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