Day 52: Turning point – we head south (23/07/12)

A chilly 12 degrees greeted us this morning as we prepared to pack up for our next stage. It sounds silly to say that a 12 degree morning is chilly, but we were starting to get used to the warm weather, I think. Anyhow, we had our “far” sights set on Cloncurry, but would see as the day progressed how far we would get. There were several free camps before Cloncurry, as well as one or two paid camps.

Once we got under way, we first went to the highly recommended petrol stop in the industrial estate to pick up the cheapest petrol we had tanked since Cairns. Then on up the road to Normanton, retreating from the furthest point on our trip. Through Normanton we went, driving down the Burke Developmental Road through country that was endlessly flat and became ever more sparse as the kilometres wound by.

Road trains were an important part of our journey today.

It was a surprise when the first bit of single-lane highway popped up – a quick check of the map showed that we would have bits right through to the Burke and Wills Roadhouse. The road train traffic was heavier, but the expected confrontation with one of these monsters on a single lane stretch did not materialise. Joke did a stretch of driving, but was happy to hand the tiller back to me, because the highway, single lane or dual was not in a very good state. But, she did survive a few road trains passing the other way, so that was another notch in her belt. (Note the outback-ish mode of expression that is creeping into this blog. Joke says that my speech is becoming more nasal by the day too... Waar je mee omgaat, wordt je besmet, ay? as Dutch Queenslanders would say).

The country kept changing. Especially on the grassland sections, the big wide flat country looked very impressive.

Where we were going.....

.....where we stopped for morning tea....

....where we had come from

Then, suddenly you would drive into a set of outcrops, rise over a hill or two, and come down on the other side into a new landscape with a different character. Very intriguing.

Suddenly there were enormous numbers of termite mounds in the fields. It was like a megalopolis of termites!

But intrigue takes effort, and effort saps energy, and when the Burke and Wills Roadhouse turned up and offered us petrol, we said “Blow it! Let’s stay here!” So we did (stay there, not blow it, I mean) and got ourselves hot showers and clean toilets for $12. Nice place to stay, especially when the last road train had pulled up, had dinner, and left again. Only thing was that there was a pong which was more than just the strange bore water smell we had already come across. Joke was convinced it was “eau de dead cow”, but as neither of us were willing to investigate in the scrub upwind, we just tried to ignore it.

The campground at the Burke and Wills Roadhouse

The road train that delivered the fuel. It was on its way to Karumba where we tanked petrol for $1.51 a litre. At Burke and Wills Roadhouse, 300 kms closer to source, we paid $1.67 a litre.

Road train

The petrol carrier - the full 52 metres, I reckon

Lots of stock road trains came past. Not so bad when they stopped in the evening, but it must have been hard on the cattle when they stopped in the heat of the day.

Another view of road trains

Day 51: Sunday in Karumba (22/07/12)

Today was going to be our first Sunday without going to church. Instead we watched a video service from Armadale, led by Rev Wietze Huizinga – downloaded from their website. It was a good sermon on Psalm 22, originally written for Easter but perfectly applicable today too, and we were surprised at how easy it was to follow on the laptop.

The day had started off quite chilly, with the temperature hovering around the 12-13 degrees mark. But once the sun gets out and warms things up, it counterbalanced the chill wind and the result was quite pleasant. We wandered a bit around the length and breadth of Karumba – which did not take us all that long because there was not a whole lot of l and b in the place.

When that got boring we sat down to some serious reading/blogging.

"Dikkie, do you really have to?"

The happy hour area

In the evening we decided to try our luck at the sunset again. There was a bit of high cloud, so the possibility of a more interesting sunset was there. Apart from that, the beach setting (covered with slabs of sedimentary rock which were chock-full of seashell fossils) was just so romantic and beautiful that it would have been worth going to even if a cyclone was threatening. (I am exaggerating, but you get the picture...)

So we toasted the setting sun with our wine and dips, made the necessary pictures, and lingered on until it was completely dark. There is a technique to sunset watching (covered in the Idiot’s Guide to Grey Nomadding – not to be confused with the Grey Nomads Guide for the Dementia Sufferer which just repeats the title page over and over again). Said technique is to stay until after the sun has disappeared below the horizon. It is only then that the really beautiful colours appear in the horizon, and the whole world becomes suffused with a wonderful warm glow. There is a wonderful silence about it as well (there being no surf and the tide out a kilometre or so). A slice of moon – which was there all the time but is only noticed as the light fades, and our trusty Southern Cross over our shoulders behind us. Perfect!

All of this was lost on the AAPT bus driver who I’m sure had his motor running before the last sliver of sun disappeared below the horizon. His gaggle of oldies stumbled and bumbled across the stone slabs, mortally afraid of being left alone on a dark crocodile infested beach. They aimed desperately behind them with their point-and-shoots at the retreating sun (with FLASH on!!!) and collapsed into their seats, absurdly grateful that the driver had cared to wait for them.

Couple on the beach watching the sunset.

Another Karumba sunset

Unidentified waterbird pecking fishies in the sunset

Dirk and Joke on Karumba Beach. It was dark at this stage. The slightly glassy look is due to the 20 second exposure and NOT due to too much celebratory imbibulation.

Day 50: Normanton to Karumba (21/07/12)

Our main aim in Normanton was to take a trip on the Gulflander, the railway that links Normanton to Croydon, 149 kms away. It was built 131 years ago when gold was discovered at Croydon. Normanton then had a functioning port on the Norman River and thus became the link to the outside world for the goldfields. Gold rushes die, however, and the railway became a general goods and mail operation. If I remember rightly, it had never turned a profit since 1931. Recently, they have realised the tourist potential and now run daily trips for tourists. Once a week they do a return trip to Croydon and on the other days they go about 30 kms out of Normanton to a place called Critters Camp and then back again – a 2 hour trip. That is the one we did.

It was good to be driven rather than to drive and see things at leisure. The train is run by a rail motor one year older than sister Alice (which makes it a pretty young machine, don’t you think?) or 3 years younger than me (which makes it pretty ancient!!). The commentary was excellent as we bommeled (Dutch word) along through the scrub. Normanton stands on a (teensy bit of a) hill, and as we rumbled down the hill on to the flats we stopped at a marker showing the various flood levels of past years. Needless to say, the highest recorded flood (1974) would have submerged the train by a good few metres....

Our tickets. Note the pensioner's ticket at the top. All I did was mention that I had a Senior's Card. Honest!

An old locomotive on display at Normanton Station

The flood markers at the bottom of the Normanton "hill". 1974 must have been a really impressive flood!!

On the way out we were in the back carriage.

At Critters Camp "Station" there is a triangle for turning the train around. There was also the AAPT bas and driver to pick up the passengers who had exclusive use of the front carriage.

"Pensioner" Dirk and his young wife Joke in front of the Gulflander at Critters Camp

All aboard in the front carriage for the return journey.

One of the passengers was asked to pour sand down a hole in front of the driving wheel. The track gang had recently greased the rails, and the old Gulflander found it difficult to get traction when starting.

This bridge is the smoothest bit of track of the whole journey.

A bicycle in a tree... (don't ask me..)

The Gulflander re-enters the station at Normanton

Read about it here:  http://www.gulflander.com.au/Pages/Default.aspx , take the trip if you’re ever there.

Our furthest destination for this trip (at least, according to current planning) was Karumba, a mere 74 kms from Normanton. We set off into country that was, if possible, even flatter than the area around Normanton. The appearance of flatness was probably made stronger by the relative lack of vegetation.

Brolgas in the fields

Flatter than a polder! (Dutch word for flat land :-) )

At Karumba the caravan park turned out to be very pleasant. It was our second choice: we needed power and they had a powered site in an overflow area. The site turned out to be ample, very private and close to everything (around the back of the office, in fact).

Our first choice turned out to be overcrowded and much less shady, and the third choice, the caravan park in the town itself was also packed to the gills.

In the evening we bought fish and chips and prawns from Ash’s, as many enthusiastic customers had already told us to do, and took them to the beach front to watch the sunset. There we were, on a stone beach, with our meal and a wine,

Sitting on a beach at Karumba on sandstone slabs with lots of seashells in them

Barra, chips, prawns, Boags and a chardie

Much later. Yes, Observant Ones, that is a wine glass in my hand. It was a long sunset and I only had one beer...

watching the sun go down in the Gulf of Carpentaria. It was a very clear evening, so we did not get to see pretty cloud-paintings, but the experience was great anyhow.

Another sunset

Which gets nicer....

...and nicer...

and leaves an afterglow..

Day 49: Just 24 kms to Normanton (20/07/12)

After 3 days of camping without power, our fridge was not doing very well on gas. It seems to be okay for 2 days at a time, but then we need to be on 240 volt again to cool things down. The weather is getting warmer than it has been, too, adding to the problem. So we decided to go to the caravan park in Normanton to power up the fridge, recharge the battery, etc.

Before we left Leichhardt Lagoon, we had to empty the Portaloo. No frills at this dump point!

Shut the gate, and please call again!

But it had to be opened first, and that is the co-pilot's job.

We stocked up on groceries for the weekend – hard to do when the shops are not particularly well-supplied. We also needed to replace our port, only to find that it is not sold in this part of Queensland, in fact the bottle-shop owner showed me the register for any large purchase of alcoholic beverages which included the registration of the purchasers vehicle. The restrictions on alcohol consumption are taken quite seriously up here. Oh well, going without was not going to do us any harm....

In the cool of the evening we went for a bit of a walk around, and then had a comfortable cool night.

Inside the Burns Philp & Co building, part of which is now used as Information Centre and Library for Normanton.

Burns Philp & Co building from Normanton's heyday. The 1974 floods came to just underneath the floorboards (@ bottom of the car window)

Krys the crocodile. Lifesize model of an 8.6 metre crocodile shot in 1957. Lucky for Joke that he's just eaten....

Flood meter on the side of a building in Normanton's main street. The 1974 floods came to 8.8 metres - grass level in this picture.

Bridge across the Norman River

Joke at the Norman River

And another sunset to close the day off with...

Day 48: From Gilbert River to Leichhardt Lagoon (19/07/12)

We left the Gilbert River camp reluctantly this morning.

A last look at the Gilbert in the morning.

We said goodbye to all our new friends with a “Safe travelling” and perhaps a “See you later” if they were travelling in the same direction. One of our new friends was Graeme from Sydney, recently widowed and travelling alone. He was going to go to the Leichhardt Lagoon camp and so were we.

Our first stop was Croydon, which had been our original destination for yesterday. To get there, though, meant more of the single-lane bitumen strips. We knew that we would encounter them and that the protocol was for us to go completely on to the wide gravel verge when a road train would come along. But experiencing them yesterday and today was something else. The bitumen strip was between one-and-a-half to one-and-a-quarter lanes wide and the gravel verges much the same. What was different to our expectation was that the gravel verges dropped off quite sharply and narrowed every couple of hundred metres. This meant that we would have to slow right down to pass another vehicle. Passing a car or fellow caravanner meant taking the left wheels off the bitumen, and you could keep up a reasonable speed. Passing a road train meant virtually stopping while they thundered past. And the road trains here are long – longer than the 36 metre ones we have seen in W.A.: the official maximum length here is 53 metres (or about 4½ times the length of our rig)! Also, all the locals tore past us at top speed, meaning you had to watch for stones on the windscreen as well. We heard lots of stories of cracked windscreens on this stretch. Luckily, we did not add to the 2 we had with us from Launceston.

Another consequence of the single-lane bitumen roads is that our car and caravan now have a nice coating of bulldust on the left-hand side. This made me think of a possible business opportunity for someone in Holland. On his recent visit, Marco told us that in Holland you can buy spray-on mud for your 4x4 vehicle to show that you have been in wild, rough and tough places. On your return to Holland you can use the spray, without having to put even a scratch on the car. Well, all an entrepreneurial type needs to do is to export a couple of container loads of bulldust from anywhere round northern Australia, find a large bit of tarmac or concrete on the Dutch border, dump some bulldust on to it, add water and charge Dutch off-road types to get their vehicles all nice and dirty!

Croydon was another mining town, proud of its history and showing it well.

The road to Normanton goes through Croydon

When you camp free, you need to tank up on water. Thank you, Croydon's parks department!!

Steam engine used in gold mining

Gold miner. A bit stiff and staid, but that's because he's made of metal.

Before resuming our journey, we climbed into the hill behind town to look at the lake there. On our way back to the main road we came to a lookout  which showed the entire town and the enormous flat plain behind it as far as they eye could see to the south and west. The hill we were on would be the last significant hill until we got to the Gulf of Carpentaria, 220 kms away.

There were trees here which looked as if they were in spring blossom.

Croydon lost at the edge of a vast plain stretching to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Our stop for the night was 24 kms short of Normanton – next door, in this part of the world! Halfway there we crossed the railway line and stopped for lunch.

Our lunch stop was at a station called Black Bull Siding on the Normanton - Croydon railway line.

The railway runs alongside the road, half on one side, half on the other.

It was called Leichhardt Lagoon Camp and is part of a cattle station. It had hot and cold showers and clean dunnies (wc in Hollands J ), but no power.

Dunnies and showers. Very basic, but clean and efficient. A nice touch was the open construction: you had free air drying in the showers and no smells in the dunnies! There were warnings in the dunnies to close the lid after use. Open dunnies attract frogs, and frogs attract snakes...

There was a lagoon with water lilies and a large variety of birds, including the first brolgas we have seen. We could not swim in the lagoon, as it was connected to the Norman River and was occasionally visited by salt-water crocodiles. In fact, we had to sign a form saying we understood that swimming and camping here was dangerous, and that we would not hold the owners responsible!

And yes, there was another sunset!

The light fades over the lagoon

We retire to our caravan to watch the last light

Our evening view.