BADLY BOGGED in Cape York swamp country with 7T of 4WD & van - was the barra fishing worth it?

Cape York. It's a destination on the dream list of every four-wheel driver in Australia. But there's a whole side to this place that few people ever discover. Check this out. This is the top view we've ever had on Off Grid. We're trying to get from the very, very east coast right the way through the guts of Cape York to the west coast. We're taking you to a part of the Cape we have always wanted to show you but have never been able to because it's always closed when we're up here. That's not a stick. Yes, very crocky bit of water. Hang about. I have spoken too soon. Doesn't help when there's that right there. No one for hundreds of kilometres. Last time you saw us, we were pushing north into the Cape via a back route that kept us entirely off the PDR. After reaching the Lion's Den and making that our base for a few days, we've mapped a route that'll take us along Battle Camp Road to Old Laura before pushing west through Station Country until we reach the western side of the Cape. The big overall picture for us at the moment, of course, is to head from the east coast where we actually touched the ocean with our tyres all the way across to the west coast where we are going to make a complete east-west crossing of the Cape. If memory serves me correct, there is a beautiful little swing holder down here on the left. Park her up. Let's go and have a look. Warm water. I need warm water. I think I should move to somewhere on the... We are in the tropics. Why? Why? Why is the water so cold in the tropics? In the comments down below. It's hot up here for 11 and a half months of the year. You could boil an egg on the bottom. Don't you touch me. Why are old blokes so soft these days? Back in my day, old blokes were tough. God damn it! He's in there. He's just in there. I'll tell you what. This little gem is Isabella Falls. It's just a stone's throw off Endeavour Battle Camp Road. With fresh flowing water for most of the year, it's the perfect place to pull up for a swim. And with a little careful footing, you can even get right behind the waterfall and soak in a completely different perspective. After a quick freshen up and the vans unhitched, it's time to head for the coast. You might be asking us why we're on the beach in Cape York. Typically, you'd think red dirt and the PDR. However, we're starting this adventure off on one of my favourite Cape York beach runs, which is on the eastern side of the Cape. Why is that important? Because we're on a cross Cape beach run and all going to plan, we're going to do the same thing on the western side of the Cape. Oh mate, I am loving this already. This is so cool. Is this your first Cape York beach drive? It is. We've only ever been as far as the Daintree before, so we are well and truly as north as we have ever been. And this is so spectacular. Pretty cool, mate. Pretty darn cool. Where the rainforest meets the sea, hey? Ellum Beach is home to the coloured sands, a stretch of coastline that boasts some of the most spectacular sand dunes you'll see. However, as is the case with most beach runs, you've got to make sure you pick the tides. Absolutely sensational. One of the prettier beaches in Australia, to be fair. Stark reminder though, regardless of how pretty it is, got to watch your step, got to get your tides right. I reckon what's gone wrong here is vehicles either broken down or got bogged and they haven't watched what the tide's doing or didn't know what the tide was doing. Didn't give themselves enough time, maybe. Who knows what's gone wrong here? But that vehicle, of course, has succumbed to some weathering due to saltwater invasion. It just shows you've really got to be on your A-game up here. You know, don't be complacent. These places are beautiful, but if that happened to your pride and joy, you'd be absolutely gutted, wouldn't you? This area of the Cape is full of adventure, with plenty to see and do. And just over the next headland is a lookout that we've got to check out. Now, we're trying to get to the other side, Cape Bedford at the moment. You basically cross over from south to north and north to south, depending on which way you're going, which is pretty cool. Drive up down the beach to get to where you're going. Cannot recommend it more highly. Oh my goodness, this drive is absolutely stunning. Really is, it really is. And if you have a look straight ahead, you'll see a track going up onto the headland to a viewpoint. Nice, that looks awesome. This is literally what, like, picture-perfect paradise looks like to me. Oh, look at the islands to the right as well. Stunning part of the world. Look at that. Man, window down, suck in a bit of that sea air. Oh my lordy mama. Gorgeous. Cape York, she goes all right. Avoganda hard right behind you. Oh my gosh, no matter which way you look at it, it's bloody stunning. And the views just keep getting better and better. It's always nice when you're climbing up a remarkably steep section of track like this, knowing there's a bit of a view at the top. What's the view going to be like? She's a lot steeper than you think at the top. Oh my gosh, what? Can you see that? No, I can't see a thing. Sorry, but oh my god. I think this has to be in my top three most breathtaking views that we have come across on Off Grid. Not just because I'm walking up a very steep hill, but check this out. Absolutely amazing. Let's climb up the top here. It's Cape Bedford. This little sort of thumb that comes out. We're just saying as we come up here, or actually Steph was saying as we come up here, we've seen a lot of views on Off Grid. I mean, more than the average person is allowed to see in a lifetime. We've overclocked ourselves. Steph was saying she reckons this could be the top view we've ever had on Off Grid. And I wanted to argue it. I wanted to say no, 100% not. Remember, but when we went to, this is it. This is the top view we've ever had on Off Grid. We're here, we're doing it right now. The best view we've ever had on Off Grid, Cape Bedford, Cape York. She's pretty special. Before we know it, the morning has flown by and we need to get a move on. Folks, if you're ever up in the Cooktown region, make sure you get out to Alum Beach for a look. There's even the perfect spot to camp right amongst the coastline. For us though, we're hooking the vans up and jumping back on the track. Well, now we've got the vans back in tow and we are heading towards, roughly speaking, Laura. Well, I've had the big 62 for what, two and a half, three years now. And that sound, that big V8 roar just does not get old. Confession, I should be running my throttle controller at something a bit more sensible for a man of my vintage, you know, like factory or economy or I don't know, maybe ultimate one, ultimate two, if I'm feeling a bit frivolous. But hey, I run it continually on ultimate seven. The primary reason I keep it on ultimate seven, two reasons. One, that's one reason. The second, I'd run it on ultimate nine the whole time, but I reckon if I run it on ultimate seven, I'm just that little bit more grown up, a little bit more mature. But when you can do this all the time, I ain't mature. I'm just a big kid. Oi, light's getting low. Camp down here by the old homestead, you keen? She's been a pretty big day getting from the coast out to the bush. It has been, actually. I pushed a bit harder than I thought I would today, just by virtue of the fact that we made some time. So I thought let's capitalise while we can, because who knows, tomorrow we might find ourselves half a day on a barramundi river. Perfect, mate. Now, I hear you're on cooking duties tonight. I say this a lot, but tonight, it's one thing I know you'll froth on and one you'll both be like, what the heck? You have our interest, my friend. With camp for the night nestled right alongside the Laura River, we're wasting no time in getting the van set up and settling in for a crackin' Cape York evening. Well, I'm not gonna lie, all this touring, plumb tuckers have bloke out. Had a big day today from that stretch of coast, Ellen Beach, Cape Bedford, coloured sands. And I reckon on its day, the headland out there, the fishing off that would be A-grade. Then of course, all the way back through here, stunning drive into camp tonight. Harley's got a bit of a fire thing, a bit of a pyro. He likes to get things lit up. So I might get him on fire duties. I'm gonna put myself on beer duties. I'm an expert. Steph's a little bit hangry. She's been getting a little bit, she's been driving all day today. So she's a bit hangry. So she's just having a couple of chippies at the moment and keeping a bit quiet. So we'll let her go with that. But look at this campsite, folks. The whole place is ours. So I might put a bit of music on. We might go a little bit of country. I'll add a little bit of Western in. We might go to volume eight because there's no one else around. That's enough for me. I'm gonna sit down, enjoy a brewski. She's a simple meal. Called into a butcher in Cairns that was recommended to me and they make their own sausages. They had 11 different flavours of sausage. So I got one of each. The next part of this ensemble, something I don't know has ever been shown on a four wheel drive 24 seven show in history. A bag of lentils. We've got some onions, some peppers right here. Little bit of mushroom. You know why you don't put too many of those. That's right. Because you won't have mushroom for anything else. First step here. I'm gonna brown off me sausages. Just so you get that, you know that, that lovely crust on the outside, but it's raw on the inside. That outside crust just gives you that umami, that lovely taste sensation that you need before you start boiling your snaggers. Cause we all know what they look like. Cold water. You've been in a swimming pool for a long time. You'll understand what I'm talking about. Add the lentils, bit of red wine in there. Give that 45 minutes with the stock just to absorb everything. Let the sausages cook. This is the epitome of a sausage fest. I'm gonna call the kids in and we'll see what they think. What do you think of that? Look, I was picturing the sausage would be pre-chopped, but like, that's just me. No, here, come here. Have another one. Two? That's a lot of snag. Now wait, Harley. That's got you written all over it, hasn't it? Thank you, sir. Blow it. Yeah, it's hot. Oh, yeah. That's great. You've done very well there. I'm wrapped about that. I've just burnt the roof of my mouth, but delicious. Let's go and eat our sausage, sit by the fire and talk about tomorrow. Oh, that's so hot. So hot. Delish. Thank you, guys. Cape York camping, not a soul in sight and the sounds of a new day. Well, it's the simple things in life, isn't it? Toast, bit of Vegemite, bit of cheese on top just for that added, woo-hoo! First thing in the morning gets you going. I was just thinking about making me toast in there using the inverter with a toaster. After having had a stinking hot shower last night, I've got a toilet in there, big old bed. You can camp off-grid and be extremely comfortable. Of course you can, but you're still camping. There's a big difference between living off-grid and camping off-grid. Out here, you are literally living. You could stay out here and do this for as long as you wanted with all the luxuries and all the conveniences of home. That's where the Mavericks, that's where these things shine. The ability to take what you need and place it in a bush setting such that you can just live out here. You've got lithium batteries, you've got solar panels, you've got 12 volt. What I'm getting at is, if you're going to be towing and living out of these things, they have got to have all the necessities to be truly off-grid. These things tick every box as far as I'm concerned. The plan for today is to try and push into a campsite that hasn't been accessed this season and right next to a fishing hole that hasn't been touched either. Between us and it though, is over 250 clicks of corrugated dirt roads with the last 30 being swampy marshland. We're not even sure if it's doable but we're not ones to shy away from a challenge. It's currently mid-June, probably the peak season up here in the Cape, June, July. That's when the PDR, the old bypass road, the tally track, she'll be chock-blocked with people. There'll be vans, there'll be cars, there'll be trucks, there'll be dogs, there'll be horses, there'll be camels, there'll be absolutely everything heading up and down the Cape at the moment. One of the reasons why we did choose this route of course, this east-west route, is to break that mould, you know, to break the chain to the north-south in the last five days, I reckon we've probably had a dozen oncoming vehicles. You probably get a dozen oncoming vehicles in 30 minutes. I'm with PDR right now. But if you've done the tally before and you're coming up the Cape for a second time, third time, fourth time, maybe try something a bit different. This east-west route offers so much, minus the crowds. Not too far from Camp Marks, one spot that we've been wanting to visit since planning this route. Come on in. There you go. The remains of the old Laura Homestead, 1880s. Back in the day, you could say. It's great to see that they're preserving these structures out here and keeping them alive so you can wander through and get a bit of a taste of, you know, what it would have been like back in the 1800s. Now, I read a bit of an excerpt from a diary. The Grogan brothers owned this place out here in 1882. One of the wives, I read a diary excerpt from her. There's a lot she had to say, as you can imagine, living out here. The one thing that got me, struck me was, every wet season, or just after every wet season, they had to go into the homestead and they had to shovel out silt and mud between knee and waist deep in the bottom part of the homestead. Now the river, the river would be 300 metres that way and we are significantly higher than the river right now. The wet seasons up here just defy description. I can't wrap my head around them. It would have been a different time. Imagine coming home from school and you've got to dig mud out of your kitchen before you can grab a Mars bar. Doesn't happen these days, did back then. Great to see these old places still standing. Just thinking to myself, about 15 years ago, I did a Simpson Desert trip in Shorty. Now, I don't remember what shock absorbers I had in it at the time, but I do remember that I had my very first experience ever on that trip was shock fade. Basically, shock fade is when you're hitting corrugations so much, so often, so long during the day, your shocks heat up, they can't do their job properly and effectively they lose the ability to rebound and compress and so they do absolutely nothing. Especially when you're doing the PDR all the way to the top or you've done the tele track to the top and you're now doing the PDR back down, you know, you're spending, you're spending your sort of eight hours a day doing 60 to 80 k's an hour on corrugated roads and that's where pedders have never let us down when it comes to shock fade. They just have the ability to handle these corrugations because they've been made for Aussie conditions, of course. Heats up a quality set of shocks and relax on these roads and just enjoy them for what they are. This is a mate's massive cattle station and he's asked us to check out a campsite down the back of his property that could potentially be opened up for future campers. We've now traded dirt roads for skinny station tracks as we begin the 30 kilometre push into this campsite. It's not long until it starts to get challenging. Hectic little crossing, this one. You just have no idea. I mean, it is the crossing. I don't know whether it's going to be soft as heck. Ah, feels pretty good. I think I'll hang around here a bit. Should be soft. Certainly a little bit softer coming up through here than I thought it was going to be. You can see there's leaf litter through here. It's all sort of rotted underneath the sand. Sometimes you just don't know. You can sail up them or you can spend the next seven days. There's a big washout here that I don't want to just fly over but I really need to give it some berries as we go through this scary sandy river crossing. Jeepers creepers. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. Keep it going, keep it going, keep it going. Beautiful. I'm glad the caravan's attached to the back of the vehicle with strong metal. Did say hit it with all the right foot but Jesus, my girl's got a bit of gall about her. Pushing into these remote campsites can prove challenging especially if they haven't been driven recently. Bit of swampy ground on my left here. Hard as a rock where I am. Swampy on either side. Kind of weird. Hang about, hang about. I have spoken too soon. Too darn soon. Second low and go, go, go. Yep, thank goodness for the swamp, the hard bit in the middle because I tell you what, I think I would have been better off trying to crawl through there. Now you can see right here, I've drifted just offline, two foot to the right and I'd have been perfectly okay. Let's have a look at what's going on. I'm glad he went first and not me. It still doesn't really help the fact that you've still got to get through it. Yeah. Just see the water now just filling these buddy, it's tire marks. Doesn't help when there's that right there. Well I've had a bit of whoopsie here as I said on the in car, kind of had swampy areas on both sides of me. What I probably should have tried to do was just crawl through there and let the big 35s do the work but instead I succumbed to V8 pressure and decided to plant the right boot which has spun me off into this soft stuff. I've just popped out and had a look, a bit of a tree up here in front of me so I might just winch off that. Better be some good barramundi at the end of this. Meter, meter 20 maybe. That'd be good. T-bones are out just in case. With a game plan together, hopefully this is a quick recovery. The old rumba's hooked up. It's gonna be quite a pull for the big girl, I'll tell you what. Yep, here we go. You can see just how sloppy the mud is and the tree line isn't the best location. It's pulling me further away from hard ground. Bit more drive. With a huge winch, we're back under our own steam. Glad about that. You think you're not gonna need a winch on my caravanning trip but it just goes to show the number of times we've actually pulled the winch out, the rumbas have come out more times than I ever thought they would. Cheap insurance in my humble opinion. Big 13 XP up the front because I've got the van and the weight of the car. We've gone the upgraded model, the big boy. You just don't think you're gonna get the rumba out very often on a caravanning trip and then you know what happens. Yep, that's exactly right. He's done it. And now it's my turn. What do you guys, how are we feeling up there? I'm feeling quietly confident. I know what I need to do. I reckon I'll just walk it in, you know? Copy that. The good news is camp's like 50 metres behind me so you don't have to get too far. Let's give it a crack, hey? I really just want to do this in one hit so I can hold it over you. Now the issue Stephanie will have here is the Y62 took the top layer off meaning she'll have her work cut out. It's a bold line. That's a real bold line. Very bold line. Oh yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep. Keep it going, keep it going. One smooth motion. Keep going. Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop, don't stop. No, that'll do you. We're just going to stop, step there because I reckon it's going to be a long winch but she's in a good spot to winch. By that what I mean is we might even be able to get her to winch back up onto this hard stuff and she'll just drive out. If she keeps going, I reckon she's going to fall further into this side over here. Might make it real tricky. That's good. Righto. You're moving. We should get you here by Tuesday next week, I reckon. Beautiful. Oh yeah, I can feel it. Yeah, you can feel it popping her up now. So just keep staying like that. That's good. You're coming up on the dry stuff. You've almost got the vehicle out, which is good. That's it. How you going, darl? You're all over it. That tree couldn't have been in a better spot for her and a worse spot for me. But that said, what would have been really bad is that we had no trees at all and I reckon that's very popular out here. To be on the other side of the swampy marsh is a bloody good feeling. You can see just how quickly it can turn from dry track into a boggy mess. Middle of Cape York. No one for probably hundreds of kilometres, let's be fair. The old station, that's it. And these billabongs all to ourselves. Look at that. That is next level. Oh my God, I live for this. This is exactly what I live for. Now, if there's a barramundi or a Saratoga in there, that would make my day. Absolutely make my day. How stunning is this little stretch of river? Super crocky. So I'm staying way back from the banks. I'm up high here. But Steph and Harley have yet to catch a barramundi on lure. Caught them on bait, yet to get one on lure. Steph's hooked one, didn't get it in. So fingers crossed, flick a few lures, stand under a pandanus, life is good. Oh, he's on. First go, he's on. Yes, Orch. Little barra? Yep. Get it. Oh, well done. First cast, baby. Nice one, darl. Mate, that's awesome. There we have it. FNQ barra. That's my first barra in Queensland. That is first cast. It's on Gary's lure, so we won't tell him too much. But geez, I'm wrapping that. Bye-bye. Off he goes. He lives another day. He's gone and done me around a log, I think. No, he hasn't. Oh, gee whiz, he scared the heck out of me. That's a nice little fish. Beautiful little barramundi. Look at that. Quick story before I put him back. Came through here in 2000s, early 2000s. Bright eyed and bushy tailed. And it was right around here somewhere, I caught my very, very, very first barramundi. Super cool. Let's get this little fella back, shall we? I'm not going to go anywhere near the water. He's going to be a surprise release. Oh, perfect release. Yes, there's a couple of leaves from that floating through here. There's a stick just behind it. That's not a stick. It's a little baby croc. That's tiny. Yep. For all of you who have studied the birds and the bees, where there's a baby croc, there's a mama croc. Yes, very crocky bit of water. With a couple of fish landed and time getting away, we spotted mama croc from the drone just down from where we were fishing. And while we were standing well away from the bank, it's a sobering reminder to be croc safe when in the top end. We found out later in the trip that this was the exact stretch of river where a local was taken a few years back. Well, that was a sick little session. Couple of barramundi, always good fun. Good dirty fun, that is. Now, showing you this stuff before, I reckon it is the absolute bee's knees. Ocean Outback Body Wash. It's from Byron Bay Healthy Co. I use it from head to toe. I've got it, obviously, in the Y62. I've got a bunch of it in the GU, in the caravan. Now, you could actually use this. I could have used this down by the river because you can use it in salt fresh. You can use it in hard water. You can use it in whatever you like. But we saw the biggest croc down there I've seen in a long time. It would have been about 12 foot long. So I wasn't about to go down the river to wash my hands. I thought I'd wait till I get back up to the car. Folks, do yourself a favour. Grab yourself some of this stuff. Ocean Outback Body Wash. Like I say, you can use it all over, in any water. Even makes you catch more barramundi. I should give some to Steph, actually. To reach this camp is a huge milestone on its own. I can think of worse places to be watching the sun go down with a cold beer in hand. We wake to another cracking morning and what a day we have ahead. With the goal of completing an east to west crossing of the Cape, we're edging ever so closer to ticking that off. With a bit of luck, we're hoping to get right out to the coastline today. Just popped the drone up this morning. Just have a bit of a look around. I'm crazy how foggy it was out there this morning. The entire area we're in was shrouded in fog. And what's also crazy is just how much technology has shifted. I never would have ever, in my wildest dreams, have thought that a drone would be, for us anyway, an essential piece of kit out here. Not only do we use it to get all the epic shots that you see out there, but we also use it as a bit of a tool out here to find the way a lot of the times. We lose the track, you know, especially when we're doing this sort of thing where you're pushing into spots like this. Stick a drone in the air and it's incredible how defined a track or a way through a bushy section can be. Good tip. When it comes to using drones, let me just put that down for a second. Grab yourself a pack of these when you are grabbing your drone. These things here are called ND filters. That stands for neutral density. The basics of it are they are just a very dark filter in varying shades of darkness. We pretty much always run our drone from the hours of eight till five in the afternoon with an ND filter on. Never comes off. Cuts down the amount of light going into the drone. It just gives you a really vivid picture. It just makes all of your drone shots absolutely pop. If you get the Fly More kit with the Mavix, you get the ND filters in that kit as well. We get all of our stuff from George's cameras. So when you order online at George's, just tick the box for the Fly More kit. Actually makes a lot of sense because you get a few other extras with it. Included in that is, of course, the ND filters. Now, not often that I'm allowed to fly the drone, but occasionally I get given the control. I'm gonna launch this bad boy once more and make the most of it. Well, yesterday was a pretty big day for the team getting in here to this amazing campsite. And we are not finished yet because we've got quite a few more kilometres to travel today. So we thought we would cook up a bit of a brekkie for the crew so that we can start the day right, you know. With brekkie into us, we're wasting no time on getting camp packed up and back underway. Well, what an absolutely magic little spot. That's magic as well. Now, today we are pushing west, about as far west as we can possibly get. Well, we're about 10 seconds out of camp and we started feeling the car go like, something like that. That's the technical term for it, I think you'll find. Yep. And I was looking under the car for like 10 minutes to see what the problem was and hardly spotted it in five seconds. Turns out we've got a bit of a puncture. She no good. I reckon it would have just happened. Anyway, luckily we've got a spare, so we'll just get the jack up and... Change him over. Well, got it done. Spare's on there. It's always a bit of a funny situation when you've only got one spare in the middle of nowhere. That's it, we're out of chances now. The next one's got to be fixed. As we navigate our way out, we need to cover similar ground to yesterday and judging by some of the crossings we had to do, I reckon we got our work cut out. Speaking of which... Yep, I think I've seen the problem. Look at that, that's incredible. Little buggy boy. Just a nice easy run out, they said. It'll be fun, they said. Oh no. She's beached us, bro. With the van still in the riverbed, the drawbar is acting as a big sand anchor. A quick winch and we'll be through. My hero. Shoveling out the track for me just to make it a little bit easier. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go! Oh, that'll do. That bank's just too steep to get the vans up. That's why you bring a winch. That's why we've got the rumbers on the front of the four-wheel drives for this very reason. She's done pretty well there. Went straight up, I think she'll drive out from here. Cape York. She always delivers. So good to be back out on the west coast. Jabiru on the side of the track. Saris cranes. Saw a couple of snakes as well this morning. A couple of big pythons, just, you know, going to hibernate for the day, been out hunting for the night. Such a wild place. Just a part of the Cape. So very, very few people get to see it. Well, there you go. There you go, folks. West coast. From east to west and a bit of white sand under your tyres to go with it. Oh, there's nothing better than that, mate. We've certainly done it the off-grid way, haven't we? So traditional, north-south, south-north, how we want to do it. But to go east-west, not too many tackle that. I think you'll agree, it's a really good option for the Cape. Mate, it's been an absolute awesome trip and one that people should definitely look into. Don't worry about just punching straight up the PDR. Yeah, it's time to go a little east to west. How can we pull up and have a celebration? West coast, we've done it. Absolutely freaking love this place. Cape York, east to west, a real viable alternative if you've got the time up your belt rather than just straight up north of the tally track. Spend a bit of time south of Cowan and check out what this southern section of Cape York has to offer, because trust me, from Cape Bedford all the way across to Pomparoa, heck, even head down towards Kowanyama. It's stunning and no one comes out here, folks. You'll have the whole place to yourselves. Now, mama didn't raise no quitter. We are going to the tip. That's in the weeks to follow. For now, I think we might spend a day or two in Pomparoa. We've got the beach to ourselves. Go and flick a line. Why not? You would too. I'll catch you folks next time when we head towards the top end of Cape York. Off-grid style.