Day 14

Day 14 (Destination – Hann River roadhouse)

After a good nights sleep by all, we packed up again. Brett, thinking a fishing charter might be our last hope of catching a good fish, decided we would go to the Weipa library to use their internet and see if we could book something for when we reached Port Douglas or Cooktown. After a half hour of ‘research’, we decided it was all too difficult and gave up.

We headed toward Merluna Station, thinking this would be our next overnight stop, however it wasn’t that far a drive from Weipa and upon arriving and seeing it didn’t really have what we were looking for, we decided to keep driving. ‘The more driving we do today, the less we have to do tomorrow’ became our motto. (We had to be in Port Douglas by Sunday for a friends wedding.)  Several hours later, after a very long day of driving, we stopped at Hann River roadhouse. Upon approach it is a fairly rough and ready looking place, with a large compound of demountable buildings presumably for the road crews work in the area.  However, looking past the demountables, there is quite a nice little camping area beyond. We set up camp again and got looking for firewood. Plan was to cook roast lamb and veges in the camp oven tonight.  There was also a pony, a peacock and an emu wandering around that were quite friendly and the kids enjoyed handfeeding the peacock some bread. 

Our camp at Hann River

A little later, while enjoying our meal, we watched a huge lightening storm in the distance, saying ‘it won’t come this way’….famous last words again! An hour or so later we were battening down the hatches, throwing our camp chairs under the Rodeo, zipping up all the windows and hunkering down in the camper to try to sleep.  It’s a bit daunting trying to sleep under canvas while heavy rain is pounding down, and thunder and lightening all around. Luckily it eased almost as quickly as it came and we all fell asleep.