Drowned Campervan

On Saturday we headed up the Bloomfield track to Bloomfield Falls at Wujal Wujal with Paul & Nehara. They're staying with us for a week, and we wanted to show them some of the lovely countryside that's so close to home. And, lets face it, you can't come to Cairns without seeing the rainforest.

The trip up was largely uneventful, so we didn't take many photos, since we'd been there before just a month prior. On the way back, however, we made it in to Woobadda Ck, and came across this...

Yep - that's a 2WD Hiace van converted into a camper for travelling round Australia. Yep - it's 2/3rds of the way across Woobadda, with water well above the bottom of the doors. Nope - it's not going anywhere.

It was "owned" by a German professor and his wife who were over here for a holiday, who simply overestimated it's capabilities. With no weight over the back wheels, an open diff, and a rocky, slippery creek bed, I'm surprised that he got as far through as he did.

By the time we turned up, there was a decent crowd gathered. A couple in a red winch-equipped Landcruiser had pulled down to the edge of the water, and we attached the winch cable to the rear bumper (no recovery points were fitted, of course, since it wasn't meant to be offroad!) and winched the car backwards through the creek. I jumped in to help push and act as navvie to the driver, and generally direct traffic around the site.







With the car out of the water, we tried to drive it back up the hill. Thankfully it would start, and didn't seem to have ingested any water into the engine. Unfortunately though, with water pouring out of it everywhere (including a surprisingly large amount from the exhaust) the dirt was quite slippery, and even with Paul and myself on the back of the van, it couldn't get traction and reverse up under it's own power.



So the Landcruiser was again called into action, this time to tow the van using it's winch cable back up the hill a bit, until we could turn it around and clear the track.



Once the backlog of traffic had left, we were able to get the van going back up the hill, through a combination of Paul & I on the back, and a lot of loud encouragement to the drive to "give it heaps mate - keep going - keep going!!!". It eventually bounced up the worst of the hill to a flattish section, and we could hop off and inspect the damage. About the worst of it was a busted tyre valve on a rear wheel resulting in a slowly deflating tyre, and the water-logged floor inside.

We sent them back north towards Wujal Wujal, with instructions to continue that way and go the long way round, via Cooktown and the inland route, rather than re-attempting the coast road. We gave them directions to the police station at Wujal, who could advise where to get the tyre fixed, or at least give them a hand to change it with the spare. I figured it was better to leave them get back off the track with the tyre deflating slowly, and hopefully providing a bit more traction, rather than changing it right then and there. If they went slowly, they should have been fine.

Whilst the recovery itself went well, we did have a related injury to deal with. A motorbike tour group came from the south, and suddenly found themselves coming around a bend and down a slippery hill, and faced with a bunch of parked fourbies. One fellow dropped the bike whilst trying to brake, and sustained what looked to be a reasonably heavy concussion, as well as a busted up hand and ribs. The tour group had a dual-cab Navara with them to carry all the camping supplies, so they bandaged him up as best they could, and loaded him into the ute and headed towards the hospital at Wujal. I imagine that, despite only being half-way through the first day of what was probably a tour to the Cape, his holiday would be over.

Once the river was clear, the stopped trucks were able to make their way across, and the backlog cleared. One notable example was a group of young kids in a lifted Hilux with 32" muddies who were one of the last ones to arrive, after the van had been dragged out of the way. Hence they didn't have long to wait at all, and in fact they didn't leave their car or offer to help during the whole procedure. Since they had to wait 10 minutes for the other vehicles to clear the track on the other side, however, they were rather upset. They demonstrated this by launching into the water at full speed, and spinning all 4 wheels all the way across, generally tearing up the river bed that already had had a fair workout that afternoon. Leaving the creek the other side was a similar affair, all 4 wheels spinning whilst clawing for traction and tearing up the exit ramp. Real thoughtful guys, since we were still to cross in the standard Pathfinder. No gold star for them.

Anyway, once everything was sorted, we sent the Britz camper on it's way and continued home ourselves. We now have the German professor's business card, with clear instructions to ring whenever we're in Germany!

2008-06-21, Daintree - Stuck Campervan

Camping at Chillagoe

Monday, the 9th of June, was the Queen's birthday holiday. Seeing as it would be a crime to waste a long weekend, we packed the Pathfinder to the gills again, and headed off to Chillagoe with Trev and Kelli for the weekend.

Chillagoe is a small town about 2.5hrs west of Cairns. It was historically a bustling mining town, along a road known as The Wheelbarrow Way, so named because itinerant mining workers would load all their belongings into a wheelbarrow and walk from town to town, looking for work.



These days, whilst Chillagoe still serves as a "base town" for two large nearby mines, it's main attraction is the natural caves that can be found in the mountains nearby. The whole area is very rocky and dry, and reminds me a lot of the Granite Belt in South-East QLD. The caves are located in national park, and are closed to the public unless you go on one of the guided tours. After being down there, I can confirm that this is actually a really good policy. At any rate, the $15 guided tour fee isn't going to bankrupt anyone, and is great value considering the tour was over 2hrs long.

More on the caves later. First, some photos of Chillagoe to set the mood.


A House on the main street


Bouganvilla flowers were everywhere, even on barbed wire fences.


One of the two pubs


The old school house

We arrived in Chillagoe on Saturday morning. We had woke up early (despite wanting to sleep in on our long weekend) and had hit the road by 7am. The payoff was that we were one of the first to the (rather small) campsite, and were able to score one of the best spots. As more and more people trickled in through the day, the place filled up quickly and soon became quite crowded. If we had arrived later, we would have been stuck somewhere in the sun on rocky ground, instead of on plush grass under a big tree. Saturday afternoon was spent walking around through the town, and generally just relaxing.

Balancing Rock
Sunday morning we set off to do some exploring by ourselves in the Mazda (the Pathfinder was holding up our camp!). First stop was Balancing Rock, which is pretty much everything you'd expect it to be. It's a 5 min walk from the carpark, and the path is quite easy and well maintained. You gain a bit of height, and the view from the top is lovely, and gives a great feel of the countryside that you're in.













Aboriginal Art
Near Balancing Rock is an old aboriginal art site that you can visit, so we went for a look.









I can't say I'm much of a connoisseur of aboriginal art, but it was interesting none the less.

Old State Smelter
From there, we went to have a look at the ruins of the old state smelter. Back in the mining days Chillagoe was the site of a state-funded and run smelter, since it was close to the mines as well as being on a natural river. Unfortunately, the smelter was never really that good. The ore that it got wasn't the best quality, but the smelter itself never really worked right, and produced fairly low quality metal output. It was plagued by accidents and mishaps - explosions that killed 30 people at a time, as well as the exposure to high levels of asbestos fibres and hot lead vapours, as well as other miscellaneous dangerous substances. It was eventually closed and sold for scrap. What remains now is a rather spooky reminder of the town's heritage.





















It was quite sobering to see the remains of the smelter - specifically the large brick chimneys. Such workmanship - the chimneys themselves were all hand built, of course, and are lovely to look at. Yet at the same time, it's quite saddening to think that all the work that went into building the site, and all the people who lost their lives or their health, came to basically nothing. It's not as if you could take any consolation that smelter was even any good during it's heyday. At least the chimneys are still standing strong as a testament to the work that went into the place.

Swimming hole and weir
From the smelter we headed back around to the river, and down to check out the swimming hole and the weir. The river, same as in most small rural towns, is really the lifeblood of Chillagoe. It's the main water supply for the town, as well as it's recreation - swimming, fishing, etc. The river itself is lovely, and you could easily spend a couple of hours on a summers afternoon down there without a worry in a world.



















Caves
After grabbing a quick bite of lunch, we headed out the badly-corrugated dirt road into the national park, to the caves site for our tour.



We all congregated under the picnic area near the carpark, and Ranger Bob arrived to take us on the tour. After getting a small safety talk, we all picked up our miner's lights (complete with backup bulb in the light - the real deal!), and headed in to the caves.



The cave we were exploring is called the Royal Arch. We stopped on the way there, as Bob pointed out the outline of Queen Victoria. You can see her in profile in the centre of the picture below:



Bob went to great pains to explain to everyone that once we were inside, if anyone became claustrophobic or otherwise started to feel unwell, to let him know immediately, and he would bring them back out to the surface. With everyone ready to go, we headed down into the cave. Bob unlocked the gate, let us all in, and locked the gate again behind us.



The cave is really well set out, with concrete boardwalks throughout, such that damage to the cave floor and walls is limited as much as possible.







As we progressed down through the caves, Bob would stop and explain the various items of interest to us. He was very knowledgable (as you'd expect), but also very willing to chat and answer any questions. We made sure that we were up the front so as to be able to pick his brain when we saw something interesting. In the photo below, Bob explained that the black line is the "high water mark" in the cave - during the wet season the ground water table rises, and floods the caves (not runoff from the rain). You can see how high it's risen from these tide marks in the caves.






Iron oxide staining





After a while of walking through the deep underground cave system, we came out into a section with a collapsed roof.









Heading back in, we had to first squeeze through what's called Weight Watchers Passage. Needless to say, I didn't have much worries, but some people were a bit concerned!







At one point, everyone congregated in a large cavern section deep underground. Bob told us the story of three local fellows in the 1960's, who came out to explore the caves one day. They bought carbide lights, and, of course, hadn't let anyone know what they were doing. After a couple of hours, their carbide lights gave out, and they were lost deep in the caves. After three days of crawling around in the pitch black, they managed to chance upon the collapsed section that we had just come from. One fellow finally managed to climb up the sharp cave walls (cutting his hands and feet badly in the process) where a fig tree root had grown down. He then walked the 15kms into town and raised the alarm. All were rescued, and apart from a few days in hospital, they all recovered.

To hear it, it's quite an amazing story, but it's not really that riviting. Untill Bob asked us all to turn off our lamps. Once everyone had extinguished their lights, there was complete and utter darkness. Holding your hand against your face, and you couldn't even see your fingers. It wasn't just dark, there was a complete lack of light. Even after a couple of minutes, once your eyes had had a chance to adjust, you were still effectively blind. It was very, very unsettling, yet we all knew that we had the lights with us ready to turn back on, and were standing on concrete walkways should we need to crawl out. These fellows had no such comforts, and had to crawl out over sharp rocks, without knowing whether they were heading out, or simply going deeper into the caves. After a couple of minutes, we turned our lights back on and let out sighs of relief - a far cry for the 3 days and nights that these men spent down there.



We continued a bit deeper into the cave system, and then turned around and made our way back out to the surface. All in all, it was a wonderful experience, and well worth the $15 entrance fee.

Tommy Prior
Tommy Prior is an old fellow (probably late 70's, early 80's) who runs the fuel depot in town - something he's done for the past however-many years. His house/fuel station / depot is about 5 mins from town, near the airport. Beside his house is a long collection of wall-less sheds. Under the sheds is a variety of lovely old fords that he's collected over the many years. And he's more than happy to talk you ears off for as long as you wish to stay around.





















Trev was drawn to an old Ford Jeep that Tommy had sitting in front. Trev's brother, Graham, has a Willy's that he's restoring, so Trev was keen to have a crawl over this one, since it was in beautiful condition. Specifically he was looking at the steering linkages, which were giving him a headache. It was very different on Tommy's jeep, but Tommy explained that when the jeeps were converted to RHD (as Graham's had been, and Tommy's hadn't been), the steering was re-worked. Apparently it made sense to Trev, who came away with a head full of ideas.

Tommy jumped in the jeep and fished around under the carpet mats to find the key. After telling us that it hadn't been started in a couple of weeks, he gave the accelerator a couple of pumps, twisted the key, and she fired straight up. No smoke, no mucking about, no fuss. All the cars are in good running order, all of them will start and drive no worries at all. Quite a feat, considering it's just himself that maintains them.









We finally managed to get away from Tommy after a couple of hours, by distracting him with some locals who'd been waiting to pay for their fuel for about 15 mins while he explained to us all the technical details of the '42 Blitz truck (Which I've now decided is basically the coolest thing this side of a UniMog, and desperately want one). He's a lovely bloke, but don't ever call in if you've only got 15 mins to spare!

Sunday evening we sat around the camp, and cooked a roast in the camp oven in the communal fire. A few rums later, and it was time to call it a night. We spent Monday morning relaxing around the camp, before packing up around 11 and heading home. We made Mareeba by just after 1pm, and had a quick bit of lunch. An hour and a bit later, and we were home to the task of unpacking the car, washing clothes, and re-packing camping supplies.

All in all a great weekend - the weather was spectacular this time round, and the whole weekend was much better than I'd expected. The variety of things to see in what is such a small town was amazing, and I'm glad we went. I'd easily go back again to tour another couple of the caves at some later date. Highly recommended.

More photos availbe in the PicasaWeb Gallery here :

2008-06-09, Camping at Chillagoe