“That bloody road will do you in, Mate…!!”

I rode the first 30 odd kilometres to the turnoff which would take me down the old coast road, in two minds… I could blitz the well surfaced Mulligan Highway back to Cairns, or take the much shorter and more challenging route through the bush to Cape Tribulation, and from there ride down to Mossman and on to Cairns beyond that…

I had been advised by dozens of people as far south as Tasmania, to stop in at the Lion’s Den pub when I got to Cooktown… It was something of an institution in the area, and people came from far and wide to either camp or stay there… It was tucked off the main road at a place called Helenvale, well off the main road and down a short stretch of dirt road…

I stopped at the Lions Den pub to refuel and check on local conditions...!! The locals were being entertained by the Hillbilly Goats, a country band and by midday, were well into their cups...!! I was all but dragged into the pub and made to have a beer... Had I known what I was in for, I would have had another couple while I was about it...!!

I made the decision to give the road with the bad reputation a go, at the very last minute… It was almost 120 km shorter than the route I had taken up from Cairns, and I thought by taking this shorter road through the rain-forest, I would save some time… After all, how bad could it be…?? I was sure if I road slowly and carefully, I would make through to the other side without too much hassle…

As it turned out, there was no chance of that though…!! By the time I reached Cairns, I was completely knackered and felt as though I had been riding all day…!! And, it had taken even longer than it would have if I had stayed on the highway…!!

One day when I'm big, I might grow a beard like this...!! Armed with local advice, I set forth to do battle with the Old Coast Road...

I was also running low on fuel, and had been told that they sold petrol at the Lion’s Den, so that was another good reason to drop in…!!

The evening before, the locals had a huge thrash there, and many of them were nursing hangovers when I arrived… Some muttered about having had no sleep at all, and sat about with their heads in their hands…!! The band that had played the night before had decided to stay on and have another session during lunch, and I was urged by many to hang around for the festivities…

I made my excuses while trying to find out more about the conditions of the road ahead of me…

A farmer who lived 10 km down the road said that there had been rain earlier that morning, and he couldn’t guarantee that there wasn’t more on the way…!!

“That bloody road will do you in, Mate, if you’re not careful, especially on the steeper sections where there is clay…!! But give it a go…!! You’ve come this far already…!!” he said eying all the stickers on my panniers…

I didn’t tell him that I had got this far precisely because I did not take too many chances with roads that “would do me in”…!!

"Yes, but to where exactly...??" Very helpful roadsigns such as this one had me wondering if I wasn't lost...!!

After the first 30 km, I thought I had it sorted... This sign made me wonder what more was in store for me...!!

The concrete causeway over the Bloomfield River, had been under water the previous week... My luck was holding out...!!

I set off in apprehensive mode, but after a few kilometres on a hard-packed gravel road, where all I had to do was dodge the odd pothole, I picked up the pace and rode at a steady 80 km/h, seeing no other cars on the road until I got to the small hamlet of Bloomfield…

I had ridden through the Cedar Bay National Park but apart from one small sign, I had no idea when I had entered it, or left it for that matter…

Bloomfield was just a few scattered houses tucked into the dank rain forest on either side of the road… “Deliverance country…!!”, I thought to myself…!! Better keep moving…!!

The stretch from Bloomfield to Wujal Wujal, an Aboriginal settlement close to the coast, wound through dense riverine and rain forest… It was narrow, very steep in places and corkscrewed it’s way around a series of mountain ranges… Hairpin bends reminded me of the ride through Flores Island in Indonesia, except this road was littered with “marbles” and leaf litter…

Some of the very steep sections had been concreted, but were as slippery as hell in the deep shadows thrown by the overhanging trees… I began seeing signs that read “Only 4 x 4 vehicles beyond this point”, and a few kilometres further on, slithered around a bend and came face to face with a fast flowing but shallow stream…

"Mmmm... This could get interesting...!!" First river crossing near Wujal Wujal... I walked across the creek, noting that there were large cannon-ball sized rocks waiting to "tell me a question"...!!

Made it...!! Now for a clean pair of shorts...!!

I sat the Big Fella on the bank for a few minutes, muttering words that rhymed with “duck”, and then hopped off the bike and walked across the stream to check how stable the bottom was…

The river was about 30 metres wide and about a foot deep in places… That did not bother me too much, but the large round stones on the bottom did…!!

I splashed back across the stream, grinned at the Big Fella and asked, “You ready for this…??”

“You mean we’re gonna cross this…?? I thought you had just brought me here to take a look…!! There’s a perfectly good road behind us, where we can go really fast…!! Why don’t we go that way instead…??”

“You know my motto, “Always Forward, Never Backward”…!!”

Ignoring his reply of “Motto, Shmotto…”, and “Hier kom kak…!!”, I slid back into the saddle, took a deep breath while wondering when last a vehicle went through there, and hoped that if I fell, one would be along shortly…!!

I put the bike in 2nd gear and we eased into the water, the little bow wave we created running over the engine pods and creating a cloud of steam as we surged forward… Halfway across, the front wheel slipped off a rock and dived into a deeper section that I had hoped to avoid… I lost my balance and had to come down off the pegs smart-like, and place both boots into the water to steady the bike and prevent us from falling over…

I kept the motor running and then walked the bike through, keeping the revs up until we got some forward momentum again, and then rode triumphantly up onto the far bank…!!

We rode on, through another series of steep, sharp-cornered bits, where a sign advised that the gradient was 40 degrees, which had me leaning as far over the tank as I could, to keep as much weight over the front wheel as possible…!! We crossed another smaller stream without even bothering to stop, and then came to another far wider one, that got my heart beating wildly again…!!

Imogen Creek was the third river crossing we had to make, ...and the longest...!! By the time I got started across, there was a busload of tourists filming us...!! I disappointed them all by making it across without mishap...!!

A few cars were pulled over on the far side, their drivers shaking their heads and showing me to go back the way I had come… I hopped off the bike, walked higher up the ban behind me to get a better look at the line I thought was best to follow, then got back on and as nonchalantly as I could, stood up on the pegs and rode straight through the river as if I did this every day of the week…!!

Huge sigh of relief and a thumbs up when I finally arrived at Cape Tribulation...!!

The fear of coming off in front of so many people must have had something to do with it…!! With steam rising off the engine, I parked, got off, and was immediately surrounded by a large group of backpackers who had clambered out of the bus… The way they went on, you would swear they had just witnessed an exhibition by Evil Knievel…!!

These two guys were from Norway, and congratulated me on reaching Nordkapp, when they saw the sticker on my pannier... That brought back memories...!!

From there, the road to Cape Tribulation was much muddier than the previous sections I had ridden through, and there was a moment when I felt the bike lose grip and begin to slide out from under me, but a quick twist of the throttle got us back into the vertical, and we powered through onto firmer ground…

I stopped for lunch at the little supermarket on the roadside, and spent much of the time between mouthfuls of a steak pie, answering questions by groups of people wanting to know where I had been, and what the condition of the road up to Cooktown was like…

Cape Tribulation was named by Captain Cook, in June 1770, just after he uttered the words,

“Good gracious…!! We seem to have run aground on this here reef…!!”

He took the Endevour back out into deeper water and finally found a safe anchorage a few days sailing to the north, at the mouth of the river where Cooktown was later founded…

It's narrow and winding all right, but a great ride on a responsive bike...!!

A number of backpacker hotels and bed & breakfasts attract an unusual mix of eco-tourists, who come to hike in the Daintree Forests, or lie on the beautiful beaches nearby, smoking pot and pretending that the world is a trouble-free place…!!

The road from Cape Tribulation to the banks of the Daintree River, is all surfaced, and follows a tight, twisting line through the thickly forested hills that run down to the seashore… Free of slow-moving traffic, it is a brilliant stretch to ride a bike on, but there are precious few places to overtake at…

I paid $5.00 to get the bike and I across the river on the small ferry that from the south, is the only access to Cape Tribulation.

From there we rode past Wonga Beach, and on to Miallo and stopped in Mossman, at the same service station I had visited the previous day…!! The owner came out to ask how the ride had gone, and was astounded to hear that I had come back down the old Coast Road…!!

“I just heard that the road was flooded and was going to be closed to all but 4 x 4’s later today…!! There’s more rain coming in the next day or two…!!”

I had made it through just in time it seems…!!

Ferry across the Daintree River...

From Mossman I tore off back along the Captain Cook Highway, that runs all along the ocean and into Cairns… Alan and Helen were waiting for me to arrive, and a short while later, we left to enjoy a BBQ at the home of their friends, Tim and Heather… Tim had traveled extensively through many parts of the world, including Central America, and we spent a good portion of the evening swapping stories about our travels…

Much later that evening, I lay awake reliving the ride I had made that day, happy and proud of both the Big Fella and I, for making it through what was a challenging day out on the road…

Even though we had covered barely 350 km, it felt as though we had ridden double that…!! Nothing like a long bit of off-road to get you to dreamland quickly…!!

©GBWT 2011