We have put quite a few kilometres behind the last week and have crossed another state border: from Northern Territory to Queensland. This is our seventh and last state, which also means that the last part of our trip has begun. Good to remember that we still have two months to go…
Once we reached Stuart Highway, the famous highway connecting Port Augusta in the South with Darwin in the North, we stopped at Devils Marbles, just south of Tennant Creek. The Devils Marbles, called Karlu Karlu in Aboriginal language, is another geological wonder. Large boulders have been eroded over 1500 million years, forming a bizarre landscape of round rocks standing seemingly weightless on top of each other.
After climbing the big boulders at Tower Rock all by ourselves, we weren’t as impressed of the Marbles as we probably should. It is just not as magical with all the other tourists, the big highway close by, public toilets and drones flying over us.
In Tennant Creek we only stayed one night, filled our fridge, got a shower and did the laundry. From there we headed north to a place called Lorella Springs. To get there we chose not to follow Stuart Highway, but a smaller, more remote road, the Tablelands Highway. It brought us through a real ‘nullarbor’ plain, without anything as far you could see, only cattle here and there.
Lorella Springs is a huge 4000 square kilometres cattle station turned into a wilderness park for 4WD enthusiasts and fishing lovers. We enjoyed the warm springs at the homestead and swimming in rockpools, but found some of the tracks a bit too rough. Driving at 5 to 10 kilometres per hour, risking our tires, is nothing we enjoy too much. Our car is simply too heavy for this type of driving.
From Lorella Springs we followed the Savannah Way eastwards. This is yet another long-distance outback driving route that links Broome in the West to Cairns in the East. It joins several small towns, most of which were born of late 19th Century gold rushes. The landscape towards the border wasn’t too varied, sparse bushland for hours – what really was a lot of fun (and quite dangerous at times), were all the wild animals along the road. Apart from all the cattle (domestic) crossing our way, we saw wild horses, many birds of prey enjoying the carcasses (run over kangaroos), lizards, kangaroos and wallabys, a dingo, and even wild boar.
It meant being alert all the time, slow down and make sure they didn’t run in our way (which they often do). Just before the Queensland border we had a flat tire – it was just too many rocks at Lorella Springs! Never mind, we have two spare tires and it only meant that we reached our goal (Hellsgate Roadhouse) an hour later.
One night we spent at Leichhardt Falls, a beautiful place next to Leichhardt River, well above the river bed and safe from the crocodiles along the river bank. I can only repeat myself: the best camping is in the bush, under a million stars at night. Much better than any 5-star hotel, if you ask me!
In Normantown we stopped to do some shopping and get our tire repaired. We were surprised about this little town with streets wide enough to land a 747 on, originally service town for the cattle stations and sea port for the gold mines in the area. The roads were lined with quite a few interesting colonial buildings like the train station, an old store building and several hotels.
From here we continued to the coast. The only place where you get to the Gulf of Carpentaria on a bitumen road is in Karumba, a small town being very popular among the fishing loving grey nomads.
Dag and Robin joined a half day fishing charter and caught a lot of fish, unfortunately most of them too small to keep. But they had a lot of fun!
During the two days in Karumba we finally put our car for sale on the internet. Please keep your fingers crossed that we find a buyer!
RCD on Walkabout 