The Tip, Cape York

By Karina.

I guess we all had our own ideas about what the actual tip of Australian might look like:

Ahvie pictured grassy hills leading down to a croc-infested sandy beach;
Jonah pictured a rocky point leading off to nothing but deep ocean as far as you could see;
I expected it to be barren and windswept with tufts of spinifex, mangroves right up to the tip, with an opening just wide enough for the famous “you are standing at the most northerly point of Australia” sign.
Neil, the know-it-all, had seen enough footage of the tip to know exactly what to expect. He was even prepared to see the island, hanging just beyond the tip, so close you felt like you could swim there. So he didn’t get the shock that we got,  realising we hadn’t really made it to the very edge of beyond.

It turns out the sign actually reads “You are standing at the northernmost point of the Australian continent”, and, as I understand it, the Island is Albany Island or Pabaju, part of the Torres Strait Islands and part of the territory of the Djagaraga or Gudang people.

What none of us expected though, was to drive through a tunnel of rainforest to get to the tip- with rich green foliage,  lacing it’s way over a rich red earth. That was a beautiful unexpected delight for all of us.

In the end we visited The Tip twice. The first time we went as a group with The Friends. We walked the 20 minutes or so from the car park to the tip with all the other groups. We waited patiently for our turn to stand next to the sign and take our photos (you can see us sitting in a row on the right hand side of the photo below), and we placed our share of rocks on the various rock stacks across the plateu, and then we walked back.

It was maybe less triumphant than we expected – especially that whole thing about the other island, being right just there!. So when Neil announced he wanted us to go again the next morning the other 3 of us weren’t super impressed about the idea. He wanted to go back at the crack of dawn, before the wind picked up, before the tour buses arrived, and get some aerial footage. We groaned a bit but obligated. We woke early, packed a breakfast heavier than clever, and drove through the rainforest again in the early morning. I loved that section, all over again, so randomly unexpectedly lush and vibrant. We parked, Neil high-tailed it to the marker, and we three trudged over the top, lugging breakfast and our discontent. The wind had gotten up before us but Neil got the footage anyway. And of course we are super happy to have it. All kudos to him to make us walk the extra mile – to not only experience breakfast at the tip of the continent but to have a permanent record of the effort.

 

The Friends arrived to join us, and we just managed to make some funny photos before the tour buses swamped in.

Bucket list = Ticked. Twice.