York Peninsula - Did we get to the Tip?
We stayed the first night in a motel unit at the camping grounds and moved to a tent site for the next couple of nights so that we were closer to the sea.
Early in the morning we watched these boat men from the far north islands in Torres Strait. They are accompanying a group who are kite surfing across the Torres Strait to Papua New Guinea.
Fellow campers ask us if we have been to the Tip yet. We couldn't imagine why a visit to a tip would be a priority. In NZ the tip is a place for rubbish. Here people are referring to Cape York the northernmost point in Australia.
We have added Tip to our list of Australian words. Grid is a cattle stop - or for people in the USA a Texas Gate.
We weren't sure about this superfluity.
I don't think we needed the advice for this road.
My boots received a red wash as I walked through these puddles.
I didn't think about crocodiles until afterwards. Notices warn that salt water crocs can be found up to 100km inland on the cape.
An 800m walk over a rocky promontory...
and we were there.
Home through the rain forest.
A long stretch is narrow and traffic moves slowly. The obvious outcome to me is that it is not corrugated.
I have been asking questions and observing the road surface as we rode up the cape.
The road men tell me that vehicle suspension triggers the corrugations and speed accentuates them.
The roads had been graded at the end of the wet season and were in good condition until the last two weeks when school holiday traffic has been speeding up the road.
On this road speed is limited and the surface is mostly smooth - the bogs and water crossings excepted.
We have been East at Cape Byron, North at Cape York; West and South to come.
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