1/8/13 – We packed up and had morning tea before hitting the road and leaving our home for the last few days. We liked Loyalty Beach and would stay here again. It is quiet, not crowded, well it wasn’t when we were there. Great views, can camp right on the beach all for $24 a night. Cost you a lot more for the same thing on the east coast. Only negative would be the amenities, could do with some more cleaning. Oh and they forget to tell you when you check into this little bit of paradise that there is a 4 1/2 m croc that wanders the park sometimes they are trying to catch. Gas was $8 per L, we will drop into Cooktown and refill our gas there.
Fuel at the ferry was $2.29 L for diesel and $2.40 L for unleaded.
Approx 27 km from the ferry is the turnoff to Vrilya Point, it’s not signposted. 4 km along the road you come to the log bridge. We found it to be reasonably strong and wider than the Cypress Creek one, bit of a steep descent up the hill. Road is very corrugated, sandy, rocky, rutted and slow.
We turned right at the beach to head up to the wreck of the lightship. We were cruising along ok when someone had stopped at the lightship and we had to go around above them right into soft sand and stopped. So we took some photos of the wreck, not much of it left now but interesting to see all the patterns in the rust and barnacles on the side.
We were stuck in the sand down to the axle. So out came the spade and MaxTrax. We got up the MaxTrax but got stuck again in the very soft sand. Chris let the tyres down even further and a couple of guys dug around the tyres and put the Max Tracks in place. Yippee we were out. Didn’t get any photos I was too busy videoing. The beach isn’t very wide and only a narrow path of firm sand and it’s on a slope. Hard for people to stop or move over for other people.
2km past the wreck is the camp ground. There were a few in there and we expect more to come later. Under the shade of the trees it wasn’t too bad but on the beach it was very hot and you can’t even go for a swim.
Bore for water.
Access road back to the beach.
It’s a popular spot, especially for fishing, but we both agreed we like the bush better so we had lunch and then decided we would go back out the track to the log bridge and camp there. We had the camp area at the bridge to ourselves; we made a loaf of bread and had a campfire, first one for the trip.
[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps?q=http:%2F%2Fgpx2kml.com%2Fpublic%2F2013%2F09%2F30%2Fbsrwoykp3_20130801LoyaltyBeachViryliaPoint.kml&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=-11.071951,142.277069&spn=0.646907,0.878906&z=10&output=embed&w=640&h=480]
Click on the link above for a larger version in Google Maps of the days travels.