Happy birthday Shaz!

The night was cool and we slept well at Nolan’s.  The weld that Glen had done on the control arm at North Alice broke during yesterday’s trip.  Seeing we got to Nolan’s quite late in the day, Glen said that he wanted to wait until the morning so he had full daylight to see what he was doing.  The boys hooked up a couple of batteries and Glen welded it together enough to get the Jeep to Bamaga to get it properly welded.

I started cooking Corn Fritters for breakfast after Glen had said that they could take a break.  During cooking, the oil spat and burned my right leg.  I’ve got 3 nice teardrop burns and gosh did they hurt.  After a day with Rawleighs and bandaids (it looked pretty funny), I’ve now just got some purple / red teardrops on my leg.

We left camp at almost 11am and travelled to where the old crossing of the Jardine River was.  We pulled up and there was no way that we were going to attempt to get across.

We made our way to the Ferry.  The ferry costs $88 return and it is a shorter cable crossing than the Moggill Ferry.  We think it was a bit expensive, but hey, what can you do?

When we got to the Ferry, it was approx 12:20pm.  The Ferry actually stops when the staff are on lunch and resumes at 1pm.  So we stopped in the shade so that we could have our lunch too.  We’d just stopped when this older guy (Pretty Prado Man – PP Man) came and had a go at us.  He said to Glen “We were all here before you and you have to let us on the Ferry first”, Glen said “No worries mate, we’re just here for the shade.”  Some of the guys that we had met at the first crossing on the OTL were waiting at the Ferry too.  They came down and we had a chat about what we’d done and how the trip was going and what the plan was for the tip.  They had their lunch with us and when they went back to their car.  PPM was asking all the other cars to move right up to the Ferry launch so that “other queue jumpers” pointing to our direction didn’t get in before them.  The guys that we knew were just like, don’t worry mate, if you want to go and park your car in the boiling sun, go right ahead.

Before 1pm, PPM was waiting at the office door, trying to get everyone to line up in order of arrival.  We thought it was really quite amusing as none of us were in a rush.  We went over and bought our tickets and when we’d got out, the Ferry had already done to return trips.  Our group got on and away  we went.

When we pulled into Injinoo, we saw some council workers and stopped to ask if they could do the welding.  They said the best guy to do the welding was at Seisia but couldn’t tell us the name of the place.  We weren’t planning to stop at Seisia, so I had a look in our Hema Cape York Atlas & Guide book, it states that the RACQ Mechanic for up here is in Bamaga and they do welding.  So that was our first stop at Bamaga.  The Challenger went to the BP to fill up $1.95 for Unleaded and $1.90 for diesel.  Scott was pretty much ignored by the guys at the mechanics at Bamaga (probably why the locals referred us to Seisia), so we went to Seisia.

Top End Motors at Seisia was easy to find.  They guy was super helpful and he said that all he gets are Jeeps and Rovers.  He said that he’ll weld anything that has come loose and to drop the car off in the morning.

Alex and I went into the supermarket at Seisia to get some more milk and some other stuff.  $47 for 3 bags!! Wowee!  A 30 pack of Coke was $50.63!!  The guys waited out the front while us girls were shopping.  Another traveller pulled up and told the guys about his trip up and that he’d have a snorkel too if his wife hadn’t seen a pair of red stilletos and a matching bag.  Now whenever we see them, we’re like “Hi Red Stilletos”.   We’ve since found out their names are Ron and Ellen.  He’s a funny guy.

We got back on the road to get to Punsand Bay Safari & Fishing Lodge.  $12 per person per night for camping.  Seeing we had booked and we’re quite a big group, we actually got a Tour Group Site called Dugong.  Everyone else here has really been sandwiched in.  One guy came up to me and asked how we scored this.  Haha.

Garry and Ristan were already here when we got here and they came into the office when we were booking in.  They’re in a cabin (really a thing that looks like an old shipping container and dodgy 70′s caravan panelling.  I don’t think I’d like to pay $200 a night for that with rattling air conditioners.  However, seeing every time I’ve gone to use the toilet or shower here, there’s been a line up of about 5 people before me and I would pay a lot just to be able to use a toilet / shower when I wanted to.  There’s so many people up here and they just don’t have enough amenities.

We set up camp and the bush turkeys have wandered around our camp non-stop.  There are heaps of them here.

The boys noticed that the Challenger didn’t look right.  His skirt was coming off (front lower bar).  Luke pulled of the bit that was coming off.  Luke has lost his skirt.  I’ll put up some piccies when we get the photos from all the other travellers

We had Savoury Mince with Rice and Apple Crumble for dessert.

Injuries & Ouchies:

Jeep – A lot is broken
Oddie – Burnt Leg
Scott – Burnt Toe
Glen – A bit of Welder’s Flash