Get lost with Russ and Margy: Kutini Payamu NP (Iron Range) Day 1

It took about 5 hours to get to Cooks Hut camp in Kutini Payamu NP. We crossed the famous and slightly feared Wenlock and Pascoe Rivers but found that numerous other smaller river crossings were much hairier especially one towards the end of our trip with an enormous washout/hole on the right. Fortunately Russ cleverly manoeuvred us clear of it first go – hope he can perform again on the way out!

Some river crossings were very picturesque and I couldn’t resist taking loads of photos. Part of the reason I was overcome with admiration is that we haven’t had many pretty creek crossings for a while.

Our other worry was that we hadn’t booked a campsite because we didn’t know if Chili Beach was going to be accessible or not and whether it would be too windy. Seeing so many people going into the NP made us worry that we weren’t going to get a campsite. We detoured 5km to book at the Ranger Station – a very slow internet process ensued and we ended up booking at both Cooks Hut and Rainforest – we booked cooks first then found out it was quite small and we mightn’t fit so we booked a larger one in rainforest. After a very slow 7km with loads of pot holes and very narrow bridges we got to rainforest and found that it was tiny and we couldn’t get in. We got to Cooks and it was plenty big enough, albeit dominated by a tour group.

After lunch we hit the pot holed road again for 27km to Chili Beach. Sadly the famously beautiful Chili Beach was covered in green slime that someone said was dead coral spawn – perhaps!! It smelt awful and was very off putting. It was low tide but you could see that without the slime and the smell and the rubbish washed up on the beach it would be stunning with the palms fringing the beach and the large smooth granite rocks in the ocean and around the islands dotted around.

We explored and Russ couldn’t work out how he could fish here. So we went to Portland Roads, just 10km away. Its such a pretty place with clean blue water, big smooth rocks around the coast, little tinnies tied up around the mangroves and several little houses on the land side of the road. We saw a sunbird flying around its nest that looked like a tangle of spider web in the bougainvillea. We went out in the tinny for an hour and caught 2 trevally which Russ said would be good enough to eat being as they have scales and silver skin (some trevally aren’t good to eat). They were delicious!

The famous Wenlock River Crossing