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Outback Australia in the wet
Posted On 2009-04-12 , 10:34 PM
 Wet day in outback Australia, what to do? Well, why not drive to the tip of Cape York.
The husband has a warrior mentality - if the going gets tough - the tough get going, and going he did, in a sturdy three door Hyundai, recently bought in Cairns from a over zealous lover of the demon drink who desperately needed to pay a fine.
Packed to the gunnels with everything and more, anyone would need if stranded in the Outback Australian bush for a week, in short we had a week to do Cape York Peninsula, there and back!
Lakeland our first stop, a small tidy outback Australian community surrounded by banana, peanut & coffee plantations, with a nice green shady camping area, and the best coffee in outback Australia. We set up the tent, cooked a divine barramundi & green salad meal and swapped stories with a few alternative life-stylers dining out of sardine tins, who had hitched down from the 3 day Laura music festival. Then it started to rain and rain it did, all night, heavily.
The next morning we headed north to Laura and on to the Musgrave Roadhouse, on stretches of seal and red dirt connecting one distant horizon with the next. The rain pelted down filling the deep causeways, and creek crossings becoming a gal’s worst nightmare.
The road deteriorating before our eyes, the dirt road turning to red mud, reminded me of the soggy clay you throw at a potters wheel, in the days when I made many lop sided ash trays for all the relies. The expedition was going steadily down hill, visions of ending my days buried in red mud under a gum tree  was not on my list of things to do.
Arriving at the very outback Australian, Musgrave Road House, we carefully parked on the only rise in Cape York Peninsula, so we could slither over the mud downhill, our little Hyundai looking like a Tonka toy smothered in thick red mud amidst ‘see how many wheels you can have on the road’ trucks, enormous 4WD’s, and ‘in need of panel beating’ coaches.
I hastily ordered cappuccinos cold beers, and all the unhealthy food I could muster, whilst the warrior pounced on the diners to get the latest road updates. A coach driver had slithered side ways toward a cattle stop with 10 senior citizens on board, only straightening up seconds before crashing and loosing only his bumper bar.
The general consensus was that apart from the next 25 clicks (km’s) where the cattle stop was number one hazard, the road wasn’t too bad, but in our not so Outback Australian vehicle boxing on wasn’t advisable, of course if we could sit out the rain e.g. camping in a soggy inhospitable outback Australian paddock we would be sweet in a couple of days.
The bowels of the roadhouse harboured a large T.V. and with Wimbledon happening I settled down to munch my unapproved heart foundation tasty morsels, 100% happy with the Williams sisters, leaving the warrior to exchange near mishaps and make new best friends, I was going no where.
Finally the decision was made to turn around and retreat as we would run out of time to reach the tip and return safely, all of which saved me from becoming a valium addict in a week. Retreating along the red slippery road which didn’t seem quiet so bad, my warrior was constantly trying to convince me the road was rapidly drying out.
And as we know from those child hood fairy stories every story has a happy ending. We found a beautiful white sandy un-rutted beach with divine warm salty ocean, and not a rain cloud in sight.  Here the warrior spent the next week justifying bailing out!
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