Spent Friday night at Mt Surprise in a seriously spooky caravan park run by an old zombie-ish, no facial expression, woman. Yikes!!!! However, to alleviate the nerves, we went to the pub for dinner. No tap beer and only box Chardy (and when I said I’d have a glass of that, the bartender told me I was brave!) but dinner was delish and so huge we got a doggy bag and had the leftovers the next night.
Left early the next morning for Undara. The road was sealed all the way. Bliss! We saw a beautiful bustard
and a daddy emu with his two kids
plus a couple of snakes and a fabulous wedge tailed eagle.
The resort is lovely and well set out. It has made good use of many old train carriages which have become accommodation, admin offices and the restaurant.
Toured the lava tubes in the afternoon. Quite spectacular.
Great camping area set in bushland with lots of birds and walleroos hopping about.
Ran into 3 guys we’d met at Cobbold and joined them for drinks around the campfire that night – but that’s another story and not for publication.
The tour guide said we might see some Rufus betongs around the campsite at night. I went for a walk looking for them but no luck. Kirsty heard a noise in the night and thinks she saw one under our table. Darn!!
One of the best places I’ve been to in Australia was Chambers Gorge on El Questro station in the Kimberly and now Cobbold Gorge is right up there with it.
The road in is dirt but not too badly corrugated except in parts. Unfortunately I cracked my windscreen when a numbnut drove past at a hundred miles an hour. Did a couple of 4×4 creek crossings but nothing too deep or long.
The resort at the gorge is well set out beside a small lake with free kayaking. There’s a restaurant, bar, infinity pool, spa and swim up bar.
We obviously arrived at “celebrity” holiday time as Bob Katter was there as well as Josh Thomas the comedian.
Took off that afternoon on a 3 hour tour. A little bus took us to a stop near the water
where we boarded a very quiet motorised flat bottomed boat to cruise the gorge.
After the boat trip we did a bush walk up to the top of the gorge where we crossed a glass bridge (after putting surgery socks over our boots to stop scratching on the glass).
And, of course, there’s one in every crowd.
A walk back to the bus, played “spot a croc” on the way and our fabulous 3 hour tour was over.
Spent the night at Normanton CP. Quite a nice little park with a half size olympic pool! Absolutely bliss in this hot weather. And just over the road from the (in)famous Purple Pub.
Then on to Karumba the next day. We stayed at Karumba Point which is the perfect spot for viewing the incredible sunsets over the water, well the Karumba Sunset Tavern was anyway.
The Gulf is suffering from a locust plague at the moment. They’re everywhere. Giant brown grasshoppers. I’ve never seen anything like it and, of course, they’ve stripped the vegetation including the palm fronds.
We had been booked on a sunset cruise in the Gulf but got dumped for a busload of tourists. Not happy at all!!!!
While Karumba is pretty enough, if you don’t fish then there’s little all else there to do.
So back to Normanton for the night where we read about the largest croc ever killed and, might I ask, by whom? A woman of course!
Up early the next morning to catch the Gulflander train. It’s an historic narrow guage train that runs from Normanton to Croydon – a total of 95 miles which took a staggering (and very uncomfortable) 5.5 hours!! Shoot me now. The first hour was ok but after that it was pretty darned long and very very boring.
Seems like such a long time ago that I last wrote. So much has happened.
Gregory River has to be one of the best (free) camping spots I’ve been to.
We had a great time. Met lovely people, went for walks, swam in the river (with the freshies) 🐊
had beers with other campers at the pub
(and a couple of locals)
and watched the abundant bird life. We were lucky enough to be camped in front of a tree with two Whistling Kite nests. It was fantastic to watch the kites going back and forth feeding their babies.
We spent 3 wonderful days there including attending the Dawn Service in the Memorial Park. Different!
Then on to Lawn Hill. I’d heard various reports about the condition of the road from “it’s bloody terrible” to “take it easy, watch the dips and you’ll be ok”. Yes, I was a bit apprehensive but
it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I had anticipated. In fact, we had driven on a worse road from Hughenden to Torrens Creek. From Gregory through to the Century Mine turnoff was pretty good. From there to the national park it was ok but getting quite corrugated in parts and some ripper dips that needed lots of caution and a speed of around 20kph. The worst part was in the national park where it was very corrugated and very rocky. Our camping neighbours at Lawn Hill had shredded a tyre on the way in and were waiting on the guys at Adel’s Grove to get them another. I didn’t want that happening to us.
We had booked into the NP for 6 nights. The campsite was lovely, well set out with very clean amenities which included flushing toots and cold showers. The showers were bliss after all the heat and dust and, although cold, were more body temperature because of the heat.
Due to some heavy rain and flooding, there was only one big walk that was open as the bridge to the other walks had been damaged so off we went the next day to the Indarri waterfalls
and lookout
Ran into Greg Grainger and crew filming a Travel Oz special. They asked if it was me up top on the lookout. Think I may have a cameo!
I was keen to kayak on the Gorge, however, to do so meant driving in and out of Adel’s Grove which has now been given to, and is being very badly run by, the indigenous locals. That meant driving 10k each way on pretty bad rocky road (so 40k all up), paying $104 ($50 deposit and $54 charge) to get the paddles for a measly 2 hours of kayaking. And, truth be told, the water was pretty slimy and uninviting. We gave it a miss.
The sky at night was quite spectacular and we were lucky enough to have a full moon.
Having done all we could do at Lawn Hill we decided to cut our stay short and move on.
I had heard people rave about Lawn Hill (and Kirsty was one of them) but, to be frank, I was a little bit disappointed. It was certainly beautiful but I wouldn’t rate it in my top ten. Glad I went though.
So let’s head to Normanton. Along the way we saw horses just at the boundary to Lawn Hill station.
Spent the night back at the Burke and Wills Roadhouse where a beer and burger was a real treat. It’s a really good stopover with fuel and cafe and some shady sites for $10 a night, clean toilets and showers plus some super friendly dogs who insisted I throw sticks for them. The only negative was the mosquitoes. Billions of them!
