Karumba (sorry we haven't had internet for a while)

We spent just over a week in Karumba. Karumba is a really nice little town. It has a permanent population of only 600 but from around April – October it swells to 2000-3000. The majority of these extras are all “Grey Nomads” who move to Karumba and set up home in the caravan parks for the winter. They go there every year, plant vegetable gardens around their caravans and enjoy the great weather, fantastic fishing and watch amazing sunsets over the water every night from the pub’s beer garden.

For most of our time there we couldn’t take our boat out because we were waiting for the new part to arrive. But we enjoyed those days learning and practicing throwing the cast net to catch bait (you are not allowed to use a cast net in NSW, so we had never used one before). We tried fishing off the banks but without any luck. Aidan and Cody enjoyed playing games of footy on the beach each day and swimming in the pool.

While fruit and vegetables up here are very expensive and terrible quality the one thing they do have is cheap and great seafood, we got stuck into the prawns for just $10kg!

Once our boat was fixed we got out on the water. Even though everyone was saying the fish were off the bite due to the winds which had come through and a drop in water temperature, we still had a great couple of days pulling in fish. We were all pulling in plenty of Bream, Cody landed a good sized Grunter (which was a very tasty fish) and Aidan hauled in a nice Jewel Jew fish. We also got a couple of extremely tasty mud crabs! So life was pretty good for a few days eating fish, mud crabs and prawns for 4 nights in row!

Another very interesting thing we discovered up here is that there are not the standard 4 tides a day (ie 2 high and 2 low tides all 6 hours apart). Up here most of the time there are only 2 tides a day, but sometimes there are 3, sometimes 4 and once or twice a month there is only 1 tide in a day!

Karumba - The Gulf of Carpentaria

We are currently at Karumba right on the Gulf of Carpentaria. We are waiting for a new regulator for our boat to arrive (post is pretty slow to here). But it is a nice place to held up for a few days.
Will upload some photos soon.

One of the greatest things we are loving about being here is seeing that it was snowing in Orange today, but we are up here in shorts and t-shirts and trying to stay out of the sun so we don't get too hot! It is a lovely 27 degrees!

Normanton

From our camp spot near Georgetown we headed on through to Normanton, which is at the bottom of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The country side did not change much from Mt Surprise all the way to Normanton. There were no houses to be seen and very rarely did we actually see the driveway for a property, just some cattle grazing on the side of the road every now and again and some birds.

The road to Normanton and some cattle we meet on the way

One of the only driveways we say - no sign of a house though!

Normanton is about the size of Canowindra – population of 1500. We were chatting to locals and found out that they have a senior footy team but no juniors. The closest town they play against is 5 hours away and the furthest they have the travel for a game is 12 hours! And we thought we have travelled for sport before! They said they are trying to organise a junior footy team but the biggest issue they are facing is that Junior Sport requires the kids to produce a birth certificate to prove their age – but a lot of the kids up here do not have a birth certificate! The local school is predominantly aboriginal kids – of the 27 kids in the class only 3 are not aboriginal. The great thing is that they said they think they will be able to get an exception on the birth certificate issue so that the local kids can play sport in a competition, in the meantime they are enjoying the training sessions.

We had a great night at one of the local pubs here, watching Australia beat N.Z and then Country beat City in the Rugby League! The boys got into the spirit of the night putting southern cross tattoos on their faces. We even managed to win 2 meat trays in the raffle they held (it was a shame we had been to the butcher that day!).

One the river at Normanton - the stars on Aidan's face is a Southern Cross Tattoo from watching Australia v N.Z.

We headed out on the river here for a day’s fishing (and croc spotting). Not long after putting the lines in the water Aidan pulled in an undersized Barramundi, followed by Cody jagging the unluckiest little catfish in the world (he hooked him through the tail). Aidan then hooked and landed our first legal size Barra – 60cm. It was a very exciting moment.

Aidan with his great Barra - it was great for dinner that night!

Then of course – the boat motor played up (anyone who owns a boat knows the hassles and frustrations of owning a boat!). So we started to head back to the boat ramp, but the motor ended up stopping (the battery was dead) so we paddled into the shore and climbed out, found a tree to sit under and wait for someone to come past and tow us back! Nothing like sitting up on the banks of a croc infested river for a few hours!

Georgetown

After leaving Atherton we headed back out on the Savannah Way, we stopped and went and looked at Millstream Falls, which are apparently the widest falls in Australia (nice but not as great as we had expected – Australia obviously doesn’t have very wide falls!). Next we stopped at Innot to see the thermal springs – this water comes from the magma core up through faults in the earth and bubbles up at the surface in the creek at Innot. The temperature was once recorded as being as high as 71 degrees. We discovered how HOT the sand got around the water’s edge! Interestingly the pools of water next to the river were very hot but the river was cool.  From here we drove out past Mt Surprise and headed towards Georgetown, camping the night off the side of the road at a little place we found about 10kms East of Georgetown.

Millstream Falls

Yungaburra & Atherton

We left Lake Tinaroo and headed into Yungaburra to go and see the Curtain Fig, which is apparently the most photographed fig tree. This was an impressive tree but we did not think it was as good as the Cathedral Fig. From here we headed into Atherton, where we visited the Crystal Caves. This was a great experience. You had to wear a safety helmet with a head light and you explored man made caves which had crystals (collected from all over the world) on display, some of the crystals were embedded into the walls to look like they were growing there. It was a great set up and we saw some incredible looking crystals.

Curtain Fig - Yungaburra

Inside the cystal caves



Inside the cystal caves




Inside the Cystal Caves




Cody and Aidan with  the worlds biggest Amethyst Geode



Pyrite - it forms naturally like this!

Typical crystals we saw

Lake Tinaroo - Atherton Tablelands

On the drive up the Atherton Tablelands

After leaving Cairns we headed up to Lake Tinaroo on the Atherton Tablelands. It was a very picturesque drive and Lake Tinaroo was a beautiful place to camp as we were surrounded by water.

Campspot at Lake Tinaroo



Lake Tinaroo



On the way to Lake Tinaroo we went a saw the Cathedral Fig – WOW – talk about impressive!! This fig is estimated to be 500 years old, stands about 5 stories high, the base is over 44m in diameter (they say that if 24 people held hands around the tree they wouldn’t quite meet up) and the canopy area of the tree is over 2000 square meters, which is the size of two Olympic pools. As we said it is one impressive tree!

Cathedral Fig Tree

Jaime and the boys inside the Fig Tree

Looking up at part of the canopy

Kuranda

Our last few days in Cairns we just relaxed, walking along the esplanade and swimming and lazing around the lagoon. We headed up to Karanda for a day, checked out Barron Falls and the markets. We also went into a big bird aviary where the birds were very tame feeding out of our hands. Our favourites were certainly the Sun Conures and Macaws.... yes the phrase “Aye Me Hearty” did get used.

Cody with a couple of Sun Conures

Aidan feeding a red Macaw

A Sun Conure having a chew on Jaime's sunglasses

Michelle with a blue Macaw

Barron Falls