Mount Isa is a mining town reminiscent of Broken Hill. The town centre and the mine are side by side, but the belching smoke stacks here ramp up the stakes a little. It is also the last major town on the only tar road west across the northern half of the country. Consequently, it is overrun with tourists heading north for the winter. Those lonely nights we enjoyed in the desert are now only a distant memory.
The Selwyn Range, which includes which Mount Isa, marks the transition from the desert to the tropics. It also divides the drainage of the land, separating the inland draining channels from the rivers that flow north to the gulf. Desert species have been almost entirely replaced with tropical ones, and there are termite mounds in abundance. Just north of Mt Isa is Lake Moondarra, an excellent bird watching and kayaking opportunity.
The stretch of "national" highway from Isa to the border is a national disgrace.
It is the only tar road across the top of the country, it is only one lane wide, and used by convoys of triples doing the speed limit.
Perhaps our pollies should spend more on infrastructure and less on their own pensions!
We spent a night a Camooweal Caves National Park spotting birds at the waterhole, including the grey teal. There's not much else to do really, since you need lots of skill and equipment just to enter the caves. Fortunately, we were there early in The Dry, so there was still some water in the waterhole. The old shops and museum in Camooweal itself also warranted a look.
Gulf
From there we headed north to Lawn Hill National Park.
We made a brief stop at Riversleigh Site D for a look at the fossils, but compared to its sister site, Naracoorte, it is a little uninspiring.
At least you get to see actual fossils, in situ.
Lawn Hill Gorge however, is magic.
There are several hikes that make it easy to explore the gorge and its surrounds, and the gorge itself can be explored by kayak.
In our first day we managed to spot the two species that the park is famous for, the purple crowned fairy wren and the white browed robin.
On one of our kayaks, Bill was resting his hand on the edge of the boat and an archer fish persistently tried to knock it into the water.
The national park provides only limited camping, and bookings are essential. In an effort at economic rationalism, all bookings have been centralised into a website. For those without web access, a phone number is provided, where trained operators click the website on your behalf. When we phoned, the website was "experiencing difficulties", but the operator eventually called us back with reservation details.
Beginning the trek eastwards to Cairns, we stopped at Gregory River.
It is the site of a major annual kayak race, which we missed by a few weeks.
The river is a fabulous place to kayak, a nice mix of waterholes linked by rapids, lined by paperbarks and pandanus palms.
Along the river there are tracks into the race checkpoints, which endless tourists use as unofficial campgrounds.
The race finishes at the bridge near the pub, which is the largest of these unofficial camping areas.
As we have decried many times, many campers are ignorant pigs. The campground at Lawn Hill is "no generators", but that doesn't stop people idling their vehicles endlessly to charge their batteries. The Gregory provides drinking water for many towns and stations, which is incompatible with poor camping standards. Consequently, signs have just gone up making it illegal to camp there. The march of closures due to poor human behaviour continues unabated. Soon there will be nowhere left to camp.
Continuing our northward march, we headed to Burketown. Like Innamincka, it was a focal point for early exploration. In its early days, settlers envisioned it would become a major trading hub for the gulf. Alas, it never managed to achieve the vision.
From there we turned east, and made our way to Normanton via Leichhardt Falls.
At a short stop for a cuppa, we spotted brolga landing in the scrub.
As we made our way (far too noisily) through the scrub to the waterhole that was attracting them, they took flight.
Several hundred brolga ascending was a magnificent sight indeed.
By circumstance, Normanton achieved what Burketown could not, by providing goods to the early gold mines to the east.
At one time, the supplies store there was the jewel in the Burns Philp empire.
From Normanton it is a short trip to the mouth of the Norman River and Karumba. Karumba is a tourist town, supported by the fishermen that flock there each winter. While watching the sunset from the beach, we witnessed a black kite snatch a cracker from the hand of a beach goer. Now that really makes it hard to "don't feed the wildlife". In order to see a little more of the wildlife, we took a short boat trip on the Norman River, where we spotted red headed honeyeaters amongst the mangroves and the rubber vine that is a major invasive weed in the area.
After taking care of a couple of customers in the area, we left the gulf coast and headed east toward the Great Dividing Range. We stopped briefly in Croydon, to explore the gold mining history that underpinned the early success of Normanton. In Georgetown we explored the Tom Elliot mineral collection, which despite its huge size is well displayed. The collection is so diverse it almost makes geology look interesting.
After a slight sidetrack to Copperfield Gorge, we made our way to the Undara lava tubes. The tour of the tubes was interesting, but hugely overpriced. The outright refusal to provide a tax invoice with the transaction only increased our outrage. Despite being a national park, it is run exclusively by private interests whose primary interest is profit. With over 300km of lava tubes, you'd think they could provide a sacrificial section so people could gain some of the experience without the massive expense. Mt Eccles in Victoria, while not as spectacular, is much better value.
After a night on the edge of Lake Tinaroo, we descended from the Atherton Tablelands into Cairns.
Jo and Ted were already camped in the agreed campground, and for convenience we took a cabin.
So began the quest to unpack the car and store some of our gear to make room for Steve who was arriving from America.
Cairns was also a chance for Helen to catch up with some old friends.
Pat gave us some excellent tips for exploring the cape, and Graham gave us some space in his garage to stow the excess gear.
Thanks guys.
No trip to Cairns would be complete without at least a quick look at the reef. With so much distance to cover, and our schedule constrained by Steve's departure date, we decided on a day trip snorkelling on the ribbon reefs with Quicksilver out of Port Douglas before heading up the cape. Given how many people they ferry daily out to the reef, they do an excellent job of making the experience relaxed and enjoyable. For the first time we used a disposable waterproof camera, but there was nothing on the film when it was developed. Perhaps we took it a little too deep, or perhaps it was no good to start with.
Cape
With the school holidays upon us, we wanted to move north quickly, so we headed up to Lakefield National Park.
Camping at Old Laura homestead, we explored the southern end of the park.
Horseshoe Lagoon provided the greatest variety of birds, but there were plenty of other wetland and river areas amongst the savannah.
So much so, that as we moved northward in the park it seemed as if we were simply moving from one bird habitat to the next.
At Kalpowar Crossing with the help of other campers we spotted a pair of papuan frogmouth owls.
There were jabiru, brolga, jacana, pygmy geese, along with herons, kites, beeeaters and many others.
We even spotted the black faced finch on the edges of the grassland plains.
Of course there were the usual lineup of feral animals, pigs the most damaging to the environment.
Lakefield has cold showers at the crossing, but we also managed a shower from an overflowing windmill-filled tank.
Despite all the water there's no swimming - it's crocodile country.
Two days driving with a stop in Coen for supplies and a shower brought us north to Iron Range National Park.
There are a few minor creek crossings on the track in, just enough to make a 4WD necessary.
We spent a couple of days exploring from the (quite crowded) campground at Chilli Beach.
The beach is lined with coconut palms at the high tide mark, their bases surrounded by washed up rubbish.
Walking tracks through the rainforest behind the beach are very limited, but we did catch a glimpse of the eclectus parrot.
As we pulled out of the beach campground we stopped at Portland Roads, a small community on the edge of the park. During WW2, it was the main resupply base for the battle of the Coral Sea. Back then, all the roads were sealed, but there is little evidence of all that activity now.
We retreated from the beach and its incessant wind to one of the rainforest campgrounds. With the main hiking trail closed, we explored disused 4WD tracks finding rusting war and mining artefacts. The rainforest camp was abundant with wildlife, including cuscus, fireflies, and white faced robins. (It was the first time any of us had seen fireflies in this country.)
Our shortcut out of Iron Range was Frenchmans Track, which includes a deep crossing of the Pascoe river. A steep sandy entrance from the eastern side, water about a metre deep over large rocks, and a steep rocky ascent to the west. There were many onlookers, those who had crossed and those who had yet to cross, on both banks of the river. The cruiser handled it well, but earned a couple of new bumps in the long range fuel tank. The Discovery from Tassie didn't fair as well, a fan blade slicing the radiator core during the crossing. After some bush repairs with the help of some friendly passers by, we were again on our way.