Mutee Head; great free camping at Cape York
Whilst staying at Alau Beach near the top of Cape York, we decided to head out for a day trip to Mutee Head, to see what it was like. We added in the Jardine River mouth (way downstream of the Jardine River Ferry) to see what it was like, and had a pretty good day out.
How do you get to Mutee Heads?
There’s two ways to get to Mutee Heads. The first, and least recommended is the pipeline track, which we followed most of the way until it came to a decent sized puddle. I idled through some of it, until the gasps of my wife were loud enough for me to stop and drive out again.
The easier way is to take the turn off just south of here, which is a windier road, but its gravel, reasonably wide and in good condition.
This takes you directly to Mutee Heads Campground, and then you can continue on further to get to the WW2 relics, or to get to the Jardine River Mouth.
What is Mutee Heads Campground like?
I really liked this place, and I said to Sarah if we did the Cape again, I’d probably stay here and at Somerset. It’s right on a beautiful beach, has decent toilets, and has plenty of room to camp. You can get larger caravans in here, and there’s enough shade to find somewhere nice to pull up.
Most of all, its completely free, which is always hugely appreciated in an expensive part of the world.
What else can you see?
We went to the WW2 radar, which is easy enough to get to along a rocky 4WD track. This thing is massive, and used a lot of power, with a heap of history behind it.
You can also head to the turtle breeding area, which had amazing views, but the campground is quite sandy, and its dirty sand that isn’t overly level. You’d camp here easily, but towing a van down the hill with some nice holes and ruts is probably not an option.
If you keep going, you can take a relatively long 4WD track that is badly chopped up to the Jardine River Mouth. This is mainly dark grey sand, and asides from it being tight and rough, its easy enough to get to the river mouth.
You can no longer camp here, but seeing the Jardine spread out at the mouth was quite interesting. You can drive onto the beach and get right to the mouth if you are game, but we didn’t want to go down to full beach driving pressures.
On the way out, we also headed to Jackey Jackey Creek, which was interesting enough, but with a new crocodile sighting sign we didn’t hang around for too long.
Watch the vlog
Overall, a good day out, and worth while looking at Mutee Heads. I’m not sure I’d bother going to the Jardine River Mouth again unless it was to fish (where its apparently amazing).
