Lower levels:
Daintree Rainforest
Battlecamp Track
Cooktown
Cape York Sampler

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Cape Tribulation is the very top of Australia - jutting up towards Papua New Guinea which is some 200km of the most Northerly tip across the Tores Straits.  Cape Trib has an incredible variety of ecosystems - rainforest, reef, savannah, eucalyptus forests and mangrove swamps.  Its inaccessible to anything but a well equipped 4x4  as the roads, if you can call them that, are nothing more than potholed clearings in the jungle which disappear under a vast floodplain each year.

Beginning some 60km North of Cairns, we find ourselves in the middle of Sugar Cane country - the tall grass fronds are there in abundance and the road is lattices with small gauge railway tracks to carry the Cane Trains. We're to see a lot more of the Sugar Industry in the weeks ahead.

Cape Tribulation is famous as the only place where two World Heritage listed sites (the Rainforest and Barrier Reef) meet. It is also where the most remote wilderness in the world can be found.

Travelling along the fantastically named Battlecamp track, we reach the historical port of Cooktown - a laid back oasis with stunning sunsets.

From here we venture onto the Bloomfield Track and up into the Lakefield National Park where we camp by the Hann River Crossing.

Even in the dry, when we visit, the rivers are flowing well and checking they're depth can be hazardous as crocodiles frequent many.  This is not a good place to breakdown...  

From the Hann Crossing, we bump our way to Musgrave over a white sand and bulldust tooth-rattler. From here its around 500km of increasingly frequent potholes, corrugations, croc infested creeks and river crossings, not to mention fallen tree trunks, broken axles, flat tyres and blown headgaskets to the town of Bamaga and a further 30km to the tip...

After a little debate, we elect to turn South, for smooth Tarmac and soft beds -- what a couple of wussies.

Its another 200km of 'good' road until we reach the black stuff by which time our heads feel like they've been in the hands of a British babysitter.

Offroad?  never again... well, not until the next time. I can't wait... 

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