The final day of the trip from Weipa to Port Douglas, via Piccaninny Plains, Oyala Thumotang National Park, Archer & Coen Rivers, Coen, Lakefield National Park, AWC’s Brooklyn Sanctuary and its luxurious mountain rainforests of this World Heritage Listed area. A false start.

Rained in

Our departure was delayed 2 hours due to rain. So as it cleared we refuelled at Weipa Airport in case we had to go around the weather. The weather was poor all day, but having 3 great days gives The Doc no cause for complaints.

Lots of surface water around as we fly out. Those green at mound you see below are Aboriginal meddins, or the shells from mussels the Aboriginal have eaten in the past – that is a lot of shells. The red ones are from the Weipa bauxite mine.

The Cattle Stations up here have a lot of surface water, in comparison to the East Coast which is having a “dry” wet season.

Piccaninny Plains to Brooklyn

We approach AWC’s property at Piccaninny Plains which The Doc wants to photograph in the wet season. The Doc’ Report from August 2014, covering the dry season, can be read here. As we cross the boundary we immediately notice an increase in bird life, plus the property has more water (Archer River and Piccaninny Creek) and swamps than the surrounding properties. A obvious difference, AWC chose the property well.

Further wet season photos of Piccaninny Plains click here.

We then fly across Oyala Thumotang National Park heading for Coen, which is the nearest town to Silver Plains Cattle Station mentioned on Day 1. We refueled at Coen Airport.

Next Lakefield National Park, which has to be said is HUGE. We flew over it for about 1.5 hours!

 

We were running low on Avgas so we needed to use the extra fuel in the jerry cans being carried in the helicopter pods. We landed at Pennyweight Outstation, located on AWC’s Brooklyn Sanctuary.

Brooklyn has the greatest variation in fauna of all the AWC sanctuaries, link.

Further wet season photos of Brooklyn Sanctuary click here.

The next day The Doc drove out to Brooklyn to meet Andrew and Megan. We ended up indexing AWC slides The Doc had scanned of Brooklyn.

Home straight

We flew over the Brooklyn Homestead and headed home. The Doc was feeling tired by now, looking through the viewfinder for 4 days was taking its toll.

 

The End

It was a spectacular trip, a way to see The Cape like few others have seen it. At least 80% of what The Doc saw cannot be seen any other way. Six months in a car would never have revealed the Cape in this way. The scale of what was seen over 4 days is hard to grasp. Not sure it has fully sunk in yet, a month after the trip. While the scenery was amazing, my highlight was the 14 foot croc and the metallic starling swarm.

God bless until next time. Packing now for a 4 month Kimberly Trip.