Rick and Rae's Travels: Sat, 27th to Sun, 28th August

It was a really warm night for sleeping, but fortunately the traffic on the highway was minimal. When we rose at 8am on Saturday it was already up to 21 degrees in the van so we knew we were in for another hot one. We continued north to the Burke and Wills Roadhouse which turned out to be just a fuel stop in the middle of nowhere. The road we were travelling on from Cloncurry to Karumba in the north is classified as a Developmental Road. After the Burke and Wills Roadhouse and for a distance of about 150kms the road narrows to one lane only in sections of 10km and 20km at a time. Fortunately, there isn't much traffic so passing and overtaking doesn't create too much of a problem.

When we arrived at Normanton it was 37 degrees and being a Saturday afternoon there wasn't much happening! We called into the Visitors' Centre and were amazed to see photos taken around 1974 when the town was totally flooded. A short distance down the road is a replica of Krys the croc - the biggest croc ever shot by a woman. Click on the photo below to enlarge for the full story of Krys.

Leaving Normanton we passed lots of small creeks that were slowly drying up, leaving only small puddles. There were birds everywhere making the most of what was left of the water, especially Brolgas. They would be hoping it wouldn't be too long before the wet season would start again and the creeks would start to flow.

We arrived at Karumba at around 3:30pm and had a look at all three caravan parks. We had been advised earlier not to stay at the park near the water as the people there supposedly weren't friendly and were a bit 'clicky'. After looking at all the parks we decided this one was in the nicest area, so we would risk it. All the parks were pretty well packed out, but we were able to squeeze into a shady site where we had mobile phone and internet, but only poor TV reception. It turned out that the couple parked directly behind us were from Cobargo so we joined them and their neighbours for a few drinks later in the day.

On Sunday we were woken early by all the fisher 'people' heading out fishing. Almost everyone in the park has a boat as they come here to catch the elusive Barramundi but often settle for a lot of Blue Nose Salmon, which we have tried and found to be very tasty. There are groups of people in the park who stay here for 3 months every year and have permanent site bookings.

We walked a short distance to the waterfront to check out the Sunday morning markets and had a coffee overlooking the beach. While there, we watched as a fellow lifted his crab pot from within the mangroves and carefully removed two mud crabs.We then went for a drive around the town and ended up having lunch at a seafood cafe on the Norman River. We also bought some tasty prawns for dinner for $15 per kilo. After lunch we returned to the air-conditioned comfort of our van as once again it was 37 degrees. I did a bit of work on this blog and Rick went for a quick swim in the pool, before returning to watch footy.