Cape York - Thursday 1/9/11

7am – The sun rises later up here and it’s throwing us out, you think it’s about 5.30am, but it’s actually about 6.30am.

Decision was made last night that we will tackle the Frenchmans Track today and stay out at Chili Beach with Jim & Evelyne.  Firstly a bit of grocery shopping to stock up the pantry, fill up the water tank and then by more wine.  I know there’s a reason for the alcohol restrictions up here and I appreciate that, but it’s very painful only being able to carry 2 litres of wine and they don’t have Sav Blanc in the cask wine.

We arranged to meet Jim & Ev on the way out of town after we each did our bits.  11.00am we were heading out of Weipa to take the track through Batavia Downs Station, which heads north east to the main road (the track cuts off a fair few klms and is in excellent condition compared to the Weipa road).  At the junction with the main road we turn left to head north to the Frenchmans Track (the marker for the track is a termite mound with a pole through it) and we missed it of course.

Track conditions didn’t start out too bad, but didn’t stay that way.  You could call the track challenging for sure – washouts, corrugations, dirt, rocks, sand, creek crossings.  We were flat out being able to do 20klms/hr along the track. 

First big river to cross was the Wenlock – no problems, wide, sandy/rocky bottom and shallow.  We stopped for lunch in the river bed about 2.30pm and let Boris have a run around and swim. 

We only had to cover say 43klms to reach the mighty Pascoe River, but we didn’t arrive there until 6pm.  There was only one place to pull up on the western side of the Pascoe before you start descending into the river, so that’s where we parked.  Craig & Jim got out to have a look at the entry – OMG, it was severely washed out with big step downs, the river depth was about 700mm & flowing, then the exit track wasn’t very pretty either, with a big step up about ½ way up.

The boys decided it was better to camp in our squeezey little campsite, due to fading daylight – crossing in the dark is just silly.  Just a quick and easy dinner, everybody was tired and went to bed early.