GREGORY RIVER

BURKE and WILLS ROADHOUSE

NORMANTON

 

 
  • Departed Gregory River Friday

  • Travelled to Burke and Wills Roadhouse

  • Travelled to Normanton

  • Camped overnight Friday east of Normanton at Leichhardt's Lagoon 

 

THANK YOU FOR BEING PATIENT WHILE THE PICTURES LOAD


Day 17

 

Friday 26th August 2005

Click on the pictures for larger versions

 


Camp for Night 12 - Sunday 21st August 2005 Camp for Night 13 - Monday 22nd August 2005 Camp for Nights 14-15-16 - Tuesday 23rd to Thursday 25th August 2005 Camp for Nights 17-18-19 - Friday 26th to Sunday 28th August 2005 Camp for Nights 20-21 - Monday 29th to Tuesday 30th August 2005  

 


After the usual packing up, cleaning the campsite and making sure the caravan was connected securely we left Gregory River. I really enjoyed our stay. The greenery of the river surrounds soon was just a memory as we headed east, past the Leichhardt River, back over our tracks towards Burke and Wills Roadhouse.
Making headway was very slow as we were driving into a stiff wind. Minutes turned into hours as we made our way past Burke and Wills Roadhouse and headed north towards Normanton.

 

Around halfway between Burke and Wills Roadhouse and Normanton we stopped at a roadside rest area - a shelter with a table under - and had lunch with the flies.
There was nothing exceptional to remember in this section of the trip, just kilometres and kilometres of straight, narrow road with trucks roaring south. Most were courteous but a notable few drove down the middle without slowing and good luck if you didn't move completely off the road and let them by.
I learned very quickly to move one wheel of the van and caravan completely off the bitumen.
Very early, after seeing a truck in the distance, I slowed and looked for a section of road that wouldn't tear the tyre walls as they left the bitumen surface and fell to the gravel below. Then I hung on with my fingers crossed, hoping the caravan didn't start to sway from the drop off.
Luckily no damage was done over the whole trip, something that is a mystery to me as there were some shocking road edges in places.
 

 

As it was getting late in the afternoon when we approached the Normanton area, I decided we'd book into the camping spot we had picked from the Camps Australia 3 book - Leichhardt's Lagoon. It was some 18km out of Normanton on the road to Georgetown but the name attracted me for some reason. As it turned out, for a commercial campsite, it was in keeping with our idea of camping.

We were getting short on fuel so I decided to drive past the Georgetown intersection and go on into Normanton. The service station attendant gave us info about the town including where the local library was located. He said we could find a lot about the town there.

We drove through town and visited the library. As we looked through the brochures I noticed they had computers for use for Internet.
As it was nearly closing time, I asked the woman running the show if they opened the next day, Saturday. She told us that they did and helped us with other questions we had. She was a lovely woman and couldn't do enough to help us. Among other things, she told us there was a Laundromat up further and also where I could get blood pressure tablets. 
As we needed to do banking, we decided we'd go back into town the following morning, do the washing, track down the tablets and generally have a look around.

On the way out Judy noticed a Butcher Shop she'd been to on her previous visit. We went in and after a LOT of chatting we walked out with "tea/dinner", some beautiful fresh steak and sausages.
The owner had such an array of food. He told us he supplied a lot of food to Mornington Island, so he had a great range of products other than meat. The building was one great "coolroom". He had the refrigeration covering the "freezer rooms" plus the area for him and the customers. It was great just being in there out of the heat.
Because I love prawns, I bought a frozen pack, thinking we'd work our way through them. Those prawns plagued us all the way to Cairns. Judy and mum DON'T like prawns so they were left for me. After I ate what I could, I had to leave them in the bottom of the freezer.
As I'm really sus about "off" prawns, I decided to leave them for "bait" to Judy's disgust, as the smell was leeching into the freezer!

We left town and drove out to Leichhardt's Lagoon to book in. It was basically a paddock surrounding a tree lined lagoon. We drove in and saw a lot of caravans nestled under the trees. The "best" spots were taken but it still looked inviting. We drove up to the manager's office and were welcomed by a friendly woman who pointed out where we could setup and what amenities there were. After chatting to her about where we had come from, to our amazement we found she and her husband were "babysitting" the park and were from Nanango!

As the sun set we set our site up and settled in for the night.

 

 



 

Last Updated : 28/01/2012 01:21 PM +1000