Awesome Aussie Life: Lawn Hill here we come

Day 5 (Tuesday 7th April 2015)

Woken by a neighbourhood rooster, we once again packed up and headed off. We were intending on getting on the road early but decided to take the time to look around Croydon first. We drove out to Lake Belmore and stopped at Diehms lookout. Then back in town we stopped at the old court house and police station which are now set up as museums with lots of the towns history on display.

Heading on our way again, this time planning to go all the way to Kingfisher Camp. Unfortunately our plans went awry with a bit of vehicle mishap. We deviated briefly into Normanton to get some supplies, re-fuel and take an obligatory photo with Krys the giant crocodile, before continuing on. We also stopped at the Leichhardt River crossing to have some lunch. We were (luckily) only about 10km out of Burketown when Brett noticed the front end felt a bit floaty. Stopping we discovered the front passenger side shock absorber mount had cracked right off the chassis. The shock absorber was just flopping around and luckily hadn't done any damage to anything else. We unbolted and removed it altogether before driving (much slower) into Burketown looking for a welder. Luckily, Nowland Engineering was open and welded the mount back onto the chassis. "Can't give you any guarantees - it might last 5 minutes or it might last 12 years"..we were told. Brett will have it fixed properly with high-tensile weld when we get back but hopefully this will hold. It appeared to have an existing crack - possibly a casualty of our Cape trip a few years ago.

As it was late afternoon already and Kingfisher Camp was still a few hours away, we decided to stop overnight at Burketown. Staying at the caravan park, we were soon joined by the same couple who had camped beside us in Croydon the night before. We enjoyed a good chat and a few drinks into the evening.

Lake Belmore, Croydon

Overlooking Croydon

The old police headquarters, now museum - Croydon

The old courthouse - Croydon

Krys the giant croc, Normanton

A dead freshwater crocodile

A strange contraption on the banks of the Leichhart River

Removed shock absorber

Broken mount

Our campsite in Burketown

Day 6 (Wednesday 8th April 2015)

Apart from several neighbourhood dogs barking all night, Burketown was a redeemable sort of place - perfectly adequate for an overnight stay. Still feeling a bit uneasy about the stability of the shock absorber, we farewelled the other couple (who were heading to Darwin) saying "if you see us pulled over on the side of the road, stop because we might need help". Twenty minutes later we had stopped to empty the diesel in our gerrican into the Rodeo's fuel tank when who should drive up... lol

The drive into Kingfisher Camp was fairly good, a little rough in places (all dirt), but we just took our time. We arrived early afternoon to find we had the place to ourselves. A terrific spot, green grass and lots of trees and wildlife around. Bordered on one side by the Nicholson River and a small creek on the other, we got our fishing gear out and wet a line. There was a boat ramp and a small boat that guests could hire which was initially offered to us at half price because we were the only ones there. The caretakers explained it had a new outboard on it which hadn't been started yet. Long story short, Brett got the motor started but it wouldn't go into gear so the caretaker gave us an old outboard to try. By that point the caretakers had said we could use it for free because we'd spent so much time trying to get it to work, however after ages playing with it and Brett couldn't get that one to run properly either so we gave up.

No luck with the fishing, although we did spot a small freshwater crocodile in the creek. By late afternoon, we were surrounded by wallabys, lots of birdlife, a few cows, and "Malcolm" the giant goanna. The mishaps continued, with me in the process of chopping up firewood, ending up with a log landing on my foot which caused a huge swelling like I've never seen before. I was to spend the next couple of days limping around and my foot turning a shade of green.

The amenites were reasonable with hot showers. Dingoes howled in the far off distance but otherwise we slept very well....until we were woken by the sound of very loud grass munching and found the cows were now only a few metres from the tent. By morning they had all moved on.

This trailer aint going nowhere - An extreme case of tyre burnout

Our campsite at Kingfisher

Day 7 (Thursday 9th April 2015)

Upon checking our yabby pots we found we'd caught a huge yabby...that is one huge yabby. We kept him for awhile but when we didn't catch anymore we let him go. We'd left 2 fishing lines in overnight and found one was snagged but the other had a small catfish. 1-nil to the girls!

We had made the decision to bring the legs for our camper on this trip, so we could detach it from the back of the ute and leave it when we wanted. This turned out to be a good decision today because we decided to do the drive out to Hedley's gorge. We headed off, the rodeo pleased to be free from about 2.5 tonne on its back, taking several hours to get there and back to camp. It was an interesting drive, very rough and overgrown in places, we even passed a fully loaded cattle truck negotiating a narrow creek crossing, but we made it to the end of the road. There was some very pretty scenery with tall rocky escarpments either side of us in places. We then had a 1km walk into the gorge. There wasn't a lot of water because it's been very dry across most of North Qld this year, but there was enough for a swim. We also spotted more small freshwater crocodiles.

We stopped to collect more firewood on the way back to camp, which led to my 2nd mishap with timber and resulted in a very swollen right hand. I was officially taken off firewood collection duties at this point. Back at camp we found we had another couple who had joined us at the camp grounds. Two more cars followed later in the afternoon. We had a bit of restless night, not because of other campers but because the cows visited us again around 3-4am. This time a huge bull got a little too close to our awning ropes. Brett, fearing it might get a leg caught and take off dragging us behind him, called out to scare him off. It worked and they left us in peace again.