Tales From The Trax: Laura to Weipa

We arrived in Weipa a couple of days ago. A lot of dust to get here, but really worth the trip. Weipa is a mining town. Bauxite is the stuff dug up. Which looks like mountains of red dust.

There is not a lot to see, you can drive around and see the sites in 10 minutes. But Weipa does have a good Woolworths and 3 fuel stations.

Weipa is the largest town on the Gulf of Carpentaria It has population of justuner 4000; the largest community on Cape York Peninsula.

The camp ground is on the coast with large shady trees to park under. As it is so late in the season the camp is only about half full. A lot of campers are workers from the mines. There appears to be a fair bit of casual work available. Even the tip is looking for a truck driver for a few weeks.

I booked in to do a fishing charter with the local Tackle World shop, run by a lo0vely family. They take a maximum of 4 out for a full day. I was the only one to put my name down so they unfortunately had to cancel.

They are really slowing down now, as most people are heading south, as the weather heats up – 35 degrees every day and down to high 20’s at night. The humidity is running just over 50% and rising, absolutely perfect!

Tomorrow we are heading off and will try to leave reasonably early to beat the heat during “pack up”. We will head for Bramwell Station, then the next day to Loyalty Beach right nest the top of the Cape.

We are thinking of doing a trip over to Thursday Island, and do a tour of the WW2 relics. It is meant to be very interesting, as well as a beautiful place.

The car and van have been behaving extremely well, with a few stretches of corrugations. It all comes down to tyre pressure and speed on these roads. There are plenty of DH’s up here, and you can see why they have a roll-over every few days during the busy season.

On the way up we stopped at a quarantine station, one of the staff said it has quietened right down with only about 190 cars a day going through, and mostly heading south. During the holidays and the high season, they are lined up for kilometres. You can take anything up the cape, but on the way back, unless you have a receipt it gets confiscated and chucked out. They are pretty serious about letting diseases enter Queensland’s fruit growing area.

See yas