18/5/2012
The savings we made free camping were quickly swallowed up by a $100 detour. On our way west there is a well known tourist attraction called the Undara lava tubes in the Undara Volcanic National Park. To get there we made a 30k round trip off the main highway only to find when we arrived that to see the lava tubes it would be by guided tour only and a cost of $50 each. Ok we thought, we have come all this way out of our way we may as well pay up and have a look. Now a tube to my way of thinking is pipe shaped, open at both ends. Here, we found three large caves of basalt and granite and nothing like the pictures in their brochure, apparently they used to be tubes……….. About a million years ago! There are boardwalks into the caves one of which was ankle deep in water, not much of a problem unless you went down in shoes and socks. The caves themselves were spectacularly ordinary, we have seen some much more spectacular holes in the ground for free. Undara is a resort with tent and cabin accommodation or you can sleep in a converted railway carriage for an astronomical fee of something like $200 per night. Then once you have done the tubes , you can walk around looking for kangaroos and wallaroos, and even go in the small swimming pool.
So, we are camped at Mount Surprise, named after the aboriginals who lived here and ran away when the first white settler showed his face here many years ago. They later came back and stabbed him to death with their spears, so it is said. Now that was a surprise!
19/05/2012
This is the Australia we know and love, mile after mile of single track road breaking up at the edges and laughingly called a highway. Driving along you can usually see way into the distance as most outback roads are straight as arrows. When you see a speck of a vehicle miles ahead you immediately start to look for somewhere to pull over just in case it’s a road train hurtling towards you. Road trains do not slow down once they have reached their maximum speed of 110kph, as many kangaroos would say if they hadn’t been flattened, discretion is always best! Of course sometimes it’s another camper so we wave at one another and drive past sheepishly.
Loving Australia (the bush) is also about sharing a campsite wriggly tin shower cubicle with the local wildlife and being stared at by a resident frog in the dunny, who sits in the bottom because someone didn’t close the lid! It’s always best to check before you sit!
We clocked up more K’s than we intended today as the free campsites we had earmarked were not suitable. So, now we are in the town of Croydon just about 200K east of our destination in the Gulf of Carpenteria. Croydon has some history as an old gold mining town so we will probably stay here a couple of nights.
20/05/2012
Definitely worth an extra night here if only for the free washing machines! The town of Croydon used to be the busiest town in Queensland when the gold rush was on around the turn of the 19th century. It housed factories, foundries, and 36 hotels. Now there is only one hotel/pub which of course we had to check out. The Tourist information centre is very good , we watched an interesting film on the history of the place. Croydon is now a quiet outback town, hard to believe it was so busy 120 years ago.
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