John & Lorna met us at our campsite at Chilli Beach then we all drove up to Portland Roads where we had a lovely lunch on a verandah overlooking the water and we think we saw a crocodile in the water (probably wasn’t). We then headed back to Archer River Roadhouse for the night and had the ‘famous’ Archer burger for dinner which wasn’t anything special.

Portland Road

Abandoned Mine Site

The next day we left the Archer River Roadhouse heading south through the Coen quarantine station down to Laura where we left John & Lorna for the night. A huge burger for lunch from the Laura Roadhouse then started the Old Coach Road. The first 32km through to the Jowalbinna Camp Ground were easy, the next 10km before we decided to stop to camp the night were a lot harder especially towing the camper. There was some creek crossings and rocky and steep hills to conquer. This was the most challenging track of the whole trip and was a LOT of fun but again, we completed it without any recoveries. We did lose the front locker though. We kept a lookout for somewhere to camp for a while and eventually settled on a reasonably flat area on some sandstone to set up camp and soon after a fellow traveler came along who was testing the track to see if it was suitable for his tag-a-long tours – it wasn’t – too hard! It was 38° today when we had lunch at Laura so the water in the camper didn’t need heating for a shower, it was already warm in the tank. The night however got quite cool which we were not prepared for.