Hi all, I have a bit of catching up to do. Who would have thought I wouldn’t get time to do our blog. After all, it’s not as though we are holidaying or anything. 🙂
Day 11 16 July 2016 Karumba Queensland.
It didn’t take us too long to get up and out on the road by 7:30 this morning and heading towards Normanton and finally Karumba.
The road from the Roadhouse to Normanton was patchy, with intermittent stretches of single lane “two-way” road. There were also areas where they are doing upgrade works on the road. Luckily we only met a couple of other cars and vans going the other way at the single lane stretches. The protocol up here in the areas of single lane road is that Road Trains have right of way, and seriously, who is going to argue with them.
There were lots of small wallabies, large Wedge Tailed Eagles, big flocks of galahs and the occasional cattle on the side of the road. About 30km south of Normanton a small wallaby met its maker as it first ran away from the road and then decided to see who would win taking on our car. It was a horrid feeling as it passed under the car and then the van! There was nowhere to pull over to check for damage, so I drove on keeping an eye on the temperature gauge. Luckily for us there was no real damage done. Our number plate is a bit dented and that is the total damage we can see.
As we approached Normanton the skies started to clear a little. We stopped in Normanton for a stroll down the main street. Normanton was at one time the main port for the gulf, with many historic buildings from the 1800’s still standing, the old Burns Philp and Co building being the most prominent.
We then drove onto Karumba, another 70km north. We got into Karumba at about 11am and were quickly settled into our site for the next 3 nights. The caravan park we are staying at is out on “The Point” away from the main part of town. So we drove into town and got some fuel (it was about 20-30c a litre cheaper here than at 4 Ways) and called into the visitors centre. The woman in the Centre was a great help. We got info on things to do around town and on the road we are going to be taking east, its condition and highlights along the way to visit as we travel.
We drove back to the point and had fish and chips from “Ash’s @ the point” for lunch at the beach area. We couldn’t go passed it when we saw it and the food was delicious.
Later in the afternoon we went back into town to the local school as they were having their annual fair/fete. We were impressed with the number of people attending the fair and the set-up they had. Cake stalls, raffles, show bags, lots of hot food and at least 3 jumping castles.
After we returned we booked in for a Sunset cruise and I booked in for a fishing charter tomorrow morning.
We then headed down to the Sunset Tavern for tea and to watch the sun set. A great way to wind down our day.
Day 12 17 July 2016 Karumba Queensland.
Karumba is a small town in the bottom right hand corner of the Gulf of Carpentaria, population of about 700. It is the only town in the savannah part of the gulf that has a beach that can be reached by road. It used to be the hub of the Gulf prawn fishing fleet, but when they started processing their catches on board that all fell away. It looks as though there are about 12-15 prawn trawlers still based in Karumba.
We stayed at the Sunset caravan park at the mouth of the Norman River, a great park very convenient to all the touristy bits, the beach, the boat ramp and the pub! There are lots of tourists up here, all the caravan parks are full with people and their boats. You sort of look out of place if you don’t have a boatloader on your roof!
I started my day early, and as a consequence so did Deb. 🙂
I had booked a half day fishing charter, with Kerry-D Charters, and had to meet them at the boat ramp at 6:45 for a 7am start. I walked over there and met up with a small group all waiting for the charter. It was cold, somewhere around 10C and a bit windy and very cloudy. They had 2 boats full for the morning (8 fishers per boat). We headed out into the gulf and stopped by a small sand island, where we geared up and wet our lines for the first time. A couple of just legal whiting got caught but it was pretty quiet. So we headed further out and trawled as we went, but again no luck. All the rain and cold weather they have had lately had made the fishing generally, and unseasonably, poor.
Rather than waste any more time out in the gulf freezing out asses off, we were taken up river to a few sheltered spots and we started to get bites and a few fish were caught. The main catches were Grunters and Jewel fish, with a few small bream. A couple of other fish types were caught that I had never seen before and whose names escape me. So far I hadn’t caught a thing and didn’t even look like getting anything, it was approaching 11 am and the charter was due to end around noon at the boat ramp!
We moved again, further up stream. My first cast I got a strong bite but no fish. It wasn’t long and I’d hauled in about 7 fish with 3 keepers, all bream, the biggest around 32cm. I was happy. It turned out I got the 2 biggest fish of the morning. We eventually got back to the boat ramp around 2pm. Our skipper and business owner, Paul, stayed out longer because we weren’t getting much and he didn’t have another charter for this boat in the afternoon. If anyone comes up here I can recommend this local company to look after you.
Deb was waiting at the ramp when we got back (I had texted her). It was good to see her there and she was impressed with my catch. Deb had had a quiet morning in the CP doing the washing, apparently it took her 3 hours to do 3 loads. 🙂 She also managed to get into the local market up at the pub, it was mainly local handicrafts and second hand things.
We had a quiet afternoon, and then went up to the pub for a drink and sunset, before heading back for bream and salad for tea.
Day 13 18 July 2016 Karumba Queensland.
We woke late this morning, sometime after 7:30!! The first thing Deb did was Kiss me and wish me a Happy Birthday. 🙂
As we lay in bed I was handed a carry bag and I started opening cards from within it. About 6 cards later, and getting right into this birthday thing, I opened my present from Deb. It was a box of “Happy Sox”. I laughed when I saw them and was so happy to get them. She also gave me a bracelet from the market, she got herself a matching one as well. (We have been looking for something along these lines for a while and Deb thought these will be just the thing until we find something more permanent. I love my woman. 🙂
After breakfast we drove into the main part of town, about 5km away, and went to the bakery and got some cakes for later. We seem to be patronising almost every country bakery we have seen along with all the other grey nomads, and most have been winners. 🙂 On the way back we called into a fish shop and got a couple of kilo’s of freshly cooked prawns. Some for tonight and the rest into our freezer for later.
When we got back we went for a bit of a walk along a nature trail just out the back of the caravan park. It was about 4km long and went back to the main part of town through the mangroves. It was a very nice walk, but we did get lost, or probably better said, we lost the track. It wasn’t sign posted at all and there were so many side trails. Anyway we enjoyed our time and saw some wildlife, birds and a few small wallabies.
We walked back, and around the back of the caravan park, and saw a sign post for the trail we thought we were on!! Go figure huh, that explained a lot about how we “lost” the trail.
We went to Ash’s for fish and chips for lunch. (Fitting really, 12 months ago we lost a friend and work colleague, Ash, in a motor cycle accident who was much like a son to us. He would have enjoyed the fish and chips :-), and it felt in our own small way we were honouring him)
We took our lunch over to the beach and ate it at a park bench overlooking the water, delicious.
In the afternoon I grabbed my fishing gearing and went fishing for a couple of hours. Deb stayed behind and washed the car and the van. And she did an amazing job of it as well. I got 3 bream about the same sizes as I got on the charter fishing just alongside the boat ramp. These went straight to the freezer for later in the trip.
I washed my fishing clothes and Deb downloaded her paper while we waited for it to finish. Later in the afternoon we walked to the pub and had a drink before going back to the CP before catching the sunset. The sunset was magnificent. Lots of clouds just above the horizon lit up in amazing colours as the sun disappeared for the day.
We enjoyed our prawns and a cheesecake birthday cake, was a relaxing, enjoyable birthday.
Day 14 19 July 2016 Karumba to Mount Surprise Queensland. 520km
We got away at 8am. We had been warned that the roads between Croydon , Georgetown and Mount Surprise were a bit dodgy. Lots of single lane areas with very soft muddy shoulders, and there were large sections of road works. Add to this it was “Roadtrain” territory (and those suckers get up to 54m long around here)and they get right of way, and don’t slowdown for anyone!! It was shaping up as an “Interesting” drive.
We got to Croydon without any issues. Lots of wallabies around the sides of the road, and some of them weren’t roadkill, yet!
From Croydon the road got progressively worse, with long stretches of single lane 2-way road with very brief “over-taking” 2 lane road stretches. Luckily for us we didn’t come across any road trains and most of the cars coming the other way were met on the 2 lane road or just at the end of the single lane areas. We did have to go on a dirt detour road for a couple of km. It was muddy! And on Deb’s clean car and van!!!! I am glad it had dried out just a bit, it could have been very slippery if it was raining.
We fuelled up in Georgetown and then had lunch in the van, a prawn wrap was amongst our delicious lunch. Yummm.
The road from Georgetown was similar to the last stretch we did without the road works. But add to it cattle roaming free either side of the road and absolutely crazy 4WD drivers who didn’t slow down an inch as they passed us on gravel roads and near blind sections of the road, this last 147km was interesting for all the wrong reasons.
We were glad to pull into Mount Surprise and the Bedrock Caravan Park. Our hosts here were absolutely delightful and told us Mount Surprise had had over 20mm of rain today, and it was only 2:30pm! We were given one of the “Less boggy” sites and then guided there by one of the workers. It was raining but he rode a bike down to our site and made sure we were OK with it.
We have booked a tour tomorrow morning to see the Undara Lava Tubes. I was told by a friend in Adelaide not to miss these if we got the chance. The lava tubes are the result of volcanic activity here that saw about 23 cubic km of lava flow over the land here at a rate of over 1000 cubic meters per sec. The lava stretches over 90km to the north and 160kms to the NW from here. It all sounds very interesting so we will see tomorrow.
We spent a quiet afternoon relaxing sheltered in the van from the rain. Deb has booked us in, in Innisfail for a few nights after we leave here. That will be our first time on the Queensland coast this holiday.
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