Advertisement
Published: August 5th 2009
DAY 271
Andy woke up early this morning and sat up in bed, I asked “What’s Up?”, “I’m just trying to work out where we are,” he replied. I thought for a moment and although I did not say anything in my mind we were at a BP Roadhouse, comfortable with that thought I went back to sleep.
Just before 7.00 I awoke and thought about what Andy said earlier and I have no idea why I thought we were at the BP Roadhouse. Perhaps 271 days of waking in different locations has finally taken its toll, we are at the Normanton Tourist Park, comfortable that we are not moving anywhere today.
The usual morning routine ensues with breakfast etc. a few chores were done and we went off to the Post Office to deal with a few bits that need posting, including Tubby. While we are in the post office a blind aboriginal chap comes in aided by an able bodied person. He wants to draw some money out, the girl behind the counter asks how much, he says "all of it," she asks where he is going today to whih he replied "over to the pub.
There is no point being rich." This chap was very well presented with smart jeans and cowboy shirt with a ten gallon hat on his head.
Oh, I forgot to mention that before we headed out this morning we spoke to a retired couple who are gem prospectors, so I am not going to tell you their names, where they are from and where they prospect but we talk for a while about how they find gems, where they have come across them and they also show us numerous rocks that they have found including one huge lump of amethyst that she found virtually on the side of the road just after torrential rain, their collection includes Topaz, Ruby, other stones that I could not even tell you the names of and the occasional diamond, my eyes literally pop out of my head at the size of some of these stones.
With that done we fuelled up, Diesel in Normanton can be expensive, there are four fuel stations, 3 are about $1.79 (78 pence sterling) per litre but the BP station is cheaper at $1.38 per litre (about 60 pence sterling per litre). (Prices depend on exchange rate
at time of going to press)
Off to Karumba and the Gulf of Carpentaria, just 70k’s on from Normanton. We have to drive up and have a look around; this is the only opportunity we will now get to stand on the coastline of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The land around the road to Karumba is very flat and very barren in places, there is a lot of bird life, I have lost count of the number of Brolga’s that we can see around the landscape, they are mostly in pairs otherwise we see large flocks of them, there are literally hundreds of them.
In Karumba we see lots of boats and lots of empty trailers that had boats on but are now in the water, rumour has it that the queue to put the boat in can be up to 30 deep so this is a very popular place for fisherfolk.
Karumba has its own World War II history, Karumba was a base for the RAAF the Catalina flying boats used to be serviced and loaded here. The B Block building is nearby which was the accomadation for the staff of the Empire Flying Boats when
Dipping our Toes
In the Gulf of Carpentariathey were en route from Sydney to London. During the war it was used as a radio communications base an air raid shelter is actually located in the river bank at the front of the building.
We drive round the town to see what it is like, pick up a few necessary groceries at the local store, i.e. bread and milk. Then we drive round to the newer part of town where you can gain access to the beach. Our key objective of the day was to dip our toes into the Gulf of Carpentaria, now we have seen the signs warning us of the potential for crocodiles and you should not swim here, we see a fisherman in the water collecting bait further up the beach, he seems to be not worried about crocodile activity, the water is exceptionally shallow, you can see the bottom and the landscape further out is scattered with large expanses of sandbanks.
We chat to the fisherman for a short while, he says he has not seen a croc here for at least 5 years, although there are plenty in the Norman River and their main food source is the Barramundi so
as long as there are plenty of those then the crocs are well fed (not always a guarantee though) and then we dip our toes in the water, quickly take a photo and then we are out of the water and back on the beach we still have all of our toes!
We wander over to the Sunset Tavern and have some lunch we sit and soak up the atmosphere if you don’t like fishing there is not a lot else here, however it is worth a look. The Sunset Tavern on the front, they do excellent chips and coffee. You can sit here and watch the sunset, which can be spectacular, sadly we are not going to sit around and wait for sunset, we head back to Normanton to have a look around.
Back in Normanton we stop to look at the large model of the crocodile, now the thing about this croc is that it is huge and is an actual life size model of a crocodile that was shot by Krystina Pawlowski. This croc is reported to have been 8.63 metres in length and estimated that it was over 2 tons in weight. Apparently Ron
He died of Swine Flu
Not really he was probably hit by a road train Pawlowski took several photographs so that comparisons could be made for its size, however these photographs were sadly lost in the 1974 floods, I might be cynical about this, however it could also be quite feasible that monsters like this did exist after all much of this land was not populated (remember Sweetheart that we saw when we were in Darwin).
We swing by the railway station home of the “Gulflander”. This train still runs taking tourists down to Croydon for an overnight trip.
For the birdwatcher there are the wetlands surrounding this area, fairly dry at the moment but the Monsoon season brings an abundance of bird life along with the water.
We see some of the town’s historical buildings before heading back to camp, the artesian hot spring spa and the swimming pool await. We both take the plunge in the cold pool for several laps and then into the artesian hot spring water for a rest then we go off for a well deserved cup of tea.
We bump into Scott and Caralyn who we camped with at King Fisher and Adels Grove, they arrived this afternoon with Caralyn’s parents whom they managed
to catch up with at Gregory Downs.
I phone up Camera House in Cairns, the good news is that my camera lens has arrived safely in Cairns awaiting my collection, I let them know that we should be with them within the next week and will come and collect it as soon as I can. I am now happy in the knowledge that it will soon be back in my hands.
I have a read of the Telegraph which we bought earlier, but I must point out is actually 3 days old anyway. We knock up a chow mein for tea tonight using the great facilities in the camp kitchen. I use the kitchen for washing up, the water is drawn off the hot spring the water is so soft it sort of makes everything feel greasy but its not. The hot water in the showers is drawn from the hot spring too, but you have to wait for about 10 to 15 minutes for the hot water to come through.
We sit outside for the evening, it is not too cold here so we are still in shorts and t-shirts, Andy manages to speak to his
Mum, I try to speak to Mum and Dad over Skype but we are less than successful as the connection seems to drop out in the end we lose them all together.
Mirjam and Dave are back on the road again, they also downloaded Skype so called to let us know that they have bought a new vehicle (remember Mirjam wrote the last one off!) so they are pleased with their purchase and happy to be back on the road.
It is way past 10.00 and our bedtime, the rest of the campsite have gone to bed, or rather it looks like it anyway, so we pack up and go to bed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.082s; Tpl: 0.032s; cc: 11; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0264s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
