Flinders River

Sun 27^th July 

I wanted to go to Burketown, Mick wanted to go to Normanton. One map said it was mainly dirt to Burketown, the other said it was mainly bitumen. We stopped at the Burke & Wills Roadhouse, where the turn-off was, and asked. The owner and another woman, who said she was a cook at one of the properties out there, both said the road was sealed all the way, so off we went. It was quite a good road and bitumen. We stopped at Gregory Crossing and had lunch. At the free camp area was a high pressure hose, and people who had just come in from Lawn Hill were washing their cars and vans. Our next stop was Burketown which is quite small, but calls itself the Barra Capital.

 

 There was a roadside stall selling “wild caught fresh fish”, so we stopped and got some barra and salmon. Also there was another young couple. When she walked by, I couldn’t tell if she had any undies on or not. All she had on was a very brief (and loose) bikini top (two triangles really) and a see through lace skirt that just touched her hips. Eventually I saw the string up her crack. After I had done all this investigation, I looked across at the fish bloke ad Mick. They were goggle-eyed. Then the fish bloke realised that I had spotted them perving. We all had a good laugh.

 

 We continued out of town to Leichardt Falls. It was really beautiful, although it was just a series of gorgeous pools covering a large area, and no water travelling between them. We could see where it goes though and could walk up to the edge. After some discussion we decided to continue on and camp out a bit closer to Normanton. That’s where the road turned to dirt. Luckily the grader must have been through recently, so the tops had been knocked off the corrugations and it wasn’t too bad. Karen Navman had no idea where we were and kept trying to send us south in the wrong direction and to do u-turns. The map wasn’t very clear either and there were no signposts, so we trusted my sense of direction and the fact that the road was wide and fairly smooth.

 

It was getting on in the afternoon and we were trying to find the next camping spot when we had a blowout on the van – in fact the tyre shredded. Just what we needed! Eventually we got it changed, and covered in dirt and very hot, sweaty and dry we continued on. By this time there were lots of kangaroos on the road, there had been wandering cattle all day, and even a huge brown snake. We saw lots of brolgas and flocks of green budgerigars. Just as the sun was starting to sink, we got to the Flinders River and found a camp spot on the side near the causeway. There was a warning about estuarine crocodiles, so there will be no sleep walking tonight. As the sun went down, there were birds everywhere a big pelican swam over to check us out and we saw big fish jumping out of the water. What an idyllic spot.