Cape York Day 9

Planned 7:30 departure this morning but we are a little late, but we are excited. Today we will start the Old Telegraph Track and hopefully get to the Dulhunty River. Original plan was Bramwell roadhouse but as we made it to archer river should be no reason why we can’t be at the dulhunty. Awesome.

Breakfast made, cleaned up, camper packed up key in ignition and turn it over, click, click, click.  What??  Press override on batteries, click click click.  Umm not good, open bonnet check all terminals are tight, click click click.

Yep!!  Flat battery.  The guy from the camper next to us asks if I would like a jump-start which I accept, so while he finishes packing up his camp I get the jumper leads out and prepare for him. This is a real bugger as we are going off the beaten track for at least the next 4 nights.

Ok so both cars hooked up, and bang off it starts. So we disconnect and he hits the road, I kindly drop 2 cans of beer on his floor to thank him for his time.

So we head up to the road house and not turning the car off I run in to see if they have batteries, nope, closest place will be coen, back south or weipa to the north.  Not wanting to risk amp other flat battery and knowing that we will need the winch which is connected to this battery we make the decision to go to weipa.  It really is a long way out of our way, and we won’t start the Old Tele Track now but I look at distances and if I could make it back to moreton telegraph station I would be happy.

So off we go making our way north, we go past the turn off to “the tip” and keep heading into weipa.  Lucky for us, there is some long stretches of bitumen and even the dirt is good, we have no problems doing 80-90kph all the way.

 When we get into town the first mission is to find some where. We head straight to the local auto elect place, who is also the RACQ bloke. Happens that he doesn’t have any to suit our set up. So down the road I go to the Repco/ ARB guy and luckily they have a start battery to suit. $220 gets me back on the road. We find a park just around the corner where I start on doing the swap.

  

While this happens Lyndall is making lunch and taking dogs for a walk. It is hot and the flies are rampet.

Ok battery’s changed over, and the ARB guys said there is a spot you can dump the old battery down the boat ramp, so off we go, and Yep it is here, big sign with bins that you can put your batteries in. They all get shipped to cairns for free for recycling and money paid for the batteries goes to the local indigenous groups.

Ok so now we get going, leaving about 1pm, the lady at ARB said the road to moreton is really really good, and it will take 2 hours to get there. As you may have guessed we haven’t stopped to sight see in weipa as I have planned 2 nights here on our way south again anyway, so we just get going.  Soon enough we are turning left, about 70km out of weipa on to a road that goes through Batavia downs. Great road.

 True to her word we pull into moreton telegraph station at about 3pm. Nice green grass greets us and only a couple of campers.  We go and pay our camp fees and set up camp next to a big tree out the front of the old homestead. Now this place is somewhere that a friend mentioned as being nicer to stay then Bramwell, and as we haven’t seen Bramwell yet I can’t comment, expect that moreton is a great place to stay (Thanks Rod Clout) Good showers and toilets, they let us have the dogs off lead and allowed them to have a run, as long as they left other campers along. Awesome.

As I was playing with the dogs, another Ultimate pulled into camp. Soon enough, we were having a chat and sharing ideas. cheers Xtrk24 from the ultimate forum.

Dinner done we went to bed pretty quickly, 2 reasons, 1. I was now excited and a little anxious about starting the Famous, One and Only Old Telegraph Track, and 2. With our little detour today, we had done a lot of extra driving that wasn’t wanted or planned, and I was a little buggered.

Night night!