Dawnvale and China Camp

It's pretty wet in Wujal Wujal in March and we discovered that nothing goes as planned.

Not that that is new on Cape York. All roads north are closed except the one to Cooktown so we headed north and then swung back down from Lions Den to Wujal.

Since we are already working on the Cape on other projects we have at last the go ahead to visit communities around Wujal Wujal or Bloomfield as some folks know it. So on the first weekend we could, we headed up the mountain towards Dawnvale and then onto China Camp.

It is beautiful in the Daintree in the wet and the journey was spectacular. There are though many rivers to cross as the song says, and we took turns in wading them to see if they could be crossed. The creeks are crystal clear and we even had a wonderful swim. Paul checked out the depth of Keating Ck. It was actually the mud on one side and sand on the other that I thought might stop us. It ws pretty chopped up from the China Camp locals trying to commute to Wujal.

The high country was just sensational with its new growth and thick grasses. Eddie and co are doing a great job in regrassing their cattle stations. The road on the mountain side is good though some hills have rather steep sides....

It was a pretty amazing way of spending Saturday afternoon traveling the Creb track in the wet.

Dawnvale Station on the far side of a few creeks is not very used in the deep wet but now it is drying up, (so they tell me), people are coming back. The family spent their first few nights back on country this week and already there has been some camps. We did a site drawing for the phone, located the best spots and then picked avocados with a piece of drain pipe. Rather clever I thought.

Now Beard's Creek was not really cute and creek like by the time we got there. We needed to get to the top end of the houses that make up China Camp but nature had other ideas. On the other side was a sand bar just to make it interesting if you didn't wash away. Needless to say we abandoned the journey and went back to the nearer China Camp houses on the mountain.

We had a wonderful visit to Eddie and Pam's place for the night hoping the creek was going to drop. Well, it rained and then some so we really did not get anywhere even the next day. The break though did give us a small chance to explore the wonderful station they own. The forests of grass trees were spectacular and the rainforest creeks very dramatic. We hope to get back there next trip. Thanks Pamela and Eddie for your hospitality and advice.


In the end we did get the China Camp nomination signed. Lucky we could stay in the area for a few days. We look forward to visiting in a few weeks time and checking on phone installation progress.

Two more nominations in - yeh and we will even get paid for these. That's a nice change.