After surviving the corrugations back to Georgetown without further mishap, we made good time to Mt. Surprise where we stayed for two nights in a small campground optimistically called “Planet Earth”. It had several large mango trees as well as some flowering trees….. ….. and on the second night we enjoyed a plate of barramundi,… Read more

Leaving the Gilbert River camp rested and refreshed we headed for Georgetown, with a stop at a curious high brick chimney which we could see from the road. This turned out to be the Cumberland Chimney, which with a large dam built to provide water to the mill and batteries, are the remains of the… Read more

We didn’t want to but it had to be done … turn our faces and Grandy’s bullbar away from the north west and start to head east. First stop after Normanton was Blackbull, just a siding really, originally named Patterson’s Siding in 1890 when the railway was opened, but renamed because “a black bull was… Read more

I thought Karumba deserved a blog to itself. We did not tow Westy the caravan there, as we had heard all the camps were full, and we were happy at the Normanton camp with its wide spaces and good facilities. As it turned out we could probably have squeezed into one of the Karumba camps,… Read more

On the way to Normanton I was keeping a sharp eye out for the Flinders River, which Geoff and I had crossed in the MGTF in 1971 with some difficulty. (See Blog 141 – An Earlier Tour of the Outback).   What I wasn’t prepared for was the enormous new bridge – and the size… Read more

Leaving Cloncurry (again!) we knew we couldn’t make it to Gregory Downs via the Burke & Wills Roadhouse before nightfall so spent the night at a free camp by the roadside, in company with about 5 other caravans. We nearly missed it, we couldn’t find the free camp we were looking for but eventually came… Read more