Maytown Mayhem

Last thing Friday night, Robert dragged tent and mattresses onto the roof of the 4wd to secure them for an early start on Saturday morning for a two hours' drive to the turnoff onto the unsealed road into the Palmer Goldfields, a region deep in the bush with a colourful history.

Palmer River was the scene of one of the largest Aussie goldrushes in 1873 when William Hann and Norman Taylor found gold in the bed of the river. Soon a thriving settlement known as Maytown, with a population of 9000, looked after the miners' needs for picks, shovels, liquor, women and song; and expanded to prompt establishment of Cooktown and Cairns as access points. Large numbers of Chinese also worked the diggings and there were confrontations with Aborigines contesting the invasion.

After lots of dryish creek crossings on the road snaking sharply up and down across lovely views of eucalyptus bushland, we passed beautiful lily-covered lagoons and arrived at the Palmer River.

We picked our riverside spot and shared it with lots of birdlife including Apostle birds in garrulous flocks squabbling in a good-natured way.

Dotted around us were Aussies with their dirtbikes and quadbikes, camping out with kids, enjoying the dust and thrills of switchback off-road driving. As the sun went down we were lucky to see two large Sarus cranes (Brolgas) glide overhead.

Towards the end of the day, a storm threatened. Black clouds appeared over the horizon, in stark constrast with the soft evening golden light. To our amazement, a double-rainbow formed over the nearby creek.

This was also our chance to set up our new dome tent which has lovely big screened windows to look out at the stars at night whilst listening in the early morning first to dingoes howling, then a bush curlew wailing; and at first light a wonderful dawn chorus.

Our neighbours included a mob of cattle, dark brown bison-looking bulls that kept roaring in the night - one would roar at one end of the valley whilst the other paced around our tent answering with bellowing and snuffling. In addition to this kerfuffle, Gen was snoring remarkably similarly to the bulls, so I feared she might attract the bull to our tent. The second night we made a bull bar-ricade with tables and chairs and that seemed to do the trick except the bulls gifted us some cowpats.

Next day, dawn treated us with a spectacular mackerel sky.

We drove up the track towards Maytown, once the thriving gold-diggers' capital of Far North Queensland. Feeling adventurous, we took a sidetrack to Queen Mill, but stopped short at a massive eroded gully right down the middle of the road.

We reversed and took Dog-Leg Creek to the Maytown ruins standing on a bluff above the Palmer River where there were some graves, fragments of paved road, an old baker's oven, and plaques indicating where the shops and hotels used to be.

It was strange to stand there and be aware of the passage of time: no-one left, just the occasional 4wd mob or dirtbikers, adrenaline-loving Aussies out for fun, kicking up dust.

We ventured further to the well preserved Louise battery that was once used to crush stone to extract the gold.

There we met a young Aussie who knew the region because his grandparents lived nearby in the bush. Tipping back his hat, he recounted tales of Aborigines ambushing Chinese goldminers; and said there were still a few local miners hitting good paydirt - the country was still thick with gold under the surface but the price had dropped making it unprofitable to extract.

On the road home, we had fun using our Gopro to video rutted tracks, river crossings and gravel road clips in this wonderfully scenic part of Far North Queensland.