Outback Meets the Ocean

We have now come back to the ocean.   From Cloncurry we have come up the Burke Developmental Highway through the Burke and Wills Roadhouse where we stopped to have some breakfast.  You wonder where they get some of these names from.  Well in 1860 two men, Burke and Wills led an expedition of 19 men with the intention of crossing Australia from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, a distance of around 3,250km, at the time most of inland Australia had not been explored by non-indigenous people.

Along the Burke Developmental Highway about 100km of it is one lane bituman, lucky for us no road trains came along today as it is a road train route.  Only a few caravans and a motorbike.

Next stop was a small town called Normanton, had to fuel the bikes up again.  Normanton is a small cattle town in the Gulf Country of northwest Queensland on the Norman River.  The town's population is about 1500 with 60% of whom are indigenous. 

We talked to a lady there that also rides motorbikes and she gave us some tips on where to go etc.  We told her we were headed out to Karumba.  She said last year she went out there and was stuck there for 8 weeks because of flooding.  Dam I don't think it is going to rain tonight.  Well coming out here you can see why, even though they have not had much rain over the last Wet it is still really low lands and wet, cattle stations in the wet, lostof different water birds, brolgas, jabirus, white ibis etc.

And our destination for the night is Karumba which is a small town at the mouth of the Norman River and is right on the coast in the Gulf of Carpentaria.  The towns economy revolves around fishing, and the Karumba port services the Century Zinc Mine.  Zinc slurry is piped into the port area, it is processed then goes onto a ship which transports it to another much larger ship out in the gulf and then it goes to Belgium.  It looks like heaps of people come here for the fishing as there are boats everywhere, you can catch as we witnessed, barramundi off the shore and also salmon.

We are staying in the End of The Road Motel which is right on the beach and the Sunset Tavern is right next door for a meal and a drink.

River mouth of River Norman

shell locked in sediment  like concrete

just before sunset

Sunset at Karumba

reminding we are in Croc territory

Welcome to Normanton

These kids posed for the photo with the croc

Burke and Wills Roadhouse

3 trailer Road Train

A bird that was hanging around while we were eating

100,s termite mounds on floodplains

single lane bituman highway

River ford