Cape York - Weipa

Weipa. Now a visit to a mining town is probably not on everyone's agenda, but it suited us so we took the road across the Bauhinia Downs Station (and excellent road it was too) and called into the town.

We were expecting something a little bigger, but it offers most things (including "cheap" fuel at around $1.65 a litre) and is a very civilised stopover.

There is just the one place to camp so that's where we went. This was the sunset from the beach where we were camped.

Looking down the beach

I couldn't resist just one more picture of the sunset! We had sunsets like this every night - just glorious.

While we were there we took a tour of the mine. Lots of people recommend it, but apart from being awed by the sheer scale of the operation I wasn't that impressed.

This pic shows the smoke from the burning off work they do when they clear the land - we took this photo from the beach at our camp site. It is a lot worse than it looks on this!

On the mine tour we learned that they skim off the topsoil then they skim off the 3 to 4 metre layer of bauxite before slapping the topsoil back on with a heap of tree seedlings to make it pretty again. Then they move to the next spot.

The trucks are big though!

This was a mine site - the bauxite is gone and they are about to put the topsoil back.

I told you it was boring didn't I?

We headed south then, back to Cairns to get our Patrol fixed. I was running like a dog after the Steinbauer chip was fitted.

On the way we passed through a town named after out little girl!

It isn't a big place, but it was pretty enough,