Clean as a whistle in Cairns

We’ve had several days in Cairns but we certainly have not been idle. Not only did the new big batteries have to be fitted, but we had to get rid of the dust and grime from 8 weeks of travelling, particularly on Cape York Peninsula.

While John and his mate Rick did the battery-fitting bit, I started with a swift and thorough clean of the bathroom.  Then I left them to it while I went to town on a mother-of-the-bride dress-hunting expedition. As some of you know, once we reach home I will have only have 3 weeks until Penny’s wedding in Brisbane, so I decided to have a little hunt around Cairns.

And it succeeded! Not only did I find a dress that suited, but also satin shoes and bag AND a matching fascinator. All are now safely stowed in a storage space beneath a dinette seat and it’s a load off my mind.

As part of the major clean of the interior, we went out the next morning and bought a small vacuum cleaner. We’d been trying to manage with just a broom but dust gets into places even water won’t and we needed that extra suction to make everything clean. We worked like navvies for the rest of the day, wiping down all surfaces, including the walls and ceiling, until sure everything was sparkling.

We took time out for some walking, including one to Centenary Lakes and the Cairns Botanic Garden . . . but I forgot to take my camera. We were blown away by some of the wonderful tropical plants there, particularly those in glorious flower.

Just some of the orange tents.

Our site in Cairns Holiday Park is opposite the tent-camping area and we’ve been intrigued by all the young European backpackers and tourists. We’ve decided we MUST be getting old as a lot of them honestly don’t look old enough to be out without their mothers.

Large bunches of them arrive in buses, they pitch matching orange dome tents, then they trek off each day to the various forest and reef attractions.

We had a chat to a young French girl who had driven with her girlfriend from Perth (around the Top End). Another traveller had given her the remains of her groceries and washing liquids, etc and as the French duo (+ her friend’s parents, who had just arrived) was moving on towards Melbourne, she came over and gave the bag of stuff to us.

It turned out she came from Montpellier, a city I know fairly well in the south of France, so we had a few moments of talking about places we both knew around that region. Once again, small world!

This morning, we were up at the crack of dawn, with electricity, water and grey water hoses disconnected by 7.15 so we could take the Isuzu in for a service. The dealer’s courtesy bus dropped us on the esplanade where had a slap-up breakfast, then walked it off for the next 6 hours.

The crew hard at work on Rasa, from the Cayman Islands.

We checked out the marina, with some huge yachts moored there, one in particular from Georgetown in the Cayman Islands, was having some attention to its timber railing (or what the Yanks call its ‘brightwork’) from its crew; then watched one of the many tourist boats to Green Island depart.

There were some great exhibitions on at the Cairns Art Gallery, including one called Ghost Nets, which featured art works made from the fishing nets that drift and endanger sea life. Quite a lot were made by people from Bamaga and Seisia, where we had been, so we found that very interesting.



The waterfront lagoon at Cairns.

After more walking, we came to a large shopping centre where we found a couple of things on our shopping list, and finally, around 1.15pm, the call came that the service was completed.

Now safely back in the caravan park, we’re starting to plan our next move south to Townsville.

Green, green grass!

Here we are in sunny Cairns. You just cannot imagine the rejoicing when we left behind the corrugated roads and red dust of Cape York Peninsula. In fact, when we spent the night in the camping ground next to the Lions Den Hotel, just south of Cooktown (more of that later), the grass was so green we almost felt like rushing out and rolling in it!

We had left Coen, aiming to stay in Cooktown, then the next day go south through a rural valley to start the Bloomfield Track to Cape Tribulation, Daintree and places south.

When we hit the bitumen just south of Laura . . . and the construction the locals are calling the Laura Harbour Bridge, it’s so big . . . we just couldn’t believe that the days and days of red dust were over. Without really counting it up, I think we did about 1400 km on those dirt roads to the Tip and back.

The musical ship at Cooktown that one
can climb into and make music.

Anyway, off we sped to Cooktown and on the way I was reading a tourism booklet which mentioned that the historic Lions Den Hotel, established for miners in 1885, also had a campground with powered sites. We would have gone past it the next day anyway on our way south, so we phoned from Cooktown and they guaranteed us a site after we’d finished sightseeing in Cooktown.

It’s a nice little town, full of references to James Cook, including a wonderful monument that almost equals Nelson’s Column for Victorian pomp and ceremony. It has water fountains on all 4 sides, with the water coming from four different animals mouths . . . a rabbit, a pig, a deer and what looks like a cat but may have been intended as a koala. Those water fountains don’t work now, but nearby in the park is a very modern installation, a musical ship. There are all kinds of things on board to play, from a marimba to pipes to tuned bells.

We nearly got blown off the top of the hill Cook had climbed while his vessel was repaired below on the river bank. He was fairly depressed by sighting nothing but sandbanks to the south and knew his only way out was northwards.

The entrance to the Lions Den Hotel, complete with a
fairly mangey lion, under one of the huge mango trees.

After that, we fuelled up and set out for the Lions Den. The campground was gorgeous, lush green grass, some of the biggest trees I’d seen in weeks, including a mango of venerable age in full flower. A great little creek runs at the bottom of the campground, perfectly safe for swimming, unlike so many others we’d seen with warnings about crocs.

We ate at the hotel that night, which has had a modern deck put on it to cope with increasing popularity and seemed to be staffed entirely by British and Irish backpackers.

In an aside, everything in northern and western Qld seems to run on the work of these young visitors. The Bramwell Junction roadhouse had French and Scottish girls (because the owner couldn’t get Aussies to work there); an Irish lad served us coffee at the Musgrave roadhouse further south; and the barmaid at the Coen pub was from England.

Off we set the next morning for our date with the Bloomfield Track. It’s only 34km from what used to be called Bloomfield but now has the name of Wujal Wujal and has a great Aboriginal art gallery (where John bought me a necklace made by a local). But those 34km are very slow, very rocky and certainly only suited to 4WDs.

The causeway over the Bloomfield River that marks the
northern end of the Bloomfield Track. After that I was
 too busy holding on to take photos.

At one creek crossing through shallow flowing water over large river stones, we saw a trail of something liquid well away from the water, and just ahead we found an ordinary Magna sedan stopped, leaking oil from underneath. There was nobody with it, but the back seats were still piled high with belongings. We just couldn’t imagine the cost of getting such a vehicle retrieved from such a place.

The track ends at Cape Tribulation and after we’d become used to being back in civilisation, with clean cars all around us, we spend further south to Daintree where we decided there was no point staying, so went on to Cairns.

We’d chosen a particular caravan park as it was close to the CBD and the Isuzu is booked in for a service on Monday; AND we needed to replace the house battery that had cracked.

As we entered through a boom gate, who should be coming out in his little 4WD but Rick Blatchley. We hadn’t seen him and Barb since Winton and we knew they would be somewhere in Cairns, but had no idea where.

So lots of socialising last night and this morning, while they went off to Kuranda, we went in search of batteries. These we found, had to get 2 (at fairly vast expense) as they operate everything in the ‘house’ part in series, from the solar panels, and John and I managed to get them out of the motorhome entrance where the lads had put them (they weigh 75kg each), ready for him to put in tomorrow, probably with Rick’s help.

We took the vehicle to a truck and car wash where John scrubbed the dust of Cape York off it and from under it, we did some food shopping and returned to our shady spot where we’re booked into until Tuesday morning.

Nearly out of the red dust

So, teeth no longer gritted against corrugations, we are relaxing in Coen, halfway down the Cape from the tip to Cairns.

The vehicles ahead of us boarding the Jardine River Ferry,
just south of Cape York.

Our battery problems meant we had no power in our ‘home’ part of the motorhome while travelling so we simply cleared the crisper sections of the fridge and freezer, bought 2 bags of ice before we left the Bramwell Junction campground where there was no power, but we COULD run our generator, putting the fridge and freezer back in the game.

Today we drove to Coen, where once again we are plugged into power and tomorrow we’ll just add more ice for the fridge (the freezer lot will have re-frozen) before we set off for Cooktown.

We met an interesting bloke at Bramwell Junction. He’s a middle-aged Englishman, born in Cooma (we suspect his Dad was working on the Snowy Mtns scheme) but went back to the UK when little. He’s riding around Oz on his motorbike, which carried a tent, sleeping gear, cooking gear etc and he has another 5 months to go.

There were also 11 very fit cyclists, with some support vehicles, who are riding to the tip of the cape, then taking a boat to PNG, and doing the Kokoda Track.

We keep bumping into participants in a Care For Kids rally (there’s 40 4WDs taking part) and today, while having a drink at the Coen Hotel,  named the Exchange Hotel, but changed by the addition of an ‘S’ to the Sexchange Hotel, a group of trail bikers rode in.

They also had support vehicles and apparently, each paid $5000 for the privilege of eating dust from Cairns to the Cape, then flying back to Cairns.

One of the sentinel anthills in the Bramwell Junction
campground.

As John says, with most places in Australia, you visit, then drive on to somewhere else. With Cape York, you drive north to visit it . . . then you have to come south over the same fairly vile roads. One more day of those dirt roads and we’ll be back on the blacktop, all the way home.

We plan to go south to Cairns on the Bloomfield Track, and have already made arrangement for the Isuzu to be serviced next Monday in Cairns, and before that will source a new gel battery so our solar system feels happy again and stops sending out alarms. . . so that’s why it’s turned off.

Tonight we’re eating some of the barramundi we bought in Karumba. John is slicing it into small sections, coating them in rice flour, then cooking them gently in the sandwich toaster. We’ve certainly learnt to be innovative and compromise. All I have to do is make a salad!

Right at The Tip

It's certainly worth the drive.

We did it! We clambered to the northernmost part of Australia, stood beneath the sign, and were photographed by one of the many other people there. We’d battled over 34km of one of the worst roads we’d encountered, but finally reached Pajinka (The Tip) along with 2 4WD tour buses and a host of other vehicles.

Midway we started hearing a beeping sound which we finally identified when we stopped as an alarm from the power system. Basically, our solar charging system was sending out alarms all over the place and there was no power for anything.

After we’d done our rock clamber we hastened back to the campsite where a full investigation showed that one of the VERY expensive gel batteries used to power all the lights, fridges, water pump, toilet system in the motorhome had a crack in its top so unless we have 240V power plugged in, we have no power (unless we crank up the generator).

However, these things happen and we’ll manage until we get back to Cairns or Cooktown (whichever has a replacement battery).

Schoolkids swarming around the vehicle ahead of
us at the carwash.

Just after we returned to camp, some of the local schoolchildren came round touting for custom for a car wash they were holding at a nearby service station, trying to raise $50,000 to take 25 Year 7 kids to Brisbane on an excursion.

As the motorhome hadn’t had a bath for 7 weeks and was particularly filthy, we took it over there and they did a splendid job for $35.

Tomorrow we’ll set off south, hoping to make Cooktown in about 3 days.

Yesterday we were among 14 passengers on a small boat that took us to Thursday Island then on to Horn Island. We thoroughly enjoyed our day, even though the chap that showed us around TI (as the locals call it) was just a maxi taxi driver and like many taxi drivers, just wanted to air his opinions about the world and public servants!

We had enough free time to enjoy the town and its tropical atmosphere and soak up some of the history before we went across a channel to Horn Island, which is where the airport is, and the main maritime loading facility. Little ferries run between the two centres but of course we were in our own Cape York Adventures catamaran.

We had lunch there, then had time to enjoy the wonderful museum put together by a local woman, featuring a lot of the World War II history of the area, with a stunning collection of photos, as well as the general island group history.

The main part of Thursday Island town, from the hilltop fort
built by the British in the 1890s.

The boat trip took about 1.5 hours each way, with a slight deviation on the way over when the skipper, a young man whose Dad runs a local pearl farm, spotted seabirds diving on a school of mackerel, so he set two trolling lines from the back of the boat.  But the school moved away so he took in the lines eventually and we ploughed on through the many islands.

We’d already seen people using nets to catch bait fish (herring) off the Seisia jetty. The water was just teeming with these little fish and when we sit outside the van, right on our beachfront site, we see mackerel leaping all over the place.

Just on the sand behind us is a helicopter landing place where Cape York Helicopters have been taking tourists for scenic flights for some hours. They’ve now flown home to Thursday Island.

I’m writing this sitting outside watching the sunset and two of the local scrub turkeys have just wandered past. Yesterday one of the local horses wandered through the campground. While some places have stray dogs, Bamaga and Seisia seem to have stray horses. They live in groups by the road and all seem well-fed and happy.

Nearly at the top of Oz

New driver's window, all the way from Melbourne.

After six rather nice days in Weipa’s leafy campground we set out for points north. The new driver’s window had duly arrived by plane from Melbourne, via Cairns, and was fitted very efficiently.

After Weipa, we really did point our noses due north, spending a night at Bramwell Junction, a delightful basic campground that’s high on our list of favourites. Not only does it have trees and amenities but it also has enormous red anthills standing sentinel outside and scattered around the campground.

Quite a few campers intended leaving their camper-trailers and tents there and have a bash at the Old Telegraph Track. We preferred to drive the bypass route which got us to Seisia by lunchtime the next day, including a ferry crossing of the Jardine River. Even so, the corrugations were pretty vile in some places, while in others, the road was wonderful. There’s even a substantial bit of bitumen to give some respite.

Bamaga is the northernmost town on the cape but Seisia, a few km away on the western coast,  is incredibly popular and we’d heard it was difficult to get a place. Adding to the problem could be a Care For Kids rally which we’d already struck in Weipa, with about 40 vehicles, many of whom needed campsites.

Our beachfront site, complete with yellow sign,
warning of crocodiles.

However, we drove in, made inquiries at the holiday park, and a gorgeous islander with apparently only one tooth in his beaming smile, hopped on a quad bike and told us to follow him  . . . to a beachfront site with a big tree beside it. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven!

We have booked a tour of Thursday and Horn islands tomorrow and have to be at the jetty (about 2 minutes walk away) by 8.30am, returning around 4pm.

The next day, we’ll make the 30km drive north from Bamaga to actually stand at Cape York, so we know we’ve been to the most northerly point on the Australian mainland.

We’ve just discovered that there are 4 scrub turkeys running around the campground, even foraging at the top of the beach. And with a gecko chirping in the tree next to the motorhome, and a reputably 4-metre croc in the bay, we’ve got plenty of tropical wildlife at hand.

We're on Weipa time

While we’re still busy relaxing at Weipa, waiting for our new driver’s window to make its way from Melbourne, here are a couple of things we’ve learnt about this place:

1.     The Weipa currency is a carton of beer. That what a mine worker uses to repay someone who swaps a shift (though the only day that is allowed is on Christmas Day), along with any other favours. In fact, we saw a T-shirt in the newsagency that read: Weipa is a small drinking town with a fishing problem. Says it all, really.

2.     There’s such a thing as ‘Weipa time’. It’s ‘about an hour’. That’s a bit of a worry because that’s what the smash repairs bloke quoted John as the time needed to fit the new window . . . when it arrives.

3.     And then there’s ‘Weipa size’. Everything’s big, mate.

Once again, the campground has emptied out as people go south or north. We still have a couple of neighbours. They are all blokes having fishing holidays.

Our view when the campground thins out each
morning.

Three are from the Canberra area and their leader, a big bloke who lives at Bungendore and who used to have a trucking business in Queanbeyan, tells us he’s the ‘Kenny of Canberra’, obviously supplying all the portable loos needed on building sites and for public functions.

The other neighbours are two blokes and a dog. They arrived in an open-sided ute with a boat on top, dragged out a couple of small transparent tents. One man and a dog went into one, and the other had his tent to himself.

In the middle of the night, there developed what John termed the ‘toad’s chorus’ as all five (who had wandered up to the local bowling club and sank a few) started snoring.

Speaking of toads, we haven’t seen a single cane toad in all our travels. We’d heard they were all over the Gulf and the Cape but we haven’t spotted one yet. We DID hear them at Leichhardt River falls and I think I spotted some of their tadpoles in rock pools there.

One of the interesting ute-top campers in the park. The ute
just backs in under it, the legs swing up and attach somehow,
the top folds in neatly and off he goes.

When we were on the Tablelands and it was drizzling rain I was sure we'd see a few at night but the score remained at zero.

This afternoon, we’ve put our names down for a fish fry on the foreshore so we’ll take along our drinks and chairs and let someone else do the cooking.

Later:

The fish fry was excellent. We met a few other travellers and thoroughly enjoyed the local mackerel, battered and served with chips and salad. One youngish fellow was sitting on his own, didn’t even have a portable chair, like the rest of us, and was perched on one of the huge steel pipes laid horizontally to define the edge of the foreshore grass.

So we invited him to join us, sitting on the grass. It turned out he’s an ambulance paramedic from Brisbane who does an 8-day shift in Weipa, then flies home for his time off, then comes back for another 8 days. He was living in one of the cabins in the caravan park.

When he heard we were from Lismore he asked if we knew the Boyles. ‘As in Boyle Road, Goolmangar Boyles?’ I said.

And of course it was. Len and Carmel Boyle are my neighbours across the creek and this fellow, Scott Wilson, is married to Carmel’s niece. Small world!

Monday morning:

Great excitement in the camp today as this is when the weekly barge arrives from Cairns, laden with provisions for all the shops, particularly the supermarket. Since Friday it’s had no salad at all, its bread is all in the freezer and lots of other things are either missing from the shelves or low in numbers.

So we’ll go across and re-provision, keeping our fingers crossed that the window arrives by air from Cairns tomorrow and we can be on our way north by Wednesday at the latest.

Shattered glass and red dust

It had to happen, I suppose. There we were, tooling along, after an early morning start from Coen, on a fairly vile, dusty road north, when we saw a road train approaching.

John slowed almost to a standstill, and just as the road train passed, loaded with earthmoving equipment, something (a rock, or maybe a piece of the road train’s equipment) struck the driver’s window, and it shattered into a million pieces.

John was unhurt, although covered in pieces of glass, and I can tell you, he told God about it for a minute or so, then we cleaned the glass out of the cabin, made a temporary window out of black plastic and duct tape, but eventually discarded that in favour of just open air  . . . and dust . . . for the next 200 or so km until we reached Weipa.

We were so shocked and stunned we hadn’t even thought about taking photographs.

We checked into the delightful camping ground in Weipa, full of huge old trees, right on the foreshore, and went in search of assistance. Rather than order a new window to be available in Cairns, and spend the next week or so on our journey to the Cape and back fighting the dust, we found that Weipa Smash Repairs could get a new one from Melbourne in a few days.

It will arrive in Cairns on Monday, be here the next day, it will take an hour or so to fit, and we’ll be on the road again.

It’s no hardship to be here, as the shady campground is right next to a substantial shopping centre with a supermarket, butcher, hot bread shop, pharmacy, and even a hairdresser and beautician, where I have an appointment for a bit of maintenance.

John jokes that the only thing missing, as far as I’m concerned, is a shoe shop!

One of the giant trucks at Weipa.

We took the mine tour on our second day here (today) and it was a real eye opener. We knew the area is full of red dust, but you haven’t seen red dust until you see the bauxite mining operations. It is literally only a few metres under the topsoil, which is scraped off for later planting and restoration. Then the ore is just pushed up into piles, loaded into giant trucks (each tyre costs $10,000), taken to an unloading point where it is dumped, goes through a cleaning process, and within 11 minutes, is loaded into railway trucks, ready to be taken to the port area where it goes into bulk container ships, mostly for refinement into alumina at Gladstone, but some goes overseas as ore.

A truck being loaded with bauxite ore. That's the red
 dust of Weipa. 

The town is owned by Rio Tinto and just about everyone works for the company. The estuary is full of crocodiles and the bus driver told us five dogs had been taken in the past few weeks, so warned everyone against paddling in the water.

The forecast for the weekend is storms, so I’m actually quite pleased to be somewhere fairly civilised, rather than bush camping.

Lots of 4WDs and camper trailers are pulling in, wearing their covering of red dust like a badge of honour, and we just sit under our big tree and marvel at the wide variety available. There are lots of young families around us at present but the campground empties out pretty quickly each morning as people head north or south, filling up again after lunch. We’ll be the proper ‘old hands’ by the time we leave on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Halfway between Cairns and The Tip

We took a punt on the weather clearing further north from Lake Tinaroo . . . well, actually, we looked at the radar images for the peninsula on our iPhones . . . and left the miserable drizzle for much sunnier climes. It looked wonderful there, through the rain, so we know where to go another time when it’s finer.

John contemplates the steep scramble we'd had on
our way to the Aboriginal rock art galleries.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable run through the northern Atherton Tablelands and on to Lakelands, a wonderfully fertile flat area between mountains and hills that are quite lovely. We had sort of expected the whole run north to Cape York to be through fairly flat bushland, so we found those mountains a great surprise.

That night we plotted our route further north and thought we’d get to Musgrave for our next campsite. However, even after spending an hour or so at the Split Rock Aboriginal rock art galleries just south of Laura, we decided to keep going after Musgrave and finally pulled into Coen, recognised as halfway between Cairns and the tip of Cape York, around 3pm . . . an ideal time to find a place to stay.

The Coen pub, complete with extra consonant.

This is at the camping ground behind the local store, almost opposite the local pub, officially called the Exchange Hotel, but someone’s added an extra ‘S’ to the start of the name. It’s apparently a bit of a bloodhouse so we shan’t be giving it our patronage.

When we were at Lakelands, two elderly Victorian couples told us they were leaving their caravans there and making a dash for the Cape in one of their 4WDs, taking tents for accommodation. They’ve turned up here, in the store campground, shaded with giant old African mahogany trees, and are trying to put up tents they’ve never used before. One of the blokes has already begged a hammer from John as they have nothing with which to drive in the tent pegs!



The Morehead River beside which we lunched.

We’re sitting here having afternoon drinkies and trying not to laugh.

We’ve thawed some of the barramundi we bought at Karumba lat week and that’s destined for our evening meal.



We know we’re really in the tropical north now as it’s quite humid, and the vegetation along the sides of the road is featuring more and more grass trees and pandanus palms. The road north from Laura has been mostly gravel and in some places very, very corrugated, but nothing worse than we’ve driven over in western Queensland. Many of the creek and river crossing bear a warning about crocodiles, but the only animal life we’ve seen in our 300km today were cattle, the odd wallaby and kangaroo, some red-tailed black cockatoos, and a stately jabiru looking for fish in a river beside which we had lunch.

We're really in the Wet Tropics

It had to happen. After nearly five weeks of the dry, dusty Outback, as soon as we reached the Wet Tropics, it started to rain. It was amazing how in the course of just one day, the landscape changed so much, with bigger trees, no more open plains, and much closer settlement.

We've left behind these rocky bushland scenes.

Gone were the angular anthills of the Forsayth area. Now they were great bulbous affairs that looked like baby elephants grazing among the cattle on the sides of the road. On our way to Ravenshoe, the highest town in Queensland at 900+metres, we stopped at Innot Hot Springs.

The spring that bubbles into the creek is so hot in fact that when I paddled into the creek for a moment I lost feeling in my feet, then yelped and hightailed it out. Of course, I had gone in just where the spring enters from the other side, but further down, as the water cools to a pleasant warmth, young people were digging holes in the sand and sitting there with their feet in the warm water, enjoying the odd bottle of beer. That’s hedonism!



Millstream Falls near Ravenshoe.

Ravenshoe was misty when we settled into the caravan park by the creek (tall trees, turtles and platypus) but by this morning it was quite drizzly, whether heavy fog or low cloud, it was hard to tell.

It cleared a little as we drove north towards Atherton . . . the first ‘big’ town we’d seen in weeks, so we did all the necessary stuff, getting prescriptions filled, mailing birthday cards to grandsons and buying a truckload of groceries.

We are installed at the Lake Tinaroo Caravan Park, on the shores of said lake, but it has been drizzling ever since we arrived so we filled in the time this afternoon getting the washing done and dried and cooking a superb dinner of pork medallions centred with garlic butter.

We have our Cape York route all planned but are now watching this weather, which is bringing lots of rain to Cairns and the coastal areas and we are waiting to see if it moves into the peninsula, as the majority of our route is on dirt roads.

The next time we’ll have internet access will probably be at Weipa, in about 4-5 days . . . that’s if we get away tomorrow, which we may not.

It’s all vague – because we can be.

Crocodiles, large and small

And so we left Karumba on July 4, after stuffing ourselves with prawns and fish every day . . . and buying frozen barramundi for special fish meals somewhere else on our travels.

The only trouble with Karumba was that it was full of Victorians and there was an unseasonal southerly blowing that had everyone rummaging for their winter woollens, just as we were leaving.

We visited the barramundi hatchery there; and saw a pretty big transfer vessel arrive to fill up with zinc that had been pumped 300+ km from a mine near Lawn Hill in a kind of slurry, then dried at the big Karumba Point plant, ready for export. The transfer vessel takes it out into the Gulf where even bigger bulk containers wait for it.

Although most other places had had their Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea for cancer research in May, it’s always at the Karumba Point tavern the first week in July (that’s when there are most visitors in town, I suspect). We left that morning so didn’t take part, but we did our bit, by having much-needed haircuts from a retired hairdresser in the caravan park who was giving everything from her $10 haircuts to the cause.

Replica of the monster croc at Normanton.

So, on to Normanton, with its huge replica crocodile next to the historic shire council offices. The croc is called Krys, after the female crocodile shooter who took out the real animal in the 1950s. It was a monster, 8.5m long, 4m in girth and weighed 2 tonnes, and the replica is very popular for photos among tourists.

The road from Normanton to Croydon runs through typical savannah, flat with just a bit of scrub, but it was brightened with the appearance of the Gulflander, a railmotor that was trundling along on its weekly trip from Normanton to Croydon, staying overnight and returning the next day. So we did a bit of train-chasing, getting ahead of it and finding an open spot in which to photograph it.

Rear view of the Gulflander trundling through the bush.

We had thought about staying at Croydon (pop. 300) but after visiting its excellent info centre and finding out all about its historic gold-mining past (35 pubs in the 1880s),walking around its original Chinatown (just a bit of bushland now but with interesting markers) and driving out to a lovely dam just outside town (no camping allowed) we decided to keep going. We found a spot beside the road where we nudged into the bush, and within minutes had a blue-backed kookaburra for company as well as apostle birds. During the night a small station-wagon pulled up and we found the next morning it contained 3 young Germans bound for Darwin. They’d hired the car in Cairns and had yet to strike any dirt roads. But the direction they were going, there would be plenty ahead of them!

Next morning we had only about 70km to reach Georgetown, a very nice little town full of trees. We came to Forsayth after another 40km. We were snug in the little caravan park there, full of people fossicking in the surrounding hills for agate and gold, as it’s also an old gold-mining area.

My Dad had had a mine here in the 1940-50 era and it’s where I started school. We drove around its couple of streets looking at things I remembered, such as playing with the police sergeant’s daughter as a pre-schooler while the resident blacktracker looked after us.

The Savannahlander, another railmotor, pulled in in the late afternoon. That was a sentimental occasion for John and I as it was on that 4-day trip from Cairns and back, that we had met 3 years ago. We celebrated with a roast pork meal at the pub later, meeting all kinds of characters.



One of the baby crocs

And then we left for Cobbold Gorge, on a cattle station about 40km from Forsayth. The village has accommodation, a bar and restaurant as well as a cafe, a dam and a pretty special, brand new infinity-edge pool above the dam. The caravan area was nice, not crowded, and we had only a short time to settle in before our scheduled 1.30pm guided tour to the gorge. This is a narrow defile, not nearly as wide as Katherine Gorge or Lawn Hill Gorge. We rode out there, across the dry Robertson River, in a special 4WD bus, then walked around in the bush for about 1.5 hours, climbing to the escarpment to look into the gorge and visiting the grave of an early gold-miner and shopkeeper who died along a track, supposedly speared by blacks. Then we came back to the creek and boarded little electric boats which glided noiselessly up the gorge and back for about an hour. It is quite breathtaking and we were all thrilled to see a freshwater croc basking in the afternoon sun. We’d already seen two babies from the latest clutch on the sides of the creek.

Cobbold Gorge.

The next morning we left to visit an old schoolfriend of mine who runs a nearby property. We’d been at school at Forsayth together so once again, poor John’s head swam as we chatted about people and places. After morning tea and lunch with him and his wife and visiting daughter and grandson, we set off for Georgetown, where he’d told an aunt of his, whom I hadn’t seen since I was 7 years old, we’d call. This we did and had a great old time with her before setting out in the late afternoon for Mt Surprise.

We stopped about halfway along, spending the night beside the road, tucked away behind a tree, with a Brahman bull feeding peacefully not far away. We love this bush camping as it is so peaceful and uncomplicated.

Tough living in barra country

Burketown was a delightful little town, despite the fact we could no longer visit what had been the oldest building in the Gulf. When Burketown was established in the 1860s it had a Customs House built. This in later years was the town pub, but it burnt down earlier this year, and not even a temporary bar has been established.

The groundsman at the shady, delightful caravan park (a Victorian who has worked there with his wife for the past 2 years from May to September) told us he gets cartons of beer sent by post from Mount Isa, only costing $5 for postage on top of the cost of the beer. The poor old mailman’s trucks must be groaning at times!

It’s the home of barramundi fishing, and we saw lots of boats setting out each day to try the Albert River or even the Gulf waters. We had barra and chips the first night (quite nice) and the second, a barra burger which was splendid. That barra was thick and juicy and succulent . . . and we hadn’t had to get sunburnt catching it.



Anyway, it’s a very historic town, and we were blown away by some of the info at the town museum (formerly the post office, and built in the late 1800s). There was a map showing the British Empire trading routes, featuring Burketown . . . no Darwin, no Cairns, but Burketown. It was so useful as a port that the ships from England used to come up the Albert River from the Gulf of Carpentaria, delivering mail which was then taken by coach to Bourke in NSW. That was faster than waiting for the ships to get to Sydney and send it west, also by coach.

Before we left we browsed around the town cemetery. The Gulf was pretty tough on health with lots of people dying when a ship brought tertiary malaria from Indonesia. It was also hard to keep babies and toddlers alive, judging from the burial records.



The surreal colours and salts mound at the bore.

We also checked out the current launching ramp, as the river cut through some country well away from Burketown, leaving it isolated by water some time ago. The current ramp is festooned with warnings about crocodiles and how taking alcohol to any islands in Mornington Shire is forbidden.



On our way out of town we visited the Burketown Bore. This was sunk to a depth of 2000 feet in 1896, as a way of providing constant water for the cattle it was thought would be shipped from there. But the artesian water was too high in lots of salts and only suitable for adult cattle so is virtually useless. It has been flowing ever since, running at 67deg C, eventually forming a lagoon which birds love, but the salts have made a multi-coloured mound around the original bore hole.



So on we went, south and east towards Normanton, intending to bush camp somewhere, possibly the Leichhardt River falls.

And that’s what we did. If we thought Cooper’s Creek was divine, and O’Shannessy River superb, then the Leichhardt River crossing beats them all. Imagine a wide river, with a bed of some sand, but mostly quite flat rock. A concrete causeway has been built across it and we found it easy to drive off it onto the flat rock area close to where a huge fault in the river bed cause the river to plunge in falls. A month ago it would have been spectacular, but now there are falls in three areas, and some big pools are starting to dry up. We were told there were some crocs (freshies, we presume) upriver and someone camping in the river bed had caught quite a big barra the day before.

The falls in dawn light, with caravanners on the rocky
river bed above.

What was really interesting was that on our second day, several Aboriginal families turned up for a picnic and some fishing. One of them brought a big bird for cooking. I call it a plains turkey but their proper name is Australian bustard. We’d seen a trio of them just before we reached Burketown. They’re not as tall as brolgas but very stately and quite a heavy body.

They hung it in a tree, plucked it, got a fire going, and it cooked while they fished and yarned and the kids played around in the water and in the riverbed. Eventually they all packed up in the late afternoon, with their turkey wrapped in foil to be enjoyed even more at home.



We felt a bit effete and very Western, as we watched all this, as we were cooking lamb shanks (frozen and pre-cooked from Aldi) in the microwave, as well as roast vegies in the turbo oven for a big Saturday lunch.

We’ve been rising before the sun to photograph the falls and the river in the various lights. It has been a delightful place to stay with campers and caravanners coming and going.

Later:



We’re now in Karumba after a very dusty trip from the falls. We stopped at the site of Burke and Wills’ last camp before they gave up trying to reach the Gulf and turned south. It’s a wonder they didn’t just slit their wrists there and then as it’s heartbreaking country . . . flat, flat, flat, with thick scrub to push through, but some grand rivers such as the Flinders, which we crossed by a ford, with pelicans fishing on its waters.

The Flinders River near Normanton not far from Burke
and Wills' last camp.

On our way to Karumba from Normanton we came through endless salt flats, all of which poor old Burke and Wills would have faced if they’d kept on trudging towards the sea.

Now we’re happily in a packed caravan park, with lots of Victorians who have obviously arrived for the season, and the park not only offers craft afternoons (for the wives who’re bored witless while the blokes go fishing) and bingo, but also a good line in seafood, so we’ve bought some barra and prawns for dinner tonight.

We’re delighted by the things people put on the back of their vans. At Adel’s Grove we spotted ‘Ken, Fae and Lindy’ on the back of one van. There was only an elderly couple and their little yappy dog, so we took a punt that Lindy was said yapper. But maybe it was Fae?

Nearly time for afternoon drinks in the shade, while wearing our shorts and T-shirts. Life’s still tough, you’ll agree.