the snail: Our journey home

1 Aug 16

After our trek up the Cape, we decided we would have a couple of nights of luxury in Port Douglas.

Booked in for two nights in the centre of Port Douglas and had a look around, very nice little town on the water with plenty of upmarket restaurants and accommodation.

We had visited there briefly with John and Di some two years previous, but this gave us a chance to look around a bit more.

Found a very nice old church by the harbour which is very popular for weddings.

6 Aug 16

We left John and Di’s place and headed to a free camp at Rocky Creek War Memorial Park at Tolga NQ. This is a large camping area with just toilets, but plenty of history about it. The locals commemorate the end of WW11 with a service and fly over each year. There are still buildings on the other side of the highway from the war,. The area was mainly used as a hospital.

Stayed here 2 nights and moved on to Lake Tinaroo NP

8 Aug 16
Camped at Lake Tinaroo near the lake. There are some very nice camps throughout the Park. We had some rain on the second night which was not only during the Olympics, but we also had a visit from the Census staff and gave us our form to complete, who would have thought!

10 Aug 16

Camped at a roadside free camp, (Black Bull Siding), beside the Normanton to Croydon rail line, (The Gulflander).

Amazing how many people camp at these places, especially backpackers in their cars.

11 Aug 16

From there we headed to Karumba as we hadn’t had a chance to visit there previously. It’s just a very busy fishing village, that really is the main attraction. The only other thing Karumba was used for was the zinc loading terminal, where the zinc and other minerals were piped to from the Century Zinc Mine, (which is now closed), near Adels Grove.

Very nice location on the bottom of the Gulf, beautiful sunsets. On leaving Karumba, heading back to Normanton we had seen many Sarus Cranes in the paddocks.

12/13/14 Aug 16

Continued on our journey towards Winton, Longreach etc. Another free camp beside the Highway. Have a look at the road trains running past our camp.

Check this dude on the side of the Highway, and the friendly locals watching over us.

15 Aug 16

Camped for couple of nights in Winton behind the North Gregory Hotel for $10 per night, gives us use of the toilets and showers.

They also have what’s now known as Ben’s chicken stampede, (look it up on Facebook). The Hotel manager and his son, Ben have started chicken racing to raise funds for local charities. Ben has trained the chickens to chase a remote control car which has feed on it and runs them around the courtyard at the back of the hotel. He was still training the chickens when we were there, but this has now grown into full scale racing where he colours the chickens and takes bets.

Winton is also the home of “Waltzing Matilda”, where Banjo Patterson first performed the poem/song.

Whilst in Winton we also visited the Dinosaur Stampede site which is approx. 100klms from Winton. We decided to sit back and take a day tour so we weren’t driving.

Very interesting site, it shows where the dinosaurs were running across a clay pan beside a water hole and the footprints have been left in the clay and preserved over millions of years.

We also visited the Age of Dinosaurs Museum which is only about 25 klms from town. Incredible site also and the laboratory is worth visiting as they have tours through and show the bones being cleaned and prepared for display. They have a whole rack of bones they haven’t even started on cleaning or figuring out what and where they are from.

Behind the Hotel is another site which is well known in Winton, Arno’s Wall. The photos show the walls and the yard have been collected from all sorts of junk/material over years which show the history of the town.

18 Aug 16

We moved on to Longreach into another free camp, well $3 per night payed at the local Council. Very large area beside the Thompson River.

Whilst in town Les visited the QANTAS Founders Museum. We both had a stroll around town and checked out some of the old buildings and shows on.

We also had a night out with river cruise, dinner and show with OzTours. Great night and great meal, beautiful sunset on the Thompson River.

21 Aug 16

Camped two nights beside the river in Tambo, also visited Tambo Teddies, where they make teddies and other goodies from local wool, great little spot, great little town.

After leaving Tambo we spotted an Emu family on the side of the Highway. We then continued on towards Miles.

23 Aug 16

Camped at “Possum Park”, an old Air Force ammunition dump used during WW11, beside a rail line, now converted to a camp ground. Had a night there beautiful campground, with an unusual structure, a plane, a TAA plane to be exact.