Our travels on Cape York began as a slow process of moving up the cape. We crossed over on the Daintree ferry and got our first look at crocodile warnings much to the kids delight. We decided to take the Bloomfield track up and were surprised that it was not really a track and more of a wide gravel road with a couple of shallow fords, some steep inclines and a few potholes of bull dust. This was the beginning of eternal red dust that coated everything and the last we saw of our white wagon!! We carried on through Cooktown (where James Cook landed in 1770, and gold rush hit in 1873. We gathered a few supplies from the bakery and directions to Elim Beach camp which was run by an aboriginal elder, Eddie Deemal. He regaled us with stories of his prime driving cattle for weeks at a time and catching big fish. I read articles on the wall showing him still spearing Fish from a paddle board taken just a few years ago. Not bad for an 80 something year old man!! The campground itself was perched right on the narrow beach surrounded by remains of an old jetty and mangrove areas. Tony was keen to camp right up on the beach as others were but I was far too paranoid about the crocs so we camped a bit further back. Elim Beach is part of Hopevale aboriginal land and has a fantastic area called coloured sands which we were allowed to go up and visit. We drove up the beach and discovered big sand dune areas where different minerals over the years have coloured the areas of sands. Summer and I filled a wine bottle with layers of the colours. We also took a drive in the other direction towards cape Bedford but got stuck trying to drive the road over a large soft dune system so backtracked out after a few unsuccessful attempts. On our way out of Elim we took a back track out known as Battle camp road. We passed through areas of active bushfire right up to the road which the kids had never seen before. From there we hit the main PDR (peninsula development road) and followed its corrugated dusty trail north where we stopped for the night at musgrave roadhouse. It’s an old telegraph station built in 1887 as a repeater. It was fortified against attacks and it still remains as the homestead today. More interesting for the kids was the dam behind the musgrave camp area. It’s full of freshwater crocodiles who are fed to keep them around. Both the crocs and the turtles come right up to the bank when anyone arrives - hoping for a feed. From there we moved into Archers river roadhouse where a swim in its crystal clear creek was more than welcome. Chilli beach in the iron range national park was our next destination and although we could see how pretty it would be in nice weather the rain and strong trade winds battered us overnight and we quickly departed the next morning. Our next destination was Weipa and we were pleasantly surprised. We’d had friends who’s done a stint there and had little positive to report but after gathering supplies at “one shop” towns it’s Woolworths, bakery, pharmacy, tackle shop and bottle-o were welcome sights. We had also decided coming into Weipa that we might look on the local but n sell pages for a foldup trailer for our boat. We had discovered that unless we were camped right beside where we were going to launch our tinny we couldn’t actually use it. Not without packing back up camp in order to launch and retrieve it. We spotted someone else with one in the campground and thought to ask them how they found it when they offered to sell it to us! What good luck!! So we stayed on for a couple of extra days fishing. One morning we launched in a tidal river and after the locals had told us there were real big crocs there and one particularly aggressive one I was totally on edge. Being a tiny tinny with a flattish bottom suitable for tidal rivers there’s not exactly a huge freeboard. Maybe 25-30cm at best? So I was feeling like croc bait bobbing about on the water when one surfaced not far away to check us out. That was it!! I freaked out and was pulling anchor and ordering lines up pronto!! Tony had no choice in the matter! We’ve been out lots since but I’m still not completely comfortable with the arrangement ...