Day 163
Friday
9 June 2017 –
Karumba – Normanton – Croydon – Georgetown – Mount Surprise
- Archer Creek Rest Area (Camps 8 QLD #227)
The alarm was set for 7am again as we had another decent day
of driving ahead of us. We have our on the road routine down to an hour, not
bad considering I am only half awake most of the time. 8.10am and we were
making our way down the road with Karumba in our rear vision mirror.
We had to return to Normanton, which appeared fairly quiet
considering there is a public holiday in these parts for the Normanton Rodeo.
We refuelled before turning on to the Savannah Way heading east towards Cairns.
Queensland roads are giving the South Australian roads a run
for their money in the “Worst roads of Oz’ Stakes. We were travelling a major
route and yet again it reverts to a single lane, what looks like a Brazilian
has been mown straight down the middle with red gravel strips on either side. While
we didn’t pass a lot of traffic, thankfully, the trucks we did pass, peppered
us with stones. We have two cracks in our windscreen now and they are slowly
inching their way across the screen, like the push bike riders we see making
slow progress travelling the land. (Nutters!)
Croydon was the next large town we came to. It snuck up on
me, as I spent most of the morning reading to Paul from the great driving
routes of Australia, picking up ideas for roads to travel in Queensland. We
didn’t stop in Croydon, just drove on through, making the next large town,
Georgetown, our lunch stop.
The road was long and bumpy, single lane, two lanes and back
again. It constantly switched back. We were often lulled into a false sense of
security thinking we might have the single lanes beaten, only to see them
appear on the horizon yet again.
We reached Georgetown at 12.15pm, found somewhere to fuel up
and then stopped to have lunch. The maps and camps books came out to help make
a decision on where to from here. While I would have like to stay in Georgetown
to explore the Cobold Gorge Paul was keen to press on and so we did.
Just before Mount Surprise we had the Savannah Lander train
pass us by. Usually when the sign says look for trains, we do a fleeting glance
and motor on through. This time I saw the sign and then the silver glinting so
we had to pull to a stop to let the train pass.
We continued through Mount Surprise, another place I would
have liked to stop as there are lava tubes that you can walk into and along,
but it wasn’t to be this time around. A found a free camp site in the Camps 8
book that sounded reasonable and set the GPS to guide us there.
By 3.30pm we pulled into the large grassy area and pulled up
for the afternoon along with a number of other campers. Once our van was sorted
we did a wander of the creek area, Paul finding a place that looked good for
yabbies, so we collected the nets and returned to put them in.
Back at the van, we did a read up of Cairns and
picked out a caravan park we thought sounded ok and then we got dinner
underway. Paul checked the nets, but only turtles had managed to get in, so he
set them free and packed it away. We ate dinner, before Paul went to bed to
read, while I stayed up to do bits on the computer before I also made my way to
bed. 
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