When we left Archer River I had my first real go at driving the track. I drove 123km to the Moreton Telegraph Station before I handed the car back to David who has been doing pretty much all the driving since we left Cooktown. The road hasn't been too bad to this point. So much more bitumen than we expected, sometimes wide and open, other times quite narrow. One thing there has not been a lack of is dust. The car is filthy. We will wait and clean it once we get back down.

David drove to Bramwell Junction which is where the Old Telegraph Line (OTL) goes north and the bypass road heads off to the east. We headed on the bypass road, although it is longer in kilometres it takes a lot less time.

These roads intersect at Fruit Bat Falls, which is worth a look out, and to get to our desired campground at Eliot/Twin Falls we had to go 7km along the OTL. The first part of this was pretty hairy with washouts, dips and a couple of creek crossings. We made it through OK but I said to David there was no way I would be able to do that for a long distance!

Eliot/Twin Falls was a lovely spot. I did not realise initially that it was a safe swimming spot so David had a very quick dip the first day but a much longer one the next. I'm a bit of a scaredy cat when it comes to Crocs so had only a very quick dip the second day.

David took off for a ride on his motorbike on Thursday. It was supposed to be a 45km loop on both the Old Telegraph Line and the bypass road. He was gone about an hour or more than I thought it would take him and it turns out on his second creek crossing he thought he'd drowned his bike. Later he was told the cold water had likely caused the bike to stall. He thought the water was only about foot deep when he tried to cross but water is so clear it only appears shallow. He could not get it started so had to drag it out and pull it apart trying to work out what was wrong. Fortunately someone eventually came along who sprayed some CRC on it which got it going. He most probably only needed to give it some choke after it first stopped and it would have restarted. He stopped in at Fruit Bat Falls on the way back and ran into our motorbike group from Archer River. All was going well on their ride.

When he arrived back at the campsite I was much relieved. It seems out UHF radios did not work to well and both were calling each other but neither of us heard the other.

When we woke up this morning to head off our car battery was dead - not sure why. Fortunately, there were other campers and we got a jump start and in no time were on the road.

Kylie