September 5, 2020 - Reading time: 3 minutes

Chilli Beach

What a gorgeous spot – 20 kms north of Lockardt River overlooking the Coral Sea and the Great Barrier Reef. Our camp site was partly protected from the ocean breeze by a few small trees but also gave us a great view of the beach. The drive in and out along Portland road was highly entertaining with a number of interesting crossing!

Unfortunately, the fishing was disappointing with a onshore breeze and a flat beach with little or no structure - our attempt to get to the creek mouth was also a failure as the sand was too soft!

Musgrave Roadhouse

The drive out from Chilli Beach was entertaining due to some local rain, which made the clay creek entries and exits quite entertaining. We drove to Musgrave Roadhouse were we were entertained by the fresh water crocodile feeding.

Hann River Lakefield National Park

Hann River sites are HUGE.. we had site 10 which could have have contained 8 people and four caravans. We were located right on the creek and saw lots of Archer Fish, turtles etc. but no Barramundi except for a small strike on our first day.

The highlight however was the birdlife with Jabiru's, magpie geese, brogla's and red tail black cockatoo's all being sited along with a host of others!

Elim Hopevale

Elim was wonderful for two days of quite time, beautiful sunsets and the coloured sands which make those down at Rainbow Beach quite insignificant

Cooktown and Archer Point

Absolutely love this place! It is character personified, could even live here - at least in the dry season. It was sad to see so many businesses closed down but pleasing to see that all the caravan parks were full, so hopefully things are picking up economically.

Archer Point is roughly twenty kms from Cooktown and if the wind is not too strong it is a beautiful campsite. Fortunately, for us it was brilliant for three days, and the fishing was also good with a number of fish being caught and one or two being lost! Suspect a number of sharks bit us of!