lakes and rivers, rainforest walks, and even local Aussie legendary creatures like the duck-billed platypus. Our first stop in the Tablelands was Mareeba Coffee Works, a combination cafe-tasting room –…