O U T B A C K
S T O R Y
TIP TOP
York Island sits just off
the northernmost point
of mainland Australia.
Some 15,000 people live in the Cape York region, at the
northernmost point of mainland Australia. Rising rivers can isolate
them from the rest of Australia for months at a time, but they don’t mind a bit.
STORY + PHOTOS KEN EASTWOOD
O U T B A C K
Y
ou could almost think
it’s compulsory to have
a broken arm if you’re
a bloke on Wolverton
Station. Here, on one
of the northernmost cattle stations in
Australia, 600 kilometres drive northeast of Cairns, 13-year-old Kaden
Jackson, one arm in a sling after
breaking it playing footy, is using his
good arm to work a steel gate as his family drafts micky
bulls from young heifers in the dusty yards. Like most
of the cattle on Cape York Peninsula, this mob are a mix
of white Brahman and red cape scrub cattle, and they’re
not being particularly cooperative.
Kaden’s big brother, Will, has taken his bandage off.
Will broke his arm at the elbow in a bingle on a fourwheeler a few weeks ago, but there was too much work
to do, so he ignored the pain for a while, finally getting
it looked at two days ago. Right now he needs to work
the crush and help brand, castrate and dehorn the
S T O R Y
mickies, so he’s removed his bandage and is once again
ignoring the pain to get the job done.
Their uncle Neville, who also lives on the property
with his family, is frustrated. Neville’s arm was smashed
near the wrist after a bull slammed him into a tree and he
has just had major surgery, with wires and a metal plate
inserted. Neville knows he can’t risk any more injuries to
it until it heals, so he mopes in the house, looking after
his youngest, one-year-old Trixie-Belle, and wishing he
was out among the tough cattle work. “It’s the busiest
time of year for us, and I can’t do a thing – we’ve got
work, grader work, cow mustering…”
It isn’t the first time Neville’s been out of action for a
while. Thirteen years ago he was caught on the grader in
a ferocious bushfire, copping third-degree burns to about
half his body. During his long recovery over the wet
season he was nursed back to health by a young English
backpacker. That backpacker, Emma, is now his wife. A
former fitness instructor and psychologist, Emma admits
she was a bit dazzled when she’d first met Neville. She
was working in the nearby Archer River Roadhouse,
which the family owned, and got to know Neville and his
brother Kevin. “They’d go out the back of the property
chasing bulls and they’d come back filthy,” she says.
“When you’re a 24-year-old backpacker and you’ve never
seen anything like this, it’s pretty cool.”
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Emma Jackson holds baby Trixie-Belle in the open-sided gunyah, while two of her other children,
Jess and Ryan ‘Jacko’ look on; Nita Jackson drafting in the yards; Kevin Jackson astride palomino Zumba; relaxing in the
outdoor bar built for Emma’s 30th, clockwise from front left, Kaden, Lucy, Will, ringer Haydn Shaw, Emma, Neville, Ryan,
Trixie-Belle, Nita, Kevin and Debbie Jackson; Will with Haydn beside the crush.
38
O U T B A C K
New Guinea
S T O R Y
S ai b a i I s la n d
Ba
To r re s S t ra i t
sa
Pun
NATIONAL PARK
Weipa
Lockhart River
Watson River
Wolverton
Aurukun
A rc h e r R
Quarantine Station
Coen
C O RAL
S EA
CAPE
EV
Artemis
.R
D
GR
EA
YORK
AD
Laura
T
Gulf o
f Car
p
enta
ria
Alba
Bay
t ro s s
UL
Cooktown
VI
PENINSULA
DI
DI
N
G
R
A
N
E
G
Cattle have been part of this landscape since the 1860s
and vast cattle stations such as Wolverton make up more
than 40% of the Cape’s area. But until about 10 years ago
there was considerably more grazing land. “In the past
5–10 years about 32,000 square kilometres of grazing
land has been given back to traditional owners and at the
same time national parks have increased to about 19,000
sq. km, so about 40% of the Cape has been taken out
of grazing production,” says Bob Frazer, CEO of Cape
York Natural Resource Management. “People really are
concerned about the future of the grazing industry.”
The cattle industry up here has always struggled
though. The native savannah grasses – black spear, giant
spear and kangaroo – don’t provide much in the way of
nutrition, so stocking rates are as low as one head per 50
hectares. Wolverton carries about 3000 head across its
750sq km and a neighbouring property that the Jacksons
lease of about the same size. Mustering and transport
costs – including getting the cattle to their closest live
market at Mareeba, 12 hours drive away, or abattoirs at
Townsville or Rockhampton – mean farmers work hard
to make a profit. In a good year, cattle generates about
4% of the region’s gross domestic profit (GDP).
Most properties, like Wolverton, supplement their
INS
these birds swirling around. The cyclones really affected the
cows though – their calving rate changed. It took 2–3 years
for the cattle to come back to their normal cycle.”
Fifty metres from the back of the gunyah is the
homestead where Kevin, his wife Debbie and their
children live. When Debbie and Kevin got married in
1984 they moved to an outstation on the property, more
than an hour’s rough drive away. “Kevin worked away a
lot and I had three kids with learning challenges,” Debbie
says. “I would often go for a month before seeing another
adult, so I really loved the wet season because he would be
home and we were all together.”
About two-thirds of the long, triangular stretch of the
peninsula, with its Cape York finger that points toward
Torres Strait and New Guinea, is covered in tropical
savannah, where rogue scrub bulls and wild horses roam
among Darwin stringybark, Cooktown ironwoods, fresh
cycad shoots and termite mounds. The region also has
pockets of rainforest and hoop pine, swamps, mangroves,
giant sand dunes, rivers with crocodiles, and rough roads
with corrugations that make you feel you’re riding a
bucking bronco. The long, sinewy spine of the Great
Dividing Range peters out here, among the gentle slopes
of Jardine River National Park.
nd
York Islasland
Roko Island
Eborac I
Seisia
Cape York (the Tip)
Umagico
New Mapoon
Injinoo
Bamaga
Jardine River Ferry
Telegraph Rd
Twin Falls
JARDINE RIVER NATIONAL PARK
Eliot Falls
Captain Billy Landing
Fruit Bat Falls
Heathlands Ranger Station
S h e l b u rn e B a y
Mapoon W
e n l o c Bramwell
KUTINI-PAYAMU (IRON RANGE)
kR
PEN
Now with four kids of her own and having become an
integral part of life on Wolverton, Emma has been infused
with a toughness and resilience that comes from living on
the Cape. Through the dusty dry, the windy seasons and
the deluge of the December–March wet (when 80 percent
of almost 2 metres of rain falls), she home-schools her
nephew Kaden and three of her own children (for which
she did a teaching degree), serves as the primary industries
director for Cape York Natural Resource Management,
finds time to run the occasional marathon, is studying
agricultural science, and looks after the books and a lot of
the paperwork for the station. Her home, which relied on
a wood-fired water heater until earlier this year, is an opensided gunyah hand-built by Neville and Kevin’s father Bill,
and featured in John Williamson’s song ‘Granny’s little
gunyah’. In cyclones and wet seasons, rain flies in at all
angles. “As long as my computer and paperwork are safe,
everything else can just dry,” Emma says.
Emma has clear memories of cyclones Monica and
Ingrid. “It was a bit of an experience,” she says, having easily
adopted that classic understated Aussie manner, albeit with
a Manchester accent. “I lay on the bed and held onto Ryan
– he was quite young then. The birds were all stuck in the
eye of the cyclone, so when it went quiet you could see all
y
nd
POSSESSION ISLAND
NATIONAL PARK
QUEENSLAND
0
50 km
Cairns
Mareeba
O U T B A C K
S T O R Y
Shift supervisor Julie Stainkey keeps watch over operations at the Rio Tinto bauxite mine near Weipa.
cattle income with off-farm work, such as doing grading
or excavation work for the national parks, public roads
or Aboriginal land. Some, such as Bramwell Station,
have branched into tourism. On Wolverton, one or more
members of the family will occasionally go and work
elsewhere for a while. “No-one in the cattle industry up
here is too rich, but I don’t think anyone would change the
lifestyle,” Neville says. “There are not too many people here
and we love it. It’s very peaceful and we’re our own boss.”
Debbie concurs. “People ask, ‘Where would you go if you
sold?’ and I can’t think of anywhere else I’ve rather be.”
T
he Cape York region takes up about 140,000
sq. km of far north Queensland. It has some
15,000 residents spread over two major towns
(Cooktown and Weipa), three small towns and
12 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. In
terms of land use, it is dominated by the cattle industry,
conservation (national parks, Aboriginal lands and private
conservation areas) and tourism.
The region’s economic powerhouse is mining. Centred
on Rio Tinto’s mines around Weipa, on the west of the
peninsula, it employs 1100 people – about 12% of the
Cape’s workforce – and generates more than half of the
region’s gross product. Mining here, on a lease of about
3000sq km, looks very different to mining elsewhere in
the country. One of the world’s richest bauxite deposits
lurks just under the surface, so ‘mining’ really just means
scraping away the red and black topsoil, then putting
the next couple of metres of soil into trucks and taking
it away. The topsoil is then put back and about 70% is
42
reseeded. Last year 26 million tonnes of bauxite were
shipped out of Weipa, mainly to Gladstone in northern
Queensland, where it was turned into more than 6
million tonnes of aluminium.
Shift supervisor Julie Stainkey has been working at the
Rio Tinto mine for the past 17 years and is in charge of
a crew of 30. Although most comfortable in her steelcapped work boots and reflective garb, in March she
donned evening wear to receive a Queensland Resources
Award as the state’s most outstanding tradeswoman/
operator/technician. “When I came back there was a tiara
and cape and wand waiting for me,” she says with a laugh.
Julie is used to the razzing that a woman can receive in
the tough environs of a mine site. When she started at the
mine she was one of only two women there. Undaunted,
she seized an opportunity to move from the easier sevenhour shift to a 12-hour shift, and straight into the most
desired job on site. “Everyone wants to be on the loader
– it’s very busy, and you’re using your hands and feet all
the time. But training was very different to what it is now
– you just had to be brave,” she says. “They’d play pranks
on you – ‘Look, here comes Mum, get your lunch out,’
those sort of comments.” Now 11 of Julie’s crew of 30 are
female, and almost a quarter of the mine’s personnel are
women. Julie says that there’s anecdotal evidence that the
female drivers don’t get bogged as much when the area
turns to slosh in the wet season. “I think women have
more of an ear if something changes in the engine,” she
says. “They think, ‘It sounds funny, I’d better report it’.”
Julie’s two sons also work at the mine, but neither is
on her shift. “Thankfully,” she says. Unlike many mines
O U T B A C K
in remote areas, Weipa is not a fly-in fly-out site. All
workers live in the town, or nearby, and the fact that people
are putting down roots is shown by the fact that 80% of
Weipa’s houses are privately owned. Rio Tinto owned
80% of them five years ago. “There are not many places in
Australia you can work in a mine and go home at night,”
Julie says. “Most people have got families up here. I’ve got a
guy on my team who’s been here for 30 years.”
Julie came to Weipa when she married at age 18 and
loves the Cape’s relaxed atmosphere. “It’s just easy – you
don’t have to worry about anything. It’s casual, and we
like camping and fishing.” She says that perhaps as a
result of friendships consolidated in wild wet seasons,
it’s a very friendly place. “The Cape people stick
together when there’s difficulty in the town – they never
let you down,” she says.
Brooke Barton, manager of the Weipa Caravan Park,
agrees. “We’re so remote that everyone bands together,”
she says. “Weipa will potentially raise more money for a
cause than half of Brisbane.”
Brooke grew up on Watson River Station and is excited
that tourist numbers are increasing as the Cape’s horrible
dirt roads are gradually being replaced by bitumen. Her
caravan park welcomed 15,000 visitors last year.
“It’s exciting for someone like me who’s grown up
S T O R Y
here,” she says. “When we used to go to the Laura Races
it would take us 12 hours in a truck. Even now it takes
five hours. But with a bitumen road it suddenly makes
everything more accessible.”
W
eipa is the Cape’s largest town,
with a population of about 3000
people. Cooktown has 2300. The
rest of the population is scattered
around communities such as Coen, Aurukun, Laura
and Lockhart River. About 60% of the people are
Indigenous, from a host of different tribes and clans,
including the islands of Torres Strait.
One of the region’s most unusual smattering of
settlements is near the very northern tip. Here five
separate communities – Bamaga, Seisia, Injinoo,
Umagico and New Mapoon – with a combined
population of about 2300, live within cooee of each
other. Until 2008 they all had separate councils and, by
all accounts, as little to do with each other as possible.
Injinoo was the first of the communities established
around the turn of the 20th century as a coming-together
of the remains of the five main Aboriginal groups in the
northern Cape. Next came Bamaga, established in the late
1940s and early 1950s when islanders from Saibai Island
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: The stunning swimming holes at Fruit Bat Falls in Jardine River National Park; Ken Owen of
Bribie Island, Qld, takes one of the supposedly “easy” options across Gunshot Creek; Cooktown entertainer Colin Fitz entertains the
appreciative crowd at Bramwell Station, which offers live music every night in season; bauxite being loaded onto a ship at Weipa.
44
O U T B A C K
had to be relocated because rising sea levels affected the water
table on their island. Some of those families then broke off
and established a community on the water at Seisia. Umagico
was originally established in 1963 for Aboriginal people
relocated from Lockhart River Mission, and was quickly
followed by the establishment of New Mapoon, for residents
forced out of Mapoon during mining operations.
The communities still have their own footy teams and
generally restrict their conflict to the field, but it’s no secret
that some people want to go back to a system of separate
councils. Even working out where a cultural centre should
be built creates ripples. Current mayor of the Northern
Area Peninsula Regional Council, Umagico resident
Bernard Charlie admits: “It’s been hard. It was a challenge
to make it all work. I supported the amalgamation because
it increased accountability and transparency in terms of
work ethics and economic growth.”
Three-hundred kilometres south of Bamaga, the 400
residents of the once-booming goldmining town of Coen
speak six different traditional languages. The local state
primary school changed its name in 2010 to become one
of the campuses of the Cape York Aboriginal Australian
Academy – a brainchild of Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson
– and adopted a radical teaching program from the United
S T O R Y
States of America called Direct Instruction. “It’s been around
a while, and it’s sort of that rote style of learning – the ‘I do,
we do, you do’ philosophy,” says principal of the 52-child
school, Glenn White. “It’s found to work well with kids with
English as a second language. Each day the kids are getting
taught 90% the same material, and only 10% new material.”
Glenn says the school’s results over the past few years
have shown the controversial program is working well.
“We’re above the national average for numeracy and then
in everything else we were above the national minimum.
Every year we’re gradually closing that gap. Last year we had
a kid in Year 3 who was in the top 2% of the state.” Glenn
says that this year the Coen school has had some of the best
attendance records in Queensland.
The children focus on a different aspect of character each
week, with old-fashioned words that still seem to fit the Cape:
grit, gratitude, curiosity, social intelligence, self-control, zest,
and optimism. Glenn says one other characteristic defines the
children and the people of the Cape.
“Their resilience,” he says. “There might be so many
barriers to their learning, but they turn up ready to learn with
wide eyes and big smiles. We do an extended school day –
8.30 to 4 o’clock – and we’re still pushing them out the door
at four because they want to learn.”
CAPE SNAPSHOT
40,000
BC
Indigenous occupation
The Cape area is believed to have been inhabited for at
least 40,000 years. The Quinkan art galleries, around
Laura, are estimated to be 15–30,000 years old.
8000
BC
Cut off
Rising seas when the last ice age finished 8–10,000
years ago separated Cape York from the islands of
Torres Strait and Papua New Guinea.
1606
First Europeans
In 1606, Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon, in the
Duyfken, landed near present-day Weipa.
1770
Captain James Cook
After striking a reef near present-day Cooktown in
1770 and then repairing his ship, James Cook, in the
Endeavour, sailed to Possession Island and claimed the
east coast of Australia for England.
1848
Land exploration
In 1848, Edmund Kennedy’s overland exploration from
present-day Cardwell results in his own death and that
of all but three of his party. The only one to make it to
the Tip was Kennedy’s heroic Aboriginal companion
Galmarra, known as Jackey Jackey.
1864
1872
Cattle arrive
A colony called Somerset was set up near the Tip in 1864.
Its first police magistrate, John Jardine, arranged for his
sons Frank and Alexander to drove a mob of 250 cattle
almost 2000km from Rockhampton to the new colony.
Gold rushes
After gold was discovered in the Palmer River in 1872,
there were rushes initially to the area south-west of
Cooktown, and then to another area around Coen.
1860s
Telegraph Track
The Overland Telegraph and the track needed to install
and maintain it, was completed in the 1860s.
1960s
Increased tourism
With the completion of the Peninsula Developmental Road
in the 1960s and the opening of the Jardine River Ferry in
the 1980s, the Cape became more accessible to tourists.
2005
Wild Rivers Act
In 2005, the Queensland Government brought in
controversial Wild Rivers legislation to protect the natural
values of river systems in Cape York, restricting what
activities could be undertaken. The legislation was
repealed in 2014.
O U T B A C K
S T O R Y
Former stockman and drover Herbert
Quinkan fashions a belt at the Coen men’s
group that meets at the quarantine station.
O
ne of the most important jobs on the Cape
is conducted 25km up the road from Coen,
at the Cape York Peninsula Pest Quarantine
Area. Because the top of the Cape is only
150km from Papua New Guinea, it is threatened by
insect-borne diseases and pests that could devastate
agriculture in the rest of Australia.
Stopping nearly all cars that travel south to check fruit
and vegetables, and animals such as dogs, the quarantine
station serves as both a monitoring point and a way to shut
down all movement of people and materials if something
particularly nasty is detected, such as screwworm fly, which
lays its eggs in animal wounds. “Screwworm fly is in New
Guinea, but not in Australia,” says Scotty Templeton,
manager of the quarantine station’s team of four. “It’s very
much full-blown in New Guinea. We check any open
wounds on pig dogs. We’re also watching for foot-andmouth disease, because that’s in Malaysia too.”
Searching up to 200 cars a day in the peak tourist
season of June–August, Scotty and his team are
particularly looking for evidence of the red-banded
caterpillar, which could devastate mango crops.
Scotty and his partner Sarah live at the quarantine
station and have done this job for 12 years. He was
originally from Tasmania, and moved up to the Cape
30 years ago. “I haven’t been back to Tassie since I left,”
he says. “Everything I like is in the tropics, and it’s too
bloody cold for me down there now.”
Nine years ago Scotty decided to contribute to the
wellbeing of some of the older men who lived in Coen.
He set up a men’s group that meets in a shed beside the
quarantine station every Wednesday afternoon, and the
fellas – nearly all old stockman and ringers who have
between them worked on every station in the Cape –
expertly make belts and bridles, woomeras and spears.
About a dozen blokes usually attend.
Herbert Quinkan, immaculately dressed in a bright
red shirt, jeans and broad-brimmed hat, is making a
new leather belt with sewn-in pockets for knives. A
proud Wik Mungkan man, he worked on Cape York
stations for much of his life and in particular remembers
droving mobs of cattle in wet seasons in the early 1960s
hundreds of kilometres to Mareeba. “The longest trip I
had was from Bramwell Station to Mareeba over about
eight weeks,” he says. “We left Bramwell Station just
after Christmas, and would swim the horses and cattle
across the rivers. We got across the Wenlock okay and
the Archer, but when we got down to Artemis [Station]
there it was all flooded. We had about 1000 head but we
lost some through the flood. You might lose 10 or so, but
there’s not much you can do.”
After delivering the cattle, the other drovers got a plane
back from Cairns. “I had to bring the horses back on my
own,” Herbert says. “Fifty or 60 horses.”
Like many of the men, Herbert smiles at the memories.
“In our day we enjoyed ourselves at mustering camp.
Chasing bulls, we loved that. We took it as great fun.”
He experienced the dangers of the job though – a bull
ran him down and put him in hospital for a year, and he
knows of another drover killed when the cattle rushed
one night. “It’s very dangerous,” he says.
Like his mate Uncle Peter – a Lama Lama elder
making a belt nearby – Herbert ceased droving on the
Cape once double-decker cattle trucks could make the
trip up the dodgy roads. “It’s an easy job today – you
just get a truck,” Peter says.
GOING HARD
Wearing a scarf over his mouth to keep out the suffocating bull dust,
Gwyllam Roberts, of Newcastle, NSW, cycled from Cairns to the Tip and
back over a month in August, averaging about 80km a day on the rough,
sandy tracks, with temperatures up to about 30 degrees. Not content
to stick to the mainstream or the main road, he took the treacherous
Tele Track, repeating a route he did 30 years ago. “Ah, that was fun, the
Tele Track,” he says. “I didn’t have to worry about water there.” Gwyllam
has previously cycled routes such as the Gunbarrel Highway, WA, and
the Birdsville Track, SA. Others have made trips up to the Tip pushing
wheelbarrows, and on postie bikes and historic tractors.
O U T B A C K
S T O R Y
Senior ranger Peter Dellow in the old slaughterhouse hidden in the scrub in Heathlands Regional Park.
T
he four-wheel-drive tracks – in particular the
infamous ‘Tele Track’ – are one of the main
reasons more than 30,000 tourists make the
trip up the Cape each year. Forged in the
1880s in order to put a telegraph line up the Cape, the
Telegraph Track was the only route for many years,
and is renowned for its difficult creek crossings, such
as Gunshot Creek and Nolans Brook, in which cars are
often drowned, impaled vertically or otherwise totalled.
“There’s a series of options you have at Gunshot and
none of them are really sensible,” says Peter Dellow,
ranger in charge of Jardine River National Park and
Heathlands Regional Park, which abuts the Tele Track.
“A lot of vehicles get drowned at Nolans Brook.”
Three years ago, Peter moved here with his four kids
and partner Ruth, and lives at Heathlands Ranger Station
with two other rangers, a mob of chooks, two dogs, two
pythons, an agile wallaby that’s blind in one eye, and a
terrarium with a changing menagerie of butterflies and
geckoes. The station is set amid one of the most unusual
landscapes on the Cape. “It’s one of the largest expanses
of heath anywhere in the country,” Peter says. “We’ve
got 3000sq km of heathland. It’s typically devoid of a
diversity of grasses. There’s no fertility in the ground.”
In the 1970s, the ranger station and its immediate
surrounds were part of a crop research project set up by
mining company Comalco and the CSIRO. “There were
agronomists, statisticians, meteorologists and a whole
bunch of people based here in the middle of nowhere
50
trying to work out how to grow good feed on sand,” Peter
says. “It’s like trying to grow grass on a beach.”
With an intention to export cattle and boxed beef to
Indonesia via aircraft, a large airstrip was built, cattle
yards and loading facilities were set up at Captain Billy
Landing on the east coast nearby, and a thick-walled
abattoir was built in the scrub. “This slaughterhouse
stands as a bit of a shrine as to how committed they were
to making it work,” Peter says, leaning against one of its
cool slab walls. “The efforts that these guys made to get
something up and running here were just incredible.”
But like many ventures on the Cape, the experiment
failed. The vast quantities of phosphorous, potassium,
boron and other minerals that had to be added to the soil
to grow pasture made it unviable.
Peter says the cleared, former pasture areas around what
is now the ranger station are maintained as a firebreak. He
and his two co-rangers conduct regular burns during the
dry season across the 3900sq km they manage, using fire to
reduce fuel loads in some areas and increase biodiversity in
others. As in most parts of Australia, smaller, less intense
burns are better than raging, out-of-control fires, and Peter
has set up a fire-management plan accordingly.
In recent years one of their most important conservation
jobs has been the monitoring and protection of vulnerable
green turtles along the east coast of Jardine River National
Park. Driving through the park, while magnificent
riflebirds and tiny red-legged pademelons scoot across the
track, Peter explains that green turtle nests are regularly
Bungie Helicopters pilot Ken Godfrey and Punsand Bay owner/manager Rod Colquhoun drop in for a f ish near giant sand dunes.
raided by some of the Cape’s estimated 1 million feral pigs.
“They’re not big numbers here in the park – last year we
shot just 60 pigs – but those 60 pigs are on the beach for
one reason, and that’s to find the turtle nests. You get one
solitary boar, and he’ll work one section of beach, a couple
of kilometres, and he’ll search it every night and get every
single nest.” As if on cue, a black boar pokes its nose out of
the scrub beside the vehicle and Peter reaches for his .308.
Because this coastline has rugged rocky laterite
headlands and crocodile-rich waters that lap at the base
of cliffs, it is almost impossible to monitor turtle nests
and check for pigs from the land. Instead, the Queensland
Parks and Wildlife Service has developed an innovative
program using aircraft – a program that this year won a
departmental excellence award for fostering innovation.
After aerially dropping in lines of kangaroo meat baits
laced with 1080 (“we refer to it as a chemical barrier”,
Peter says), a series of very high definition photos are
taken during regular flights over the beaches where the
turtles lay. “It’s such high resolution you can follow a pig
track right along the beach, right to a nest,” Peter says.
“You can see exactly what’s going on – can see whether
nests are being predated upon.” The aerial baiting
program can then be targeted to specific areas. “It allows
us to cover this country that you wouldn’t be able to
otherwise,” he says. The program so far has recorded an
extraordinary 86% reduction in predation of nests.
On the Cape’s opposite coast, the highly respected
Mapoon Aboriginal Land and Sea Rangers spend most
of August monitoring and protecting other species of
sea turtle – the highly endangered olive ridley and the
threatened flatback.
Pigs were also a problem on the west coast, with up to
90% of turtle eggs being eaten, but an extensive shooting
program in 2004 and 2005 took out 15,000 pigs, and in
the 10 years since then only two nests are known to have
been lost to pigs.
Dr Col Limpus, Chief Scientist of Threatened Species
for the Queensland Department of Environment and
Heritage Protection, has travelled here every year for the
past 15 years to monitor the turtles. He says the removal
of the pigs led to an increase in nest predation by dogs,
so then they worked on reducing dog numbers from
2006 to 2008. Then the nests were primarily predated
upon by goannas and humans.
Last year the 12 Mapoon Land and Sea Rangers
removed a dozen large goannas along the beach,
significantly helping the flatback turtles. “The modelling
we’ve done indicates that for every 10 clutches laid
you need at least seven producing hatchlings for a
sustainable population,” Col says. To protect the olive
ridley nests from being dug up by dogs and goannas, the
rangers cover them with a mesh that is wide enough to
allow the hatchlings to emerge.
Ranger Sarah Barkley says although they love the turtle
work – including zipping along a 24km stretch of beach
on quad bikes in the middle of the night – the rangers are
busy doing a host of other things the rest of the year on
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O U T B A C K
the 1830sq km of land they manage. As well as a burning
program in June and July, they remove huge, dangerous
ghost nets along stretches of beach, help quarantine,
collect and destroy foreign timbers, are involved in
seagrass, dugong and wetland monitoring, check water
quality and in the wet season eradicate weeds such as
Mossman burr, and sickle-pod, gamba and grader grasses.
They have extensive programs for destroying feral animals
such as pigs and horses, and last year won the Tangaroa
Blue Foundation’s Golden Thong award, for removing
7000 thongs from a 3km stretch of beach.
“I’ve been in other jobs before and I liked what I did,
but I didn’t love it,” Sarah says. “I always wanted to
connect back to country. The old people are gone and it
needs younger people like us to keep it going.”
In a community with few employment opportunities
apart from working for council, the ranger positions
are highly sought after and the rangers are expected to
become local role models. They help run a junior ranger
program in which 15 local children come out with them
for a couple of days, to learn to identify weeds or help
in other ways. “The kids are always happy when we’re
going on country,” Sarah says.
I
t’s no wonder the number of tourists coming to
the Cape each year now more than doubles the
resident population. As well as the wild, remote
and isolated feel of the place, where even Telstra
phone coverage is rare, it has some stunning locations. At
Captain Billy Landing, a kaleidoscope of colour greets
the traveller, with golden bouquets and green heath
on red laterite cliffs, creamy sands, tropical aqua and
greens merging through purple reefs to deep blues on
the horizon, and the sparkling white parabolic dunes –
98% silica – of Shelburne Bay. In Kutini-Payamu (Iron
S T O R Y
Range) National Park, keen birdwatchers lurk in darkened
pockets of rainforest looking for some of the sexiest birds
in the country: eclectus parrots, cassowaries, red-bellied
pittas, buff-breasted paradise-kingfishers and the highly
intelligent palm cockatoos. Many of the animal species
here are more commonly associated with Papua New
Guinea, such as tree kangaroos and spotted cuscus, and
60% of Australia’s butterfly species are found on the Cape.
World War II buffs travel through the region to find
old heavy bomber airstrips, such as near Lockhart River,
where 7000 American troops hid in the jungle, launching
attacks in the war in the Pacific.
The most popular national park camping area on the
Cape is Eliot Falls, which is one of a string of spectacular
swimmable cascades, including Fruit Bat and Twin falls.
But pretty much every tourist keeps heading north, across
the tiny Jardine River Ferry with its $100 return ticket, past
Seisia and Bamaga, and towards the most northerly point on
mainland Australia. Most stopover about 40 minutes short
of the Tip, at Queensland’s 2015 Telstra Business of the Year,
Punsand Bay. It has a large camping area, cabins, restaurant
and a bar on a gorgeous long stretch of beach with views
north to the Tip. The water is tantalisingly tempting, but
with regular sightings of big crocs, guests don’t usually swim.
“We occasionally swim here though,” owner and manager
Rod Colquhoun says. “In the wet season we swim all the
time – it’s crystal clear, and you can see everything.”
A former ringer on large Queensland stations such as
Julia Creek, Rod bought Punsand Bay with his wife Anne
three years ago after several trips up the Cape. “I always
liked remote places and the bay here, Punsand Bay, is one
of the most spectacular places I’ve ever been. And this
little set-up has a nice casual feel to it.”
They set about reinvigorating the place with a new
customer-service attitude, updating facilities and
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: Mapoon Land and Sea Ranger Jocelyn Leigh De Jersey documents an olive ridley that has just laid 110 eggs; Henriette Tchen Pan
and her son Jason on the Roko Island jetty; biosecurity officer Scotty Templeton monitors an insect trap that is laced with a pheromone to attract fruit fly.
O U T B A C K
S T O R Y
At the very northern tip of the Australian mainland, Rod Colquhoun takes a photo of Chip and Rose Meredith, of Melbourne.
installing a wood-fired pizza oven. (The most popular
pizza, the Holy Mack, features locally caught mackerel.)
He then let social media and word of mouth carry the
message. And it worked. In three years, the number of
guests has increased from about 12,000 a year to 22,000,
and every Sunday locals from the five communities drive
up the road for a drink or three at the Corrugations Bar.
Although it is possible to drive to Punsand Bay on the
corrugated Peninsula Developmental Road without ever
getting out of two-wheel-drive, Rod says more than half
of his guests have come the hard way up the Tele Track.
“In a typical year, there’s 70 write-offs and five divorces
on that track,” he says.
Punsand Bay offers day trips to Torres Strait islands
and rides with Bungie Helicopters, where guests get an
extraordinary aerial view of the Tip, mainland Australia
stretching south beyond it, and the islands beyond.
On one 0.8-hectare cluster of mangroves, flame trees
and coconuts called Roko Island, 20 minutes boat
ride from Punsand Bay, 34-year-old Jason Tchen Pan
and a handful of helpers are running a pearl farm and
tourist operation, carrying on a pearling tradition that’s
operated here since the late 19th century.
At various times of the year Jason dives into the water
to work on the oyster basket lines, and although there is
someone on watch on the boat, he often sees crocs swim
past. “There’s not much you can do if a croc wants to take
you,” Jason says nonchalantly.
Tahitian born, Jason moved to the island when his
family took over the pearling lease in 2001, and no longer
calls French Polynesia home. “Not anymore. I started
54
calling Australia my home,” he says proudly.
With great fishing out the front door, bold ideas for
how to grow tourism on the island, a magnificent view of
Possession Island – where Captain James Cook claimed
eastern Australia for Great Britain in 1770 – and a wet
season with no-one to bother him, Jason loves his Cape
lifestyle. “There’s nothing to be stressed about up here. It’s
remote for some, but for me it’s not that remote. We’ve got
internet, and a supermarket [in Seisia] 20 minutes away.”
T
he very tip of Cape York, the goal of so many,
isn’t much to look at. An awkward grey
rock platform juts out to the water, and the
blue water races past at 7 knots between the
mainland and the closest islands, York and Eborac, just a
terrifying swim away. Travellers patiently await their turn
for a photo with the sign that marks the mainland’s most
northerly point. “In the school holidays this year there
was a two-hour wait to get your photograph because
everyone wants their shot on their own,” Rod says.
Perhaps in a reflection of the wild, rule-breaking way
in which many travellers treat the Cape, Rod says the
sign had to be replaced after it was nicked by someone
with an angle grinder.
For many tourists the Cape signifies an adventure, or
something they’ve always wanted to cross off their bucket
list. But to the residents who live here it’s a home with
very few people, and fewer worries, where cattle and free
spirits roam in wild serenity, and where they can pretty
much smile at and ignore the rest of Australia, stretching
away timelessly to the south.