Leave it to the birds!

We had a day to spare, so spent it partly at Karumba- the nearest place to Normanton on the Gulf of Carpenteria (See map attached). Just 70kms down there following the Norman River, and it is the cheapest place to buy petrol in the state! Don't ask me why the most remote place in Queensland should have the cheapest petrol, in Normanton it is $1.74 a litre, in Karumba just $1.45. Even round Cairns it is $1.49.

What's here then? Hundreds of boat trailers, lined up in a special car park,, while their owners are out fishing in the bay, or on the Norman River.

Well- I couldn't beat them, so thought I would join them, and I got out my expensive rod and reel ($27) and tied on my very expensive new lure ($17) and cast into the river from the shore. One hour later I had caught nothing but more sunburn, wet feet from the wash of the boats going up and down the river, and a great dose of boredom.

In the meantime a little boy, seeing my lack of success, took pity on me and gave me some live bait, squid. I didn't want to squander it there- more than likely I would have lost it to a log on the bottom of the river, so we decided to return to Normanton where I knew there was a special bridge just for fishing that I could use. I got out the handlines, much stronger for the 55cm barramundi I was going to catch, (smaller ones we have to put back!) Full of enthusiasm I dangled my squid in the water waited- and waited- and waited. Eventually I pulled it in- to find that the bait had gone. Hmmmm... try again. Several squid later I gave up- the red claw crabs had beaten me again. Ah well, let the pelicans have the rest of the bait!

So today we moved on to Burketown. On the way we stopped to see the Burke and Wills memorial, the most northerly camp that the  ill-fated 1860 expedition made before their venture to find the Carpenteria Gulf. They never saw the gulf, swamps, mangroves and rivers full of crocs stopped them and they had to return to this camp defeated. They made their way back towards Melbourne, from whence they had started, but never made it there either, all but one of the expedition died on the return journey. A tragic story, of brave men who gave their lives in the cause of discovery.

As we travelled along the Savannah way, over grassland and through huge stations with hundreds of cattle grazing, we came across numerous birds, in particular birds of prey. We were fortunate to come across a wedge tailed eagle, which we managed to photograph,many kites, and little eagles. They were taking roadkill, of which there was a lot, mostly taking off as we approached and wheeling around overhead until we had passed on. 

We crossed many rivers, mostly bu bridge or causeway, but the odd one by ford, until we came to the Leichart River, where a couple of nice waterfalls fell into a lovely pool below the road. As we crossed the causeway, just about fifty metres wide at this time, we could see the scars of the torrents in the wet season, when it is almost a kilometre wide, and totally impassible. We saw a photo of it like that,, it is unrecognisable from what we saw today!

Burketown is our destination for today, a small town with one pub, a couple of shops, and a a caravan park. It used to lie on the Albert River, indeed ships could tie up at it's dock, until a flood a number of years ago moved the river two miles out of town. Nature is a wonderful thing!

Rockin' rollin' ridin'.....

for five hours- on a train ! Once a week, on a Wednesday, the old Gulflander winds it's way up from the coast at Normanton to the goldfields of Croydon, and once a week, on a Thursday, it winds it's way back down again.

It's just about 100 miles, but as the train has a maximum speed of twenty five miles an hour (and even at that I was dubious about getting off alive!)

The track is 120 years old, and the engine itself is 60 years old. She's a beauty however, lovingly restored both mechanically and decoratively, inside and out.


The engine, a six cylinder 102 horsepower Gardiner Deisel, is immaculate, polished daily! The interior, marroon leather, was  restored and recovered just a couple of years ago, so she looks really good.

Wish I could say the same about the track! severely bent in many places, sunken in others, or sometimes both at the same time. The heat, the sandy base,( no ballast here- laid straight on what was there before after a little levelling!) and the ravages of time and burrowing goannas are starting to show a bit.
At the time it was laid, 1891, it was revolutionary in that it was the first track laid on iron sleepers, wooden sleepers have to be replaced after three years because of the termites. Many of the original sleepers are still doing duty, but some, in salty areas, are being replaced by galvanised ones, in between the old.
They were made in Glasgow, good old British engineering, but better still- the rails were made in WORKINGTON!






As we rocked along many animals were scared off the track, at one point about 15 feral pigs shot across the line, and several large goannas similarly ran into the long grass before I could arm the camera.

Our driver,Tony kept up a running commentary and gave us many interesting facts about the history of the railway, it was originally intended that it go south 350k to Cloncurry to bring the copper up from there for loading in Normanton, but when gold was discovered in Croydon they changed their minds. Since then it has run continuously, kept really for when the road was impassible during and after the wet season. Now of course the road is bitumen, so it is almost entirely maintained for tourists. I say almost, as it is the very last mail train running in Queensland, delivering mail to two outlying stations once a week.

At Croydon they are rebuilding a steam train, originally working the line in 1902, and when that is workinh the line will attract even more tourists, I hope they upgrade the track to take it!In the meantime Anne did the washing, tidied the car, and eventually drove the hour and a half down to Normanton on her own- she tells me she enjoyed her day, but I can't believe she didn't even miss me!

I shall leave you with a couple more photos from the trip, it was certainly exciting - even just for the thrill of not knowing if we would get to our destination!

Lava tubes and Cumberland Gold.

A short bus ride took us to the Lava tubes this morning- a series of caves formed some 200,000 years ago when a nearby volcano erupted, and spewed lava over 100 miles down creek beds and any depression in the ground that it could find. Tubes formed when the upper lava cooled before the lower lava, which continued to flow. Since then much of the roof has collapsed, but in places it has left large caves which as they are basalt do not support stallagtites or stallagmites as most caves do. However many roots grow down through the roof, and where it has fallen the rainforest has taken hold in the depressions.

One of the few animals we have not seen here is the dingo, but today that was rectified. As we were driving out of the park he was there, just at the side of the road,and we managed to get a good shot of him.
He has rather a bad reputation nowadays, in the seventies he is reputed to have taken a baby (Azalia) from a tent at Uluru, as well as attacked other children. Be that as it may, he is the only wild dog that belongs here, and he is protected now.

Seeing the Name Cumberland in relation to a chimney that we were passing alongside the road between Georgetown and Croydon we just had to stop. The chimney is the remains of a gold crushing plant that Cornish miners had built during the gold rush here. How the name Cumberland came about is not recorded, but the area was a sizeable town in the 1880s when the whole area was being mined

Most of the day today we have been travelling on single lane roads with graded verges. This means that should a vehicle aproach from the other direction we have to put our nearside wheels off the road, as he does also. However if a road train approaches, we make damned sure that we give him plenty of room and get off the road altogether!
But the views are terrific, a photo on here cannot do them justice, at times we could see for many miles from the tops of hills.

Tonight we are in a small country town called Croydon, just one pub, a shop and a filling station. Oh and a campsite. However it has a nice heritage area, and I took off to look at it while Anne was sorting the washing. I did the old police station, with a jail in the rear, the police Sergeants home, and then went into the old court house.

Unfortunately, while I was listening to a case  the warden came along and locked up with me inside! I banged and shouted, but he probably couldn't hear me over the case going on. Eventually I had to open a few bolts to get out, and catch him up as he was locking up the jail a few doors down. Nearly another Bailey adventure!

Something very special tomorrow to report- don't forget to look in!

Betty's day off

Yesterday was Betty’s day- she had a good wash, a new windscreen and a full service. She passed with flying colours, the engineer said that she is in excellent condition after her 2500km trip up the Cape, and ready for the next challenge.

All this takes time, and while she was off the road we spent an hour or two in Mereeba, a pleasant town about 60kms inland from Cairns. While there we met two lads in their twenties, who are doing what we are- but on bikes! They had already gone from Sydney, south to Melbourne and Adelaide and west to Perth, north to Broome and through the Gibb River, then across here. What a feat! They cycled about 100kms a day on average, stopped wherever,   and are now nearing the end. One of the lads said he would like to cycle home to the UK, and was considering it.

They are raising money for Cancer Research, and we made a contribution, we have his facebook page and will look them up as soon as we can.

We spent an hour in the local museum, very good, an old rail ambulance was on show, as well as many pioneer exhibits. I was particularly taken with an old Post Office and telephone exchange, and an exhibit about tobacco growing and manufacture in the are.

We met Judie for lunch, she is a lady we met up Cape York and spent a bit of time with her and her husband. He has just gone off to the UK for a couple of weeks to visit his parents, so she is alone at the moment. The time passed quickly and soon we were to pick up Betty again.

Preparations then for our next adventure- the

Savannah Way

. Revictualling and refueling this morning, we set off West towards the Gulf of Carpenteria, some 800kms across the base of Cape York Peninsula. (See Map attached).

We stopped for lunch at the Millstream Falls, reputedly the widest falls in Australia, (they like their superlatives here!) and we came across a very cheeky Laughing Kookaburra.

 I put my sandwich down for a second and she was down and stole the ham from it. Not interested in the bread- just the meat! She sat around us until we had finished, we made sure she couldn’t get any more by hanging on tight.

Tonight we are Undarra, in a weird “swag tent” as there was no other accommodation left, not even a camp site. It is school holidays here at the moment so everywhere is pretty full. We enjoyed a campfire sing song with a guy called Sreve Case, he plays guitar and harmonica rather well and we had a pleasant hour there before bed.

We are here because there are massive lava tubes nearby, and tomorrow at dawn we are to be guided on a two hour walk. Watch this space!

More than the odd nightmare!

Leaving Cooktown on the Bloomfield track we at first wondered what all the fuss was about. We had been told that this was extremely bad, yet we went for the first half of it almost half on bitumen, and the gravel road while narrow in places was just great. Then we came to a roadside notice which ended Tea Coffee 100Mtrs. Hmmm... maybe we hadn't seen the worst then. On a couple of ks and we took a short walk and came to a river with a lovely waterfall. This is the Bloomfield River, crocodile ridden as are all of them on this coast, but beautiful.

We crossed the river on a low bridge, which no doubt gets completely flooded in the wet, and will be impassable, but at the moment the river runs quietly under it.

Then we found out why we had been warned. The road narrowed even more, and when vehicles came towards us one of us had to find a place to pass- ofetn with a cliff at our left. Hills- we have seen nothing like them! Although they had been concreted for safety they were at least one in three, and one was one in two and a half. (40%). The first one we were taken by surprise and Betty was unable to change down in time, and she suffered. Lights flashing on the dash, struggling in the wrong gear, she almost gave up as she climbed over two humdred metres. We had to give her a rest to cool. Mea Culpa!
She recovered quickly, but there was more to come, almost as bad. No photo can show those hills, but can show some of the terrain we had to cross, huge rocks, narrow lanes, steep drops to our left without barriers, just trees, cliffs to our right. A nightmare! And the downhills were just as bad- one in three for two or three hundred metres, first gear job with the brakes hard on, in four wheel drive. That was undoubtably the worst road we had been on in this area.
We arrived at Cape Tribulation- so called because that was where Cook's troubles had started, just off the coast here he had run aground and taken three days to get off again, only to find he had a big hole in his bottom, which he bandaged with a sail.

Anyway, we had booked the most lovely cabin in the rainforest, at the Ferntree Rainforest lodge, which would rival the hotel we had in Mallacca. The manager had only been there a month, and he was aware that the whole place needed a little TLC, but we think it will be wonderful when he gets hold of it. Certainly it was a very restful place, and we had a good breakfast this morning before we set off.
Hah we had time to spare we would have stayed there a lot longer- we would reccommend it.

Yesterday afternoon we walked through the rainforest on a boardwalk, we were fortunate to see  two wild pigs and yet another casuary. The casuary was the fourth we had seen, there are only about 1200 in the whole of Australia so we have seen a lot more than our share, we have met many Australians  who have never seen even one.

We also witnessed tree ants building a nest- they fold two leaves together and glue them, the leaves are about eight inches long and the ants only half an inch. They work as a team- marvellous!

Today we travelled through the Daintree National Park, an excellent bitumen road which winds it's way along the coast down to the Daintree river. We had a view of the mouth of the river and of Kimberley Point from a viewpoint on the road. It was a lovely run and eventually we came to the river itself, which we crossed on a ferry.
We decided to talk a trip on a solar powered boat up the Daintree River, during which we saw a great number of crocs, some just a few months old and about twelve inches long, some two and even three metres long, male and female. We saw where a very large and agressive male had taken a bite at the boat- not very encouraging! But a very good trip, during which we saw quite  few birds, including a kingfisher, an Astralian Dart and another large bird I can't remember the name of! I'll leave you with a few pictures of the wildlife- tomorrow Betty is due to have here service and a new windscreen so it will be a busy day for her!

Cooktown

James Cook, the finest mapmaker and navigator of his time, was the first European to sail up the east coast of Australia in 1770, and, unaware of the Great Barrier Reef, his ship Endeavor stuck fast near what is now Cooktown. After freeing the ship they made their way into here to carreen the ship and repair her. Had they not been able to Australia's history would have been very different.

His naturalist, Joseph Banks, collected botanical specimens and recorded kangaroos and many other strange animals, reporting them back to an incredulous Europe.

He climbed what is now known as Grassy Hill, which for many years now has contained a lighthouse, and observed the landscape around, a view for many miles up the Endeavor River. Cook stayed here some 77 days, meeting local Aboriginees before setting off home with accurate charts of the coast.
We visited an excellent Cook Museum, housed in a 19th Century convent, which contained cannon and anchors that Cook had to throw overboard to lighten ship dusring his stranding.

It was over 100 years later that another white settlement took place here, as a result of the discovery of gold on the Palmer River. A small community took shape, growing rapidly to service the goldfields which were inaccessible by road at that time. After the gold petered out the town survived on tin mining, and timber and cattle exporting.

The main street of the town paralels the Endeavor River for most of it's length, and the historical charm  still prevails, many of the buildings date from the mid 19th century, despite many devastating cyclones, and a fire which destroyed part of one side of the road. Last night we ate in a restaurant that was built by a Norweigan furniture maker called Seagren, built as a workshop and home above in 1880, and still as good as the day it was built.

There are many spiders in Australia, many with a bite that can cause a great deal of pain and illness such as the Redback and the Black Widow which eats the male after mating. We came across one today which while painful is a little less venomous, but rather decorous, with yellow stripes across it's back. about four inches from end to end of it's legs, it sits motionless on it's web until some unsuspecting creature touces it and it then moves rapidly to tie up the prey and consume it. Fascinating.

We move on tomorrow down the coast, offroad again for a few miles, by the time we get to our destination tomorrow we will have completed over 2300 kms (1500 miles) on gravel roads and 4 wheel drive tracks in the past ten days, quite a feat for a 14 year old car!

Old Laura Homestead.

Leaving our campsite early we made our way south along the track, which in places was pretty poor with corrugations and rocks. Some of the river crossings were quite bad too, in places over the wheels, but as usual Betty coped.

At one point we crossed a river with a huge bull with very large horns watching us intently- I don't think we would have had the nerve to stop had he not been a little away from us. He was almost pawing the ground- we were ready to take off if he had moved towards us!

Further on we came to Old Laura Homestead, a historically significant site through it's association with the establishment of the cattle industry on Cape York Peninsular in 1879.

The lease was granted to a young Irishman  for the princely sum of £8-15 for an area of 50 square miles, and by 1894 the area catered for 8000 cattle.

The present buildings were renovated in 1986 similar to the buildings which were there in 1908, and many old photographs show the buldings as they were.

Apart from the main house, there are the aboriginal quarters, a large workshop and a meat store protected by wire gauze.In the middle of the yard was an old vehicle almost rotted away, this was purchased new in the forties, the first vehicle on the station. North of the station were the stockades for the animals, and the river running close by provided the water for them and the human occupants alike.

Tonight we are in Cooktown, and from what we have seen already we will enjoy tomorrow looking around before we move on to the Daintree forest. I'll leave you with a sign seen on the road today.....