Just text again, sorry. I have some great photos – too annoying!

The caravan park at Burketown was fine, and the men judged the pies at the bakery to be the best in Australia – there are now so many pies with that award! No crocs to be found at the boat ramp where they usually hide to grab unwary fishermen if they are a bit too slow to get their boat out of the water. We inspected the Boiling Down Works ruins, where local meat was once brined for export to Batavia. There’s not much else in Burketown, but the meals at the newly rebuilt pub were good and the beer served from the ice rather than on tap.

Although the locals complain about the Wet not being as good as usual, they must still have had a decent lot of rain in the Gulf because it is green and lush everywhere, and the cattle are rolling fat and glossy. We’ve been lucky with the roads too, they’ve obviously just been graded after the damage caused during the Wet.

Passing through Normanton the next day, the Purple Pub attracted us for its quirky nature but then got the tick of approval for barra and chips for lunch. The chef (who is also the pub manager) was such a weirdo but in a nice way. He slammed the window shut on Al when he proffered a card to pay, then opened up again when Al shouted that he had cash. We could hear him singing and mumbling in the kitchen as he cooked, and exchanged looks of apprehension, but he brought the meals out in good time, very friendly by now, and they were excellent. The front bar and the poker machines were well patronised, it being pension day, and we saw the ATM at the bank doing a roaring trade also. A couple of drunks in the park asked Miranda for a cup which she was unable to provide J, however the hardware store did sell Dave a very good folding chair for a reasonable price. The huge crocodile statue is a highlight there too – the subject of which was shot by a female hunter in (I think) the 1950s, and apparently is no exaggeration.

Now that we are in Karumba, I have found out that the same woman and her husband, after hunting crocs for 12 years, ran a crocodile farm just up the road from our camp, with a lake including an island for the crocs to sun themselves on. They had both salt and freshwater, and sold the skins. The site is now a petrol station.

This caravan park in Karumba, the Karumba Point Caravan Park, not to be confused with the Karumba Point Sunset Caravan Park, is very comfortable. Not in the luxury sense, the amenities while clean are a bit old and shabby, but most of the park is very shady and all the occupants and staff are so friendly. We have ended up staying an extra day because it is so relaxing here.

A snapshot of life in the caravan park here: I would say that 90% of the residents are regulars, mostly from the southern states who come here to escape the winter for 3 months every year. The other obvious statistic is that most would be in their 70s, so that makes us the youngest in the park! Each camp has a boat, usually a tinny but sometimes bigger and better, and every day the men toddle off with their boat hooked onto the car, and hopefully come back with fish to fill their massive freezers. When they return to the south, they take the fish with them to last several months.

All the 4WDs are new and expensive, but some of the caravans are left on-site all year and have become shabby and weathered in this harsh climate. During the Wet, they are sometimes flooded, and the “matey” told me that all boats left here are tethered to the fence so they don’t float away. There are none of the massive motorhomes and 5th wheelers that you tend to see closer to civilisation, just normal caravans and a few camper-trailers used by young’uns like us. Dave knows some people here who leave their motorhome here, drive their little Suzuki back to Cairns and leave it there, and fly home.

So … while the men are off hunting and gathering, the women do their own sort of gathering, it seems like most of them prefer the spot under the huge tree next to our camp where they play mah-jong. It sounds like a chook-house, after all the chooks have laid their eggs, but they are very friendly and having fun. They tried to get me to join them at bingo yesterday afternoon, but I regretfully declined. When the men return, they join in with stubbies in hand, and the cackling gets even louder. Fortunately they knock it off and all go home to bed about 7:30pm.

And that is pretty much how they spend 3 months of the year. They are nice to everyone, and wander the park, chatting all the way, in and out of the pool, around the fish cleaning table. It’s quite funny though how shrill their voices are – the men as well as the women. I bet there is some underlying gossip and cliques though – I will have to get Miranda on the job! The weather is usually fine, and from now on will get a bit cooler. It has been 30+ deg during the day and a bit cooler at night, but really quite pleasant. I did a long run (18k) yesterday, and a short one with Miranda this morning, and we were told that you don’t run, you walk, in Karumba.

I enjoyed my long run, with one exception – the road kill from the previous night. On my way back, the council truck was driving along picking up all the dead wallabies. Those wallabies are welcome in the area though – they are in their thousands on the golf course, which is watered and sort of green in the Dry season, and although they pick at the grass, they also fertilise it at the same time. Good trade-off. They also wander through the camp during the night, it’s been nearly full moon so when I hear a quiet little hop hop, I can look through our screens and see them nibbling the grass on the edge of the tracks. They are all quite small, not sure what variety of wallaby they are, with the occasional bigger one.

Miranda and Dave did a tourist fishing trip, with Dave the hero of the hour. No-one else but him, on either boat, caught anything, but he caught a big Cobia and several smaller bream. He took a large fillet to share with us, and gave all the rest to the unlucky fisher-folk. Today they have gone with their friends out in the tinnie, croc-spotting. Dave is a bit apprehensive!

We bought some frozen barra and King Salmon to take with us when we leave tomorrow. After my long run yesterday, I was hungry and tired last night so we had barra and chips from the takeaway – yummo as Al would say. Now I am cooking a spaghetti sauce which will have prawns added to it for dinner tonight. Trying to empty out the fridge and freezer to stuff it full of frozen fish. Everything here is wild-caught, and mostly exported – you have to be here on the spot to get the best quality.

The other famous attraction in Karumba is the sunset – it is reputedly the only place in Australia where you can watch the sun both rise and set over the sea. And they are spectacular sunrises and sunsets – there is a traffic jam at the Point just before sunset, standing room only. We scored a table at the pub by getting there early yesterday and had a front-row view.