Gismo Queen and her King

Day 11 - Normanton to Burketown

We were on the road again after breakfast (I can't help singing that song at least once a day - suffice to say Greg is over it by now) and stopped in at a few shops - the Normanton Traders which triples as the hardware store, a supermarket and a fuel station; the BP; and if we didn't already have bread, would have gone to the butcher to get bread (as you do).

20km from Normanton the bitumen ended and we were at Burke and Will's last campsite, #119. They made it further north from here to the Gulf but died on the return journey.

While here, we had morning tea and let the tyre pressures down in anticipation of the next 123km. The road was pretty good, very wide and much easier to travel on with the pressures down. We passed several other caravans and quite a few road trains before the traffic eased.....until the road works. Section after section was being graded so they send us off on a detour along the road, which most of the time was pretty ordinary. Also along the way, we had to contend with cattle.
The anthills at times resembled cities of their own.
Eventually, we crossed the Leichardt River, all 150m of floodway and parked on the bank for lunch. Most of the river bed is rocks and was quite dry, but they say where the river drops down, the waterfalls can be quite magnificent. We first had lunch under a shady tree (as it was up to 31C by this stage), then pumped up the tyres (bitumen for the remaining 71 km into Burketown) and then wandered down to the river. The falls weren't falling but it is still quite beauitiful.

We easily completed the remaining 71km into Burketown, which is renowned as the barramundi capital of the north. Apparently, the caravan park does an award winning barra burger but there were no sites left so we have found ourselves a patch of picturesque ground at the bore (an artesian bore from which bubbles 68C water) and will walk to the recently rebuilt Burketown Pub for dinner.

posted by Tracey @ 6:15 pm