triplog

Last weekend we headed out of Townsville and up into Paluma Range National Park, camping first at Crystal Creek, then at Lake Paluma. The ranger there told us about a family of platypus (platypii?) on the other side of the lake, so at dusk we canoed over - and managed to see them. They’re very shy little creatures, we had to be completely silent and just drift the canoe - the footage above was shot on the second night we went out to see them.

You know those picture-perfect, tropical clichés? Sunset over the ocean through the coconut palms and all that jazz? Well, that’s what we’re living with at the moment.

Bec had been told of a great pub with a beer garden overlooking the water in Karumba, on the Queensland side of the gulf. It’s a tiny fishing hamlet a mere 70kms detour off the Savannah Way, just past Normanton, and since 70 klicks is no obstacle in the pursuit of a cold beer and a good view, off we went.

We got here yesterday afternoon just in time to see the sun sink below the horizon, then turned our attention to the pub menu and more beers - when in Rome etc etc, so XXXX on tap it was, with massive slabs of steak*, copious prawns and chips. As it turns out, this place really is a fishing mecca, with a thriving prawn fishery as well - this news of course made Janes day, so lunch today was a mountain of fresh prawns, and tomorrow we’re hiring a tinny to try our luck at fishing.

* Yes, if anyone was paying attention there, I’ve cracked and fallen off the vegetarian bandwagon (to mix metaphors). And in case you’re wondering, I like a steak bloody - still mooing, if needs be

Our first stop in Queensland was Lawn Hill National Park, home of Lawn Hill Gorge; a real, live, swim-able, canoe-able oasis in the middle of a lot of croc country. For a small donation to the Royal Flying Doctors, you can hire inflated inner tubes to float around in, which became the perfect way for us to explore the gorge with Matt and Bec despite only having one canoe - simply throw a rope out the back and tow.

We camped at Daly Waters pub last night - its about 275kms south of Katherine. Jane and I got here late in the evening (again), we stopped off at the Katherine swimming pool for Jane to swim some laps and I went for a skate at what was a pretty well built skate bowl (but full of rubbish and leaf litter).

Daly Waters is a bit of an Aussie pub institution - established by the Pearce family in the 1920s as a rest stop for travellers on the north/south route, it experienced a boom in the 1930s when it actually became an international airport - it was used as a refuelling depot for international flights heading for the east coast via Singapore. During WWII it became an Allied airbase and was used as a staging post for American bombers. Post-WWII it entered a bit of a decline before re-emerging on the tourist and truckie routes as a nice rest spot - having cold beer on tap can’t hurt either. The current pub was built in 1930 and is now heritage listed.

The photo above shows a flock of rainbow lorikeets having a shower in the spray from the sprinkler - they were hilarious, all screeching when the sprinkler passed over them, then flying off into the trees to shake themselves off, before coming back for another round.

Here’s a couple of shots from our canoeing trip up Katherine Gorge… yet another instance where the canoe has been pure gold. We went up to section 4 of 11 - it’s divided into sections separated by portages.