From Cooktown, on the York Peninsula, the corrugated red dirt road winds its way through bush towards Laura, an abandoned cattle station built in the 1880s at the entrance to Lakefield National Park.
The roadsides are dominated by termite mounds; larger cathedral mounds shaped as the name suggests and magnetic or tombstone mounds with sharp peaks that point directly north-south.
The sun sets in a red haze of dust and smoke at our camp site near the Musgrave Telegraph Station. The blue-winged kookaburras are quieter than their southern counterparts - although they still let us know when it's morning. They're followed by a thousand galahs, rose-breasted cockatoos, that make themselves at home in the trees nearby, waking anyone who had slept through the kookaburras' dawn chorus.
