We survived the bovine horror of Mary Kathleen and woke pretty darned tired with lots of light upon us … yes we’d slept in BIG TIME.
With 500km to go and nothing much to see on the way it wasn’t a real big deal.
Kel grumpily said goodbye to our friendly neighbours and we got settled on the road. There was a monument to Burke & Wills along the way, so the kids got a history lesson. Everybody settled in for the long drive.
We skirted around Cloncurry, which also hasn’t got a lot to offer the visitor, and headed North once more.
The road was quite good. A few patches to dodge, but nothing much to worry about. Soon enough we got to the Burke & Wills roadhouse and another history lesson. I don’t think the kids quite get how the early explorers managed to get from Melbourne to Karumba way back then. It’s pretty darned mind boggling to do it today, let alone when there weren’t roads, services or especially pubs 😉
After Burke & Wills the road gets decidedly worse. The road becomes single lane for significant portions. This means that the road trains coming the other way have absolute right of way and you’d best get well off the road and let them past with no reason at all to get off the bitumen. Otherwise you will be showered in a hail of golf ball sized rocks.
This makes for a tiring drive since you have to slow down for every approaching vehicle and look for a potential spot to get right out of the way. There’s lots of traffic too so you’re always speeding up, slowing down, dodging stuff, going on and off the bitumen, waiting for a tyre to pop ….
Despite all that, we got to Normanton unscathed. We did the worlds quickest setup and got stuck into the all important beers and pool time. Ya see, going North again meant that all of a sudden it got bloody hot again too!
Luckily the park has a huge 25m pool and an artesian fed spa. A very friendly park. We’d like to stay here for a bit longer but the lure of Cairns is pulling us East. We won’t make it there tomorrow, but getting there is our current goal.
A local lad, Wazza, took a shine to young Hannah here and was after her affection in a big way.
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