On the road – Lake Argyle to Cairns

We had come to the end of our WA experience for this year, our last night was spent at Lake Argyle and favourite destination of our last years travels…. What a way to end one chapter and begin another.
 



Mangoes almost ready!

Given that we’d travelled the NT last year we planned to pretty much fast track to Queensland, so we had long driving days and some interesting stopovers!  The Jeep is great at hauling our bloody great van and Geoff does an amazing job, well done on keeping us safe and reaching our destinations!  The weather was sunny and hot!  We crossed a couple of borders, we can’t help ourselves we always have to stop and get a pic!



Driver extraordinaire, he loves his lollies!



NT / WA Border



NT/WA Border



One of the hundreds of Boab trees we saw along our journey

Daly Waters Pub was a must for an overnighter, we’d heard about the legendary Beef and Barra for dinner…. We couldn’t believe the dust bowl of a caravan park and how they just packed you in so closely…. We were lucky enough to be on the end.  Dinner was yummy!!! 



Daly Waters



Daly Waters



Daly Waters



Daly Waters



Daly Waters Caravan Park

Our first overnight free camp in Queensland was Camooweal Billabong – what a lovely place with many special birds, we had a great camp fire and chilled… so lovely!

 




A couple of Brolgas



Budgies



Pelicans herding the fish for their dinner!



Budgie feeding her baby



Egret



Fire lady!

 

Then on to the big smoke, Mount Isa where we had to get a puncture repaired and we had to stock up on our depleted wine stocks! J  Nothing much really to see in Isa but we did go up to the look out and the visitor centre had some great info for Queensland and in particular Boodjamulla (Lawn Hill) National Park.

We headed towards Lawn Hill via Cloncurry for lunch then a road side stop at Terry Smith for the night then next day we got fuel at Burke and Wills Roadhouse and arrived at Gregory Downs river camp and managed to get a great spot next to the river.  We weren’t sure where to leave our van for the 3 nights while we camped in Lawn Hill (road was too long and too rough to take the van in).  Our choices were Gregory Downs Pub van park or leave it in the free river camp.  After enjoying a happy hour with our fellow campers they convinced us that we should leave the van at the camp, they were all willing to keep an eye on it for us.  This was a great camp, such a gorgeous place, apparently its not the “official” free camp but Council placed bins in the camp area, so everyone goes there as its so much better!

Our camps and things were saw along the road.....

Massive eagle claiming the latest road kill - we saw many of these guys along the way!



This just blew us away...I know this is horrible but this baby wild pig was unbelievable, totally vicious and not willing to even move from the road when a car is coming after claiming this unfortunate road kill kanga! 



Overnight free camp



Queensland Border



Queensland Border



Emu crossing the road



Some kind of rally car



We have no idea of what kind of birds these are!



Savannah Way



Gregory River Camp



Gregory River Camp



Gregory River Camp



Don't think we'd take a car across this bridge..... Gregory River Camp

We got an early start and headed for Lawn Hill, apparently an oasis in the outback.  The gravel road was pretty good for about 50kms but then it got progressively rougher!  There was so much cattle on the road and cattle poo everywhere!! Oh and another puncture, tyre was flat as a tack and we discovered the jack was pretty much hopeless and a lovely family stopped and helped us out with their jack!  We dropped the tyre off at Adels Grove for repairs and drove on a further 10 kms to our camp at Lawn Hill.  Wow it was a pretty dry and dusty place, once we set up camp we headed off to try to find the “oasis”!



Lawn Hill Camp



Red Wing Parrot - our friendly camper

We found the river and canoe guy so we thought we'd spend the rest of the afternoon paddling the river and apparently its “fine to swim in, there are only freshies but they won’t hurt you….” Hmmm yeah right I thought!!  Well it was pretty easy for me, I just sat in the canoe and took pics and Geoff paddled us all the way to the first water fall then we walked the canoe (Geoff dragged it) to the next section and went right to the end.  What a gorgeous gorge with bright green water, red rock walls and stunning vegetation! Yes we’d found the oasis!  Geoff swam at the first waterfall, it was so hot and I was just dying to swim but I satisfied myself with splashing a bit of water on myself…. Because I was convinced that if I swam I’d become crocodile lunch!!  By the end I did manage to sit in the very clear shallow water with my eyes peeled!  What an amazing day, we didn’t have any trouble sleeping on our very thin foam mattresses!!

 

We got up early in the morning to the bird song choir!! OMG I’v never heard so many different types of “tweets”, fabulous!!  We headed off on the first of our many planned walks!  We loved this walk we marvelled at the beauty and getting a view of the gorge from the top was truly brilliant and given we’d canoed it the day before we were familiar with the layout!  We went back to the camp before our next walk.  Our exhilaration was quickly deflated because we attempted to start the car so we could charge our phones, but no go the car battery was totally flat!!  We spoke to the canoe guy and he said to us that he’d bring in jumper leads the next day.  So we weren't too worried so we continued walking for the rest of the day!  We also got some interesting news, I was offered 8 weeks worth of event work in Cairns where I used to work…. After considering our options we thought that we’d except the offer for work and enjoy some additional time in the wet tropics!  We managed to do all of the walks in one day except for one and I even had a very quick swim…. Given we needed to get to Cairns we thought we’d cut our camp trip short by a day.

 

Long story short, the jumper leads could not start the car, the canoe guy took the battery back to Adels Grove and tested it, and it was confirmed it was stuffed!  Adels Grove staff organised a battery to come from Mount Isa so we ended up having to stay the extra night anyway.  We became a little depressed about having another issue with the car, so most of the day was spent moping around!  We managed to do the last walk the next day and later in the afternoon, some campers from Adels Grove bought the new battery to us, and brilliant it started!!  We’d packed up the car already so we headed straight back to Gregory River to find our caravan in good order, even the fridge was still working! Yay!

Our next stop was Normanton/Karumba for the night then we continued east to Archer River free camp and then through the amazing wet tropics mountains to Cairns!



Karumba Sunset



Karumba to Normanton Road at dusk.... we ran the gauntlet, kangaroos coming at us both directions!



Crumbed Barra and Chips

Karumba




Karumba Sunset



Karumba Sunset



Norman River Camp



Archer River Camp



Archer River Camp - gathering fire wood





Walsh's Pyrimid - heading into Cairns, maybe we might climb this one day!



Bartle Frere - Highest mountain in Queensland

We have set ourselves up in a caravan park for a few weeks then we have a house sit opportunity for 2 weeks which will be great!  I’ve completed my first week of work, which I wasn’t used to, so I was very tied.  But we’ve got back into our daily and sometimes twice daily walking and the best thing of all about being in Cairns is Rusty’s Markets!! Which we’ve been to twice already!  I will not be blogging while we are here in Cairns, once we commence our journey I will be back to blogging!!



Cairns Camp

Take car everyone!