For most Australians, myself included, the names Cape Melville, Iron Range, Lockhart River, Portland Roads, Somerset, the Lockerbie Scrub, Cape York and the Torres Strait Islands evoke almost mythical images of a far-away corner of our island continent that few ever visit. So when the opportunity came to see them, albeit mostly from the distance of a ship, I couldn’t resist.

We sailed north from the port city of Cairns under leaden wet-season skies but through sheltered waters inside the Great Barrier Reef which is 40 to 100 km offshore. Our ship, the MV Trinity Bay, is an 81-m cargo vessel that supplies remote communities on northern Cape York Peninsula and the Torres Strait Islands with almost everything: food, fuel, cars, boats, machinery, building materials … . The thousand-kilometres each-way journey along the north coast of Queensland takes 5 days, of which about a day is spent downloading cargo.

Many of the photos have a story with them, so you may find it worthwhile to view each individually.