Day 15 – 21st June
Coen today. Ric and Gill are having hassles with their fridge and an overnight on 240 volt might just be the cure so we’re heading for the roadhouse and a powered site for them. We’ve been told that the free camp down by the river is lovely, but I must admit that camping on grass behind the pub with a clean toilet and lovely hot showers was a bigger draw card for me.

Day 16 – 22nd June
We’ve booked the Mango 1 campsite in Oyala Thumotang (pronounced oy-a-la toom-o-tongue) National Park for two nights. We’re lucky in that they’ve only just opened it this week after being closed for the wet season, however that’s made us a bit concerned about what state  the road would be in. We needn’t have worried – they  were grading and repairing it as we drove in and the majority of it was very good. A few sandy patches and muddy ‘dips’ benefited from 4WD. The road leading from the Roylen Rd into the park was two wheel tracks for about 12K, but still quite good.

Really lovely drive in to the National Park.

Here we started to see more termite mounds. There was one vividly white, very tall and narrow mound that was stunning and I regret not stopping to photograph it. The Archer and Coen Rivers form part of this park with the majority of the vegetation being dry open eucalypt woodlands and melaleuca swamps.
Mango Lagoon turned out to be not that nice – dirt and stubbly grass recovering from a recent burn off and the lagoon was pretty ordinary. We decided to take a look at Coen 2 campsite and it was lovely so we set up there for the night. It had steep sides down to the river with fallen trees giving it interest and we could see the water flowing – and we were on grass.

Set-up complete – just need to fill the chairs and the glasses.

This afternoon we walked to Chong Swamp, another campsite within Oyala NP which was very pretty – covered in water lilies. It would have been a lovely spot to camp too.

To see more photos from our trip today CLICK HERE.