Driving to Kowanyama and beyond

Through the windscreen

Leaving Pormpuraaw, we headed down the most variable road in Queensland. The road began wonderfully and we wondered what the excitement was all about. Wide graded sand road with sculptured edges. Well, after we turned the corner.......

The road narrowed and the crossing across the dry sandy rivers were okay. So long as you stayed on hard ground. Its slow but - down to 40 K on the good roads.

Then we found the road getting smaller - down to road tracks. the GPS surprise surprise did think there was a road occasionally.....

And the river crossing got rougher....

And rougher.....

And wetter....

Closer to Kowanyama, the road improved

Leaving Kowanyama we found great creek spots and just had to camp...

And yet more rivers - no wonder its dry season territory

And deeper - closer to the coast

Friends visit the lunch time camp

Dinner camp - last one before hitting the big smoke.

Great night spot - sunset across the water.

And the road is now back to normal - red and dusty
but pretty smooth except for the dust holes.

And so we say bye for now. Back in Cairns, some 2200Km later on this leg.

The BIA project has been great for us and great for all the people we met. Thanks to new and old friends. We can't wait to go back.

Michelle and Paul

Camping - life after work

Its a tough project camping after work each day... well the accommodation in K and P is not always the best, so we took our camper 800km to Lockhart and then 500K across to Pormuraaw. Although the beach was closed to tourists, we had talked to the ranger team and they liked the workshops we were doing and let us camp. Thanks Rob and team.



The beach at Pormpuraaw is just amazing. We had the beach to ourselves and enjoyed the most beautiful walks after a long day at the keyboards - no other people anywhere. It really is one of the best beaches on the cape. Just loved the big shells and the metres of little shells piled up.

Fell in love with Brolgas - such a beautiful bird in flight and on the beach.


The best sunset we have seen yet. Was pretty special. This is the sunset we watched while using skype on the beach to talk to the family - using next G modem and power from the battery.

Shells and patterns are pretty neat - it was hard to leave these beauties on the beach. We used the shells as plates for our veges cooked on the fire.

The bird species on the beaches are quite spectacular.

Morning tea spot on the road. Touch gig between towns.

Round 2 fun

While in Lockhart River, we lived next to the Kids Club, the venue for the workshops. We parked the truck and used the local power supply to keep cool at night. It was good to have a shower on tap (bit cold Rod) and a kitchen. The workshops were "homely" with folks turning up as early as 7.45 while we were still having breakfast till after 7.30 at night. It was wonderful to have folks comfortable enough with us to live with us....




Keegan lived with us and mum constantly. He was in for lunch, dinner and for entertainment. He loved the music and knew just how to get it started and control it. Great kids and loved his cuddles and kisses.

Helping Nola learn how to control her computer. She was very competent and with just a few gaps in her knowledge filled in, she was away. Michelle had the biggest photo collection, we had seen. So she loved learning how to manage her collection, back it up and improve her photos. Two very happy customers from Lockhart.

Denise Fruit and family.

Old and young came in every day and we loved having them.

From banking to making videos, they kept us busy as they learned.

6.30 at night.
We had made dinner and still had company.
The kids helped each other and we were pretty redundant.
Love this work.

The success of Lockhart.
Great young people learning enough to now be able to help others.

Kowanyama team - everyone on a different project

Back on the Road

Our New Home

Since our last post, we travelled via charter plane from Darnley Island in the Torres Straits to Bamaga on the tip. We were too busy to do the tip but got very close with a nearly-night drive through the forests. Just beautiful and lots of wildlife including a quoll. From Bamaga we travelled by boat to Thursday Island and then the next day to Horn island and Cairns. Stayed in Cairns Onight ( I think - can't really remember) and then back to Bris. Thanks Drew for collecting all our stuff from the barge and putting it in the shed.

We had three days at home. Mum was in hospital again and we had to freak out poor old Scott the housesitter by turning up in a great hailstorm when the power was out. It was all quite confusing really. Then we flew to Nauru for a week. One night at home to check up on Dad's eye operation. Thanks Jeff for stepping in while I was flying from Honiara.

Then believe it or not we stayed home for 20 hours before flying to Cairns and then getting our 4wd camper and driving to Lockhart River. Lockhart is 830 K from Cairns.

This trip, we are driving to avoid the bad weather issues at Lockhart (for some reason pilots don't like landing on mountains in the fog) and to make sure we get enough time at Pormpuraaw.

We have a delightful camper (cook outside) which currently has a 10 laptop network, next G system and lots of cables stuffed in the storage boxes. We have a freezer for food and an esky and have done really well for delicious dinners. The camping and camp spots have been outstanding.

Tough roads and dry creek beds make the driving interesting,
though the road was in better condition than we thought and made good time.

We had a delightful camp on the first weekend, enjoying veges on the coals. Its been a while since the last camp. We had to learn to put things in the same place, a bit of a trap in a camper full of laptops. We woke up to kangaroos feeding just outside the van and a baby kookaburra amusing us.

The roads are mostly dirt up here. The road through the centre of cape York and out to Lockhart is mostly red dirt. It certainly makes finding the road easy. We took the GPS which was a hoot. It could find the communities we were going to, but thought we were either on unnamed roads, off the road or travelling cross country. We stopped at Archer River RoadHouse and Paul found an old environmental days mate John, who was camping out counting possums. Amazing who you meet. he was headed in towards Lockhart to the Wenlock.



I lost count of the rivers we had to cross ( no bridges Sue) and the truck seemed to go really well through them. The country was really spectacular, especially towards Iron Range. the heathlands style vegetation was a treat, though at this tie of year the flowering is nearly over. We did stop and get a short walk in to do some photography.






So we eventually found Lockhart, only to find that we had to reassemble the training centre computers network again and clean up after some builders put down a floor. Just what we needed after 2 days of travelling. It was okay. Paul fiddled about with the network to make it talk to the Internet and we began on time for day 1 of 4 days in Lockhart River.

More Workshop stories

Family environment - we welcome the kids of all ages.
People bring their families and we get free cuddles - win -win all round.
This was the Boigu island team coping in the very small library on chairs
and on the floor while meetings occurred in the council room - our usual venue.

Back on Erub - Darnley island.
Old friends came in to refresh their skills and needed very little help.
It was terrific to see the increase in confidence.

New friends learning how to make music.
These communities are ready for their public access computers

The girls came in after school and when there was no room, they hit the floor and invited Michelle down to show off what they were doing.
They loved all the new software to make cool photo options and developed videos in an hour. Congrats to the Boigu SS ( Now campus of Taigai) for the great work in developing computer literacy in local kids.

Workshop fun

The workshops

The workshops we run are such fun. Nothing goes as expected but it is delightful fun. We are doing the repeat workshops now visiting communities for the second time. We found that people came back and joined us and brought along lots of new friends.

On Boigu, Michelle got on the floor with bunches of kids, who came in after school.

Paul helps out the men and usually they play with Google earth to start with.

We have been flying again. The flights around the straits are always breathtaking. It was a pretty cloudy day but it was still wonderful. look how clear the floor of the ocean is in these amazing waters.

These twins caught my eye as we flew over. Loved them.

Sunday and all is better

Kowanyama Sunset at the beach while barra and crab fishing

The week began with a plane flight - first of many. We were very pleased to see a plane land in Lockhart, so we could continue the journey. Three days of watching the clouds descends over the airstrip was not amusing after the first minute. We did make the most of the time, revisiting Chilli Beach and have tours through the rainforests in the rain.

On arrival in Cairns we did a rushed emergency shop for the next journey and then went to the shed to repack the computers and boxes for the Kowanyama- Pormpuraaw leg. Stayed at the Holden's over night and enjoyed a nice dinner, a bottle of wine ( real treat) and a great conversation. We did a change of printer and then a huge rush to the airport Tuesday morning, only to wait for hours to find out the plane had been cancelled. Luckily the put us up at a pub for the night and Paul had a couple of Guiness's. Was nice and I had time to shop for a belt and some food to take with us. We knew we needed to cook somewhere for Kowanyama, cause the guest house is crude to say the least. Cause we had the weekend delay in Lockhart, we did not get any cooking done or even a shop in a super market. So I did get a few things, even some new coffee and soy milk. It's the little things that count.

Life in a 1 metre shed. We repack on the floor and store the excess.

Fishing in Pormpuraaw while keeping a healthy lookout for croc slides

Finally got to Pormpuraaw on Wednesday and people were great forgiving us for not arriving on Monday. Pormpuraaw is right on the beach so we finally got some fine weather and an early workshop finish. While Paul fished, I took photos of shells and beach sand patterns to use as backgrounds in the digital scrapbooking activities we do.

Friday afternoon we headed off in the 30 minute flight to Kowanyama and we met at the airport by Rachel and Matthew and also Renee. From no-one to meet at at Pormpuraaw where we had to catch the community bus, we had two offers. Met lots of great folk at the airport and all seems positive and organised for the week.

TB, thought you might like some pics of Rachel, Matthew and the new dogs to see how they are all going.

Shelfo on Sunday

Had a great weekend. Rachel and Matthew have been wonderful hosts. Saturday night was a campfire and camp oven experience on the beach after an amazing walk and then a fish. Paul caught a small barra and I caught a catfish and a couple of big crabs. Rachel has the dogs trained to did for crab, so we used them for bait. Crabs obviously like eating their littler cousins.

Brolgas - part of the wonderful bird life everywhere

Venus crabbing for bait

Sunday, we went out to Shelfo where we can swim, more or less croc free and we made a new fire. Rachel made bread in the camp oven and we made jaffles with the curries we brought. All very delicious. Swum in the creek and just floated down the river, until the little fish and crays started nibbling the toes. Wonderful scenery. We will camp there next trip.

Paul checked out the road where we will need to drive in a month. it looks like a scary crossing to me, but he thinks he will be able to do it. When the locals turn around.....

Campfires and jaffles and bread

Ended the weekend with a great drive back through the bush. the bird life is amazing - swarms of corellas, galahs and lots of brolga groups. Also saw a wonderful display of pelicans polaying the thermals and black kites. Just the most beautiful creatures in flight, feeding and on the ground.

Sunsets on the cape. Worth the wait.