Karumba calling

The vannies who come to Karumba (population 600) on the southern corner of Gulf of Carpentaria seem to be interested in one thing only: fishing.

Perched atop their 4WDs are the biggest boats legally permissible. Every morning the van park trembles to the clatter and rumble of exodus to Gulf waters.

At the Sunset Hotel beer garden.

They’re usually back in the afternoon when the wind gets up. Some seem to do pretty well, catching barramundi, salmon and other species.

We prefer to buy our fish and prawns at the co-op in Karumba proper about seven minutes drive from our park.

Sunset at Karumba.

So far we’ve pigged out on barra at $19 a kilo and banana prawns at $12 a kilo. We’re about to try the tiger prawns at $15 a kilo, which are just coming into season. The best thing about the seafood is that it’s just so fresh.

One of the highlights is to watch the sun set from the beer garden of the Sunset Hotel. Every view is different, depending on cloud formations.

Brolgas outside our van park at Karumba. Note the bougainvillea.

But if you do happen to buy lunch at the pub you need to guard it carefully as the large kites that float in the thermals above will swoop down and snatch if before your very eyes. I saw this happen to one shocked pommie tourist.

We’ve noticed that many of the vannies are regulars from the south who reconnect here at the same time every year. Some are quite elderly; all seem to have a lot of fun.

Isolated

It’s pretty isolated. You can’t get mobile phone reception unless you have a 3G phone, although there are landline public telephones. We could only get an Internet connection at the tiny Karumba library, where the fees are fierce.

There’s no TV reception (except at the pub), prompting a frustrated neighbour to rush out and buy a $700 satellite dish (‘coz I like me sport, mate).

The biggest building in Karumba is the huge Oz Minerals processing factory. Everything else is Lilliputian by comparison.

The water is so shallow that the port entrance has to be dredged and the leads go out as far as the eye can see. Most of the land around Karumba is tidal flats.

Birdlife comprises brolgas, kites, white and black cockatoos, galahs, parrots, pelicans and other sea birds, and tiny doves that scavenge around the park.

The foreshore has large rock formations made up entirely of sea shells, as if some ancient hands had gathered them up, kneeded them with dough and baked them in a giant oven.

We made it here in three hops after leaving Gordonvale south of Cairns in mid-afternoon. We took the Palmerston Highway from just north of Innisfail and stayed overnight at a camping ground in Ravenshoe on the Atherton Tableland charging $6 for a powered site and $3 for an unpowered site (that we parsimoniously occupied).

We braved the freezing night temperatures to walk to the local pub to watch the Broncos RL team beat St George and were up early to head west via the Savannah Way, staying overnight at Croydon.

Road kill

As the name suggests, the Savannah Way goes through grassland populated sparsely by trees and carved into enormous cattle properties.

Club Hotel, Croydon.

There’s a same-ness about it, but if you’re observant you can notice interesting changes in tree species as you progress west.

The road is being continuously upgraded and there are some 110-kmh stretches. Some parts are very narrow and you have to drop your speed and move over for oncoming 50-metre road trains.

Well-preserved 1928 Bedford at Croydon museum.

The saddest thing is the amount of ‘road kill’, although we don’t feel sorry for the number of feral pigs that meet their doom on the edge of a bull bar.

Most people haven’t heard of Croydon, but it was once a goldfield that attracted thousands of miners including a large number of Chinese, and supported 36 pubs.

We were most impressed by the local museum and effort made to preserve local heritage buildings.

A long way between drinks

We camped in 34-degree heat at a spacious site with power but no water. One of the most garrulous people I’ve ever met camped next door. Carol sent me to bed when I fell asleep during one of his long-winded stories.

The distances we are covering between petrol stops are quite long – so far up to 150km (Georgetown to Croydon and Croydon to Normanton), but we have a 200km sector on our next big leg south between Normanton and Burke & Wills Roadhouse.

I found Normanton, which you pass through en route to Karumba, very interesting.

Purple Pub at Normanton.

It’s where the Burns Philp conglomerate was established in the late 19th century and the original trading house is now an information centre.

Normanton was also a staging point for rescue missions trying to locate the ill-fated 19th century south to north overland expedition undertaken by the explorers Burke and Wills. During WWII it was a staging point for Catalina amphibious aircraft.

We’ve been told most of the Indigenous people from Karumba have moved to Normanton because Karumba is 'bad business'.

Carol with a model of the biggest crocodile shot in the region. It was over 28 feet long and weighed two tonnes.

Normanton is the only place on this leg of the Savannah Way I can get autogas (we are on dual-fuel). Predictably, they charge $1.10 a litre (49 cents in Sydney), but hey, whose complaining?

So far we haven’t had any serious hitches. The only scare was when Carol plugged in her hair curlers, causing an electrical shutdown. Thankfully we are well protected by a circuit breaker and power was restored with the flick of a switch.

Our next destination is the Burke & Wills Roadhouse and then Mt Isa.