Dirk and Joke doing the Half-lap: Day 18: Crystal Creek to Hull Heads (19/06/12)

After a refreshing but brisk night we woke to the sound of hard work! A crew of 4 rangers had come in and were cleaning the toilet block (with a leaf blower!!!). They came around to check on our permits and turned out to be a cheerful bunch of fellows. We asked them about the boulder slides and they said that these were a couple of kilometres up the road. So we unhitched the caravan and took the car up there. After another half kilometre walk we arrived at a place where the creek flowed from smooth rock to smooth rock. We had left our swimming stuff in the car, so we contented ourselves with just sitting there and taking it all in. Bewdiful!

Achtung! Rocks! Mind der abrasion unter der swimsuits!

Two enormous rocks pinch the river gorge at this point

Naiad (water nymph)

Beautiful flows

Dryad (tree nymph)

Note jaunty angle! :-)

Crystal creek crystal clear

We left Crystal Creek well after midday, set for another short journey. This time it was to another “free” or low-cost camp at the mouth of the Hull River, just south of Tully. We motored through Ingham and then stopped for a lateish lunch at Cardwell where we thought Cyclone Yasi made its landfall. We sat there by the water’s edge trying to imagine what it would have been like when the storm hit.

Cardwell beachfront with Hinchinbrook Island behind

Imagining the storm!

Then on to Hull Heads. TomTom was not up to the task, so navigator Joke did a superb job guiding us to the correct destination. We heard later that the road Selina tried to have us use, had not existed for the last 40 years..... The campsite is run by the local volunteer coastguard, a friendly bearded chap who told us stories about Yasi,(which hit the coast close by and not in Cardwell as we thought) explaining how high the storm surge had been (about caravan deep in the campsite). He also showed us a picture of our neighbour across the Hull River, a large crocodile lazing on a sandspit at the mouth of the river. Then he took $13 from us for the night. We didn’t mind: we had already found out that the advertised cold showers had magically sprouted a hot water supply – bonus!