Our plan was to drive from Cooktown to Cape York and back again along the Peninsula Development road stopping at various roadhouses along the way.

The first day we aimed to get to Mary Valley Station where we'd read you could camp, plus there was a flying fox bat colony which came out at night.

We set off just after 10am from Cooktown, the journey began well as the first part was tarmac! We stopped for lunch just south of a small place called Laura at a site called Split Rock which had various Aborginal paintings dating back around 14,000 years. There were some interesting drawings of men and women, and animals local to the area such as flying foxes.

The development road varied from stretches of a white sandy base to sandy red and then baked hard red with periods of tarmac in-between. We'd pass the odd car and most people would be polite and wave. Along the way we saw large grey coloured termite mounds dotted on the road side, some of which were as tall as me. We stopped to take a closer look, Richard tapped one and it had a hollow sound which I didn't expect.

By around 3:30pm we were looking out for Mary Valley Station to park up for the night. Stations are like farms in the UK but much larger! Due to poor signage we initially missed the station so had to go back on ourselves only to find it closed. A little disappointed at missing out on the flying foxes we pushed on as we knew there was a roadhouse at Musgrove. Close to our destination Richard spotted an object in the middle of the road about 20 meters ahead. I slowed down and there in front of our eyes was a kangaroo looking straight at us. As we approached it bounced across the road and into the bushes. I jumped out the car and managed to get a picture of it before it bounced away further from sight.

We arrived at Mussgrove roadhouse about 4:30pm. It consisted of a shop, restaurant, petrol station and campsite. There were cows just wandering around the fuel pumps, and to the side of the roadhouse was a grassed area with more cows which was apparently an air strip. We set up our little tent (which we can now erect in less than 5 minutes) and had a well deserved beer celebrating the fact we didn't have any mishaps and more importantly our first kangaroo spot!

The next morning we set off just after 9am hoping to get to at least Archer River Roadhouse. The journey got off to a pretty dismal start as the road was heavily corrugated and when there weren't corrugations there were large rocks. Not wanting to puncture the tyres I drove really slow - down to 20km an hour in places. The scenery was similar for most of the way and it wasn't much fun being bounced around in the car for miles on end. We filled up with petrol at Coen and continued on for about another 50km before deciding we didn't fancy another couple of days of the same and then having to do it all again on the way back. So we abandoned our trip to go all the way to Cape York; we'd seen enough of what we wanted and were keen to press on with the rest of our trip around Australia.

We turned round and headed back to Musgrove roadhouse. Guess who we bumped into? Ronny the retired policeman and his wife who we'd met in Cooktown! We had to chuckle when they told us they'd got a puncture the previous day just 5km after getting on the gravel road. There we were with one good tyre between four and beginners luck on our side. I think they were quite pleased we hadn't made it to the top, that would have dampened their spirits a little.

We woke up bright and early the next day as we had a long drive ahead of us to get back to Cairns. I was a little more experimental with the car and tried going faster over the corrugations like others had advised. The car travelled a lot more smoothly once you got up to about 60km an hour, although the faster you went the less control you felt.

Although this road wasn't as fun and interesting as the Bloomfield track, I feel like we learned a lot about four wheel driving over the last few days and have definitely found out we need new tyres. Bring on the Gibb River Road.

Katy