2WD drive around oz

It’s all about fish.18^th July. 2010.

Yesterday we arrived at “The Barramundi Capital of Australia.” Karumba, on The Gulf of  Carpentaria, is the town where the outback meets the sea. In fact it meets it in quite a spectacular way; inviting turquoise water stretches to the horizon towards Indonesia, but there are lots of warnings not to put a toe in the heavenly dew. The crocs have not been culled for thirty years and there are plenty of them. There are also plenty of 4WDs, even more than you see in Mosman and Manly.  These, however, have serious grunt and intent. Most pull a boat trailer and those that don’t, pull a caravan and have a boat on the roof of the vehicle. No Crystal Car wash for these beasties. They all wear their red dirt like a badge of honour.

The Sunset Caravan Park had 163 sites and none left, but we were offered a tight squeeze between a building and a coconut palm, next to the fish cleaning tables. We accepted gratefully and watched many super sized, barra, king salmon and bream being prepared for dinners all over the camp. We scored a couple of coconut too, when they were pruning (so they wouldn’t drop on peoples heads).

 The regulars complained that there were far fewer fish than in past seasons. The locals observed that many fishermen took undersized fish and there were too many trawlers operating, so a depletion in stocks should be expected.

I chatted to a man from Dee Why who has been coming to Karumba for three months every year for the last ten years, and there are plenty of others like him. This town is all about fish, and now that the road is sealed there are more and more caravans swaying along.

Karumba also boasts The Barramundi Discovery Centre. This is perhaps the only place in Australia that is actually addressing the issue of fish stock depletion. It concentrates on one species only, the Southern Gulf strain of barramundi, but is having enviable success. Now run completely by volunteers, it restocks rivers, dams and lakes in the area with thousands of fingerlings every year. They are bred in the tanks, hatched, raised till they are about 2.5 cm, then released. The huge breeding fish are tagged and also eventually released.

Very interesting fish, barramundi. Apart from tolerating both salt and fresh water, they all hatch as males, but somewhere around five years of age they realise the error of their ways and become female.

We had dinner, barramundi , of course, on the grass at the Sunset Tavern and watched the sun go down. There are spectacular sunsets here, just like Cable Beach at Broome, but of course this is the only area of Qld where you can see the sun setting over the ocean.

 We shared a table with a young couple from Croydon, a surprisingly delightful town, with an entire historical precinct museum where we had spent several very pleasant hours the day before. He was one of the police officers from the town and we realised that we had seen him the day before. After chatting for some time we discovered that Sam, his wife had a mother who had worked with Ngaire in Cairns several years ago. It is amazing how you can make a connection with almost anyone you talk to, even in the most remote corners of the country.

We have found that although the Information Centres in the towns are wonderful, the best, and most reliable road information comes from fellow travellers. Two centres had told us that the road into Cobbold Gorge was OK for our vehicle, but three lots of caravan couples, who had been in, warned us not to go. They were still licking their wounds and counting the cost of repairs to rigs and replacement of broken crockery and glasses. The road, they said had been graded three weeks ago, but was already badly breaking up.

The road back from Karumba to Normanton, is sparsely vegetated and salt pan covered for some distance, but there is a remarkable amount of water around for this time of year and the bird life is abundant. We saw many pairs of Brolgas and some in groups of a dozen or more. This fellow was just mooching around in the town.

 We also  saw a number of Jabiru with their magnificent iridescent blue plumage and many majestic white cranes. The ubiquitous hawks seem to do very well on road kill. Although the route south from Normanton to Cloncurry has many nasty narrow stretches, the road trains are not as prolific on this road as they are on the Barkly Highway, so the carnage although bad is not as horrendous. The road trains are about 50 metres long with three carriages. Each carriage has two tiers of cattle and the train can carry up to 380 head. They have priority on the road and no wise person would argue with that. On the single lane stretches you simple pull over and stop until they have passed. On The Barkly Highway we have seen places where they have hit a whole mob of kangaroos and left thirty bodies spread over 200 metres of highway. Quite a distressing sight.

A helicopter has just landed about 20 metres from our van. I foolishly thought he might have been bringing in mail or newspapers, but no it is just a good-looking young chap from one of the stations, come for a beer. The young Irish back-packer serving the drinks is blushing. Probably the best sort she has seen around for some time. It’s mainly grey nomads and truck drivers out here.

Hello Emily, James, Zali, Lachlan and Koby,

In the town of Normanton in Queensland, there is this statue of a huge Barramundi fish. They do grow very big indeed, but not as big as this.

The statue of the huge crocodile, however, is the exact size of the biggest crocodile that was ever caught in Queensland  His name was Krys and he was 8.6 metres long. He is like a huge dinosaur, isn’t he James? I don’t think Grand-pa would be sitting there if he were really alive.