Cairns to Port Douglas 4WD Road Trip - Britz

Six nights and 2,200 kilometres in a loop from Cairns in a 4WD camper, north beyond Cooktown into Cape York country and back.

Mount Molloy, Lakeland and Helenvale come first, then Cooktown, where Cook beached the Endeavour for repairs in 1770, and Hope Vale, an Aboriginal community inland of Elim Beach, where coloured sands stand in bands along the shore.

Lakefield National Park follows, now Rinyirru, a vast wetland system of rivers and lagoons with a very large crocodile population, then Cape Melville, where the hills are made of granite boulders stacked into a jumble that supports species found nowhere else and was effectively unexplored until recently. Port Stewart and Silver Plains Station come next on the east coast, then Laura, with the Quinkan rock art galleries nearby, among the most significant in the world, and Port Douglas before Cairns.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. This is the most remote itinerary in the Queensland range, with corrugated roads, river crossings and crocodiles in most of the water. Seven days for 2,200 kilometres of that surface is brisk. The tracks are dry season only, roughly May to October, and permits are needed for parts of the Aboriginal land the route crosses. The Quinkan art at Laura is reason enough on its own: tens of thousands of years of painting across several hundred sites, with guided access through the local rangers.