Cooktown

The run into Cooktown was easy on the very good Mulligan Highway; the only trouble was a small chip in the windscreen from a passing tip truck. We checked into the Cooktown Caravan Park and proceeded to catch up on some washing while awaiting the arrival of our friends Brian & Petra. Once the chores were done we ventured into town to seek out a venue for dinner for tomorrow night, we wanted something special because we would be celebrating our 43^rd wedding anniversary. A booking was made at the Pier restaurant for a balcony table overlooking the Endeavour River. A little looking around and some souvenir shopping filled in the rest of the afternoon. It was nice to see the great improvements made at the Grassy Hill lookout since our last visit. It is also quite significant to think that when you are there you are standing on the exact spot Captain Cook stood in 1770 while trying to look for a way for his ship through the reef.

Trevethan Falls

Sue & Petra enjoying Trevethan Creek

Thanks to the good information from the very friendly and helpful owners of the caravan park the next morning the four of us ventured out to Quarantine bay and then on to Trevethan Falls. This spot, accessible only by 4WD, is pretty much known only to the locals and is definitely not in any of the tourist brochures. After an enjoyable couple of hours viewing the falls and swimming in the crystal clear creek it was time to return to town to stock up on provisions for our next morning departure for Cape York. We then dressed ourselves up a little for our anniversary night out, the sunset the views; the restaurant and the company were first class and made our night very special.

Endeavour River Sunset

Anniversary Celebrations

Atherton Tablelands

Back in the Atherton Tableland we visited many of the most popular attractions and re-visited some of our favourites like Millaa Millaa Falls, Malanda Falls, Yungaburra and the Curtain Fig Tree. We did all this while staying in Mareeba at the rodeo grounds where a powered site is only $16 per night. We find at this time we are in need of tyres for the caravan but after visiting all three tyre retailers we found there were none available, with only one retailer offering to order some in. A type of tyre and price was agreed upon and we were to expect them in to be fitted on Monday so this left us a few days for more sightseeing.

Millaa Millaa Falls

Malanda Falls

Curtain Fig Tree - Yungaburra

Peterson Creek - Yungaburra

When we had had enough of Mareeba we de-camped to Granite Gorge approx. 30 Km’s out of town to set up in the camping area for the night. Apart from the scenery and the challenging walks in the boulder-strewn gorge the major attraction at Granite Gorge are the Black-Footed Rock Wallabies. These normally shy and elusive creatures are in abundance and quite used to human interaction. They will readily approach you in the hope of being offered some food (fully approved pellets from reception – of course)

Granite Gorge

Granite Gorge

Black Footed Rock Wallaby

Leaving Granite Gorge on Monday morning we travelled back into Mareeba to do some shopping while waiting for our tyres to be fitted. An unexpected phone call from the tyre dealer was not what we were waiting for. We were told the earliest we could have them fitted was 2.00 P.M. So will filled in the time having a bit more of a look around town and having lunch. We arrived at the tyre dealer at 5 minutes to 2 and backed straight in but to our great annoyance we found that he had ordered in the wrong tyres. With no other choice we headed out of town and on to Mt. Molloy on the way to Cooktown where we spent the next two nights at the delightful Rifle Creek rest area just out of town. This great free camp has flush toilets and cold showers and each night we were in company with 20 – 30 other rigs. If you are ever in Mt. Molloy you must try the burgers at the café in town. They have been voted the best burger in the world – twice. They are huge and are made freshly on the premises and at $9.50 for the Mexican Burger it is a real big meal.

Cobbold Gorge

The Savannah Way is taking us back east with two overnight stops at Gilbert River and Cumberland Mine before arriving back in Georgetown for three nights. A booking was made for a day trip to Cobbold Gorge about 90 Km’s from Georgetown. Our original intention was to take the van out to the gorge and camp there but we were advised against it because of the severely rough unsealed road. We must say that this time the advice was well founded although the really bad section was only about 13 Km’s long between Georgetown and Forsayth, the rest was either sealed or fairly good gravel (gravel about 50 Km each way)

A View From On Top

A Side Gorge

Your visit to Cobbold Gorge is comprised of a small group three hour conducted tour. Starting off in a 4WD bus we are taken on a network of rough and narrow station tracks with a crossing of the wide sandy Robertson River before reaching the parking area near the gorge. Then an interesting guided walk up onto the escarpment with plenty of stops to learn about the native vegetation and it’s uses by aboriginal people. We also inspected the lonely grave of an early settler and businessman named Corbett. Then on to the top of the ridge to look down into the deep narrow gorge, before returning to the creek to board a small electric powered boat for a cruise on the narrow waterway. The boats are specially designed to fit up the gorge and in the narrowest sections there is only about an inch of clearance on each side. Thanks to ‘Scruffy’ our skilful and informative guide we only gently touched the rock wall on a couple of occasions.

Cobbold Creek

The gorge is so narrow because it is quit young - about 10 Million Years Old

Cruising the Gorge

Upon returning to the Cobbold Gorge ‘village’ we had a delicious lunch in the café followed by a cool refreshing swim in the magnificent infinity pool – wow how we wished we could have a pool like this in our backyard – it even has a swim-up bar serving cocktails in the evenings. Refreshed and invigorated we were ready to tackle the rough and dusty drive back to Georgetown.

Our next pool - we wish

Karumba

The major goal of our trip, well this part anyway, is to go to Karumba on the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria and meet with our good friends, Petra & Brian and Cas & Ian. It was a pleasant surprise to meet up with them in Normanton while waiting for our Gulflander train trip. They were heading out to Leichhardt Lagoon on the Norman River for a few days camping prior to going to Karumba and so we undertook to meet them there after out train trip.

Sunset - Leichhardt Lagoon

Reflections - Leichhardt Lagoon

Karumba is only about 70 Km from Normanton and the journey is easy on good roads taking you through vast open flat country interspersed with wetland areas. Even though the wetlands are quickly shrinking in this very dry period there was still plenty of birdlife to observe as you drove. Being avid observers of birds we were delighted to see large numbers of Brolgas, Sarus Cranes and Jabiru (Black Necked Stork) amongst flocks of Egrets, Stilts and many other wading birds. In fact in all our travels we could not recall seeing such large concentrations of large waterbirds especially when just driving along. More surprising still, was that Brolgas calmly walked around the streets of town.

A Nice Feed

 The main attraction for visitors to Karumba is the fishing and without good fishing I don’t think too many people would venture here. Unfortunately at the time of our visit the fishing was rather poor, in fact, quite dismal. Obviously the fact that the area did not get its annual monsoon wet this year had a bearing on the fishing but, there were many other theories as to why they were not biting. According to locals and regular visitors it was; either too hot or too cold, the tides were too high or too low, the water was too hot or too cold, there was too much moon, or too little, the wind was too strong, or not strong enough – you get the idea, there are nearly as many theories (excuses) as there are fisherman.  The first day of fishing was quite promising, Sue (not a regular fisher) caught 8 fish, unfortunately, even though they were all good-sized fish they were all just under legal size (minimum size limits are quite large around here). I am afraid to say that the fishing success just went downhill from there, although we did manage a couple of reasonable catches of mud crabs.

Al, Baiting the Pots

Brian Enjoying the Catch

We had initially booked for two weeks but considering the poor fishing and the persistent very high temperatures we reckoned we had had enough after one week but we must point out that we really did enjoy the company of our friends and other things like watching the colourful sunsets over the gulf while eating fresh fish & chips washed down with a lovely chilled wine. Now we are travelling back along the savannah way towards the east coast.

Viewing the Sunset

The sun sets into the Gulf

Karumba Sunset

Normanton

The main purpose of our visit to Normanton was to travel on the ‘Gulflander’ train however the town has many other interesting attractions. There are 30 historic sights listed on the town walking map. Normanton is the second oldest town in the Gulf region and the administrative centre of the Carpentaria Shire. Some of the sights we marvelled at were the original town well in the middle of the main street and the giant crocodile statue next to the shire offices. Called ‘Krys – the Savannah King’ this faithful reproduction of the largest recorded crocodile ever hunted is 8.63 metres long and was estimated to weigh around 2 tons and is authenticated by the Guinness book of records. Normanton also has a number of Pubs, most notably the Purple Pub in the main street and the Albion Hotel just a couple of blocks away. The Albion was built in Croydon on the 1880’s and moved to Normanton in the early 1900’s. The original bar is now hanging on the wall to preserve the artworks on it, painted by charismatic Australian artist, Percy Trezise in the 1950’s.

Normanton Town Well

'Krys the Croc'

'What a Monster'

Normanton once served as a port town on the Norman River and was the main access point for the Croydon gold rush of the 1880’s. With the improvement of the roads and the efficiency of road transport the steamers and barges no longer travel to Normanton and now there is only a small remnant of the town’s once busy wharf. The first Europeans to visit the area were the explorers Burke and Wills in 1861. Their camp 119 is situated just 30 Km from town.

Percy Trezise Artwork - Albion Hotel

Percy Trezise Artwork - Albion Hotel

Shire Offices

The Purple Pub

The 'Gulflander'

Our long fascination with trains, especially old ones, almost demanded that we take a trip on the ‘Gulflander’ from Normanton to Croydon. The official name for the line is; the Normanton to Croydon Railway, but a lot of people say it is a railway from nowhere to nowhere because it is totally isolated and not connected to any other part of the rail network. Construction of the line began in July 1888 and was completed in sections reaching Croydon on the 20^th July 1891. The line uses a unique form of construction using native earth and rock filled special steel sleepers that are then laid directly on the existing ground level with no embankments or ballast. This method was pioneered by a clever civil engineer named George Phillips (1843-1921), who designed the sleepers and the method of bolting the rails to them. There are three main reasons for this construction method, to keep construction costs down, to defeat the Gulf’s voracious termites and to prevent damage from the annual wet season floods. With the rails virtually at ground level the floodwaters simply pass straight over the top with very little disturbance. In fact of the 151 Km of line, side drains and culverts protect less than 4 KM. The efficiency and effectiveness of this design is borne out by the fact that most of the existing track and sleepers are the originals from the 1880’s. Back in 1891 steam locos hauled the train four times a week between the two towns but steam was discontinued in favour of less costly rail motors, with the last steam train running in 1929.

The 'Gulflander'

Today the Gulflander runs just once a week, leaving Normanton on Wednesdays and taking around five hours, including stops, to cover the 151 Km trip to Croydon. The train then stays in Croydon overnight and returns to Normanton on Thursday, again taking around five hours. For us this was a very memorable experience made even more special by the dedicated and friendly staff headed by Ken the officer-in-charge who is; the driver, mechanical engineer, tour guide and all round nice guy. He is very ably supported by Mark the porter/guard and of course Liz in the station gift shop and refreshment room who takes the bookings. The entire staff’s dedication is evident in the immaculately maintained train and station. It would have to be the cleanest and most well maintained train we have ever been on, even though the current rail motor was built in 1950 and the carriage of about the same vintage.

Gulflander Gallery

Croydon Station

Heading Down The Line

One of many Special Interest Stops

Our Fabulous Crew - Ken on Right - Mark on Left

Normanton Station