Posts for August, 2023

The story of discovery of Cobbold Gorge and it becoming a tourist attraction is quite interesting. The gorge is situated on land that was established as Robin Hood Station in the 1800s by the Clark family. On the sandstone walls of the pool at the entrance to the gorge is a carving J E Clark 1900 but despite having obviously found the pool the clark family did not know about the gorge. The property was sold to Cobb Terry and his family in 1964. In the 1990s the Terry family decided to divide the property between the members of the next generation and the youngest son Simon Terry got the worst of the subdivision. It was considered the worst because it had large areas of sandstone outcroppings which cannot support cattle. Simon discovered the gorge 1992 after the division and almost immediately started running tours through the gorge.

As I mentioned a few posts back we have been "marking time" around the Forsayth/Georgetown area waiting for the expected delivery date of some parcels in Croydon. Well today we moved on to Croydon and were pleasantly surprised to find that 2 of the 3 parcels were waiting for us. The final one is not expected until Friday (4th) so we will spend 2 nights here in Croydon.

A waiting day in Croydon. A chance to do the washing. Nina started her day with a walk to the railway station to watch the Gulflander depart on its weekly return journey to Normanton. There are a number of interesting buildings and other sites in town. We spent some time looking at those.

Unfortunately the parcel we expected did not arrive in todays mail. The lady at the Post Office offered to forward it to Katherine, so with that we departed Croydon. We did however require a couple more photos of True Blue and the town pub.

The day started with a few Icons of Normanton. Krys, the largest confirmed salt water crocodile in the world ( see this link for more info) and the associated info paque, the Purple Pub and in tribute to Nina's father the local Westpac Branch.

This post starts with a photo of the Gregory Pub and a couple of shots of the lower campging area on the lower part of the Gregory River Bank. I was spoiled this morning as the town of Gregory, population 125 (2023 census) has a coffee shop that sells home made pastries as well as the usual range of excellent coffees. As you can imagine the horde of tourists roughing it in the outback flocked to this city comfort. I was one of them.

Going West today we were presented with a couple of noteworthy rivers. The first was the Gregory River which required getting our wheels wet on an interesting curved causeway. The second was the Nicholson River which was just before entering the Aboriginal Town of Doomadgee and was surprisingly wide but the causeway was dry.

You have heard of the novel "A Tale of Two Cities", well today was " a day of 6 tales".

It took a few hours on the phone this morning to start the process of organizing tyres and parts for the tent, and then a few more conversations throughout the day to get a plan together. TyrePower in Katherine will get in 3 tyres for us but it will take until the week of 22nd Aug for them to arrive in Katherine. Ivan at Peak Offroad, will send some replacement latches for the poptop tent. TyrePower have allowed me to have the tent parts sent to them so that fixed the "where to send stuff" question.

A beautiful morning encouraged me to get up before the sun and I even took a photo of the rising sun to prove it. Nina got a picture of the strange ants/termites nest on the tree near our camp.

Before leaving Daly Waters this morning Nina did her usual walk around and visited the Stuart Tree, the nearby WWII air field, railway bridge and we said goodbye to the campground cattle.

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Today was the final leg to Katherine, civilization for the first time in some weeks. For Brendon and Daniel it will be an opportunity to prepare for the second leg of their odyssey, for Nina and I it will mean some new tyres and repairs to the pop-top tent. Nina and I were the farewell party for the guys as they prepared to get underway and finally departed. Then we did a little tour of the Mataranka area visiting a few of the local sights; Bitter Creek, the replica of Elsey homestead built for the movie We of the Never Never, and the old Elsey Cemetery.

This weekend is the annual Katherine Horse Races. Accommodation is hard to get, drunk and loud behavior will be rampant (it started already last night) and no tyres are going to arrive until at least Monday. So we decided we should take a little excursion out of Katherine for a few days.

Today we made the short drive North of Katherine to Edith Falls. This is a small National Park where the Edith River cascades through a series of large ponds and a series of water falls. It is very popular as a day trip as it provides good swimming and as we discovered good sun tanning (or is that good sun burning) opportunities.

Another day killing time waiting for tyres and other stuff to arrive in Katherine. Rather than go back to Katherine we decided to spend another day in Pine Creek. It is a very pleasant little town. The Lazy Lizard campground has lots of shade and generally feels a little cooler than Katherine. Mid afternoon we heard from Tyrepower that our tyres had arrived so tomorrow we will get them fitted. Hurray !!

Most of the day was focused on getting back to Katherine and having tyres fitted. I had ordered three new tyres. Two of the new ones went on the front and the two spares are on the rear so effectively the Troopy is now running 4 new tyres. I also took the opportunity to visit the local weigh bridge to get front and rear weight in an effort to figure out what pressure I should have for the tyres. It was 1400 kg front 2000 kg rear. Interestingly this means that already the vehicle exceeds the stock GVM and hence it is good that we had a GVM upgrade as part of the fitout.

Overnight we got a tracking update that suggested one of our packages had been delivered at Tyrepower so this morning that was a priority stop. As it turned out there were 2 packages waitiing. One that Brendon had ordered from Europe and the replacement tent latch that Ivan at Peak Offroad in Sydney had acquired and sent. A big thanks to Ivan this was definitely a case of customer support as there was no profit in this transaction for him. Also a big thanks to Rene and Simon at Tyrepower Katherine for allowing us to use them as a mail drop in addition to delivering our new tyres ahead of schedule.

It seems to be the way of this country that the day starts off with a gentle feel, the birds are out, the light is soft and it feels comfortable, and this morning we tried to absorb that feeling. Nina took in her usual early morning walk and I repaired that broken tent latch. On leaving the Roadhouse we visited the nearby ford crossing of the Victoria River. The grass near the river was surprisingly (to us) high and we tried to capture this by comparing it to Nina. Not sure that worked.

It was a very peacful night and we were up early to watch the sun rise on the nearby escarpment, we could not resist one last shot. We have encountered this sign in photo 2 in many places. They seem to be cast them about when ever there is slight or major road damage. We have guessed that they signal "danger". Nina finally caught a photo of one for us this morning.

Today may turn out to be the highlight of the trip as we accompanied the cyclists along the King River Road and then onto the Kurunjie Track (which was once called the Bedford Stock Route). In order to give the cyclists a bit of a start Nina and I started the day with a return visit to Parry's Lagoon and the nearby Telegraph Hill which once was a wireless radio relay station but is now just a set of foundations with no buildings.

The final 8km of the Kurunjie Track proved to be quite rough. This is probably because it is close to the Gibb River Road and gets more traffic with travelers on the Gibb doing some exploring. Again the cyclists out paced our 4wd vehicle on this rough track and we arrived at the Gibb River and its crossing of the Pentacost River behind.

It has been great to have a couple of days traveling with Bredon and Daniel, but today we go our separate ways. They will stay another day at El Questra while we (Nina and I) will start West along the Gibb River Road with the aim of being in Broome in about 4 days. So after a big cookup by the boys this morning, we said our goodbyes and were on the road by about 10:30.

It was a surprisingly cool night, so cool I got up during the night to find my down jacket. But as we were about to find out the day would be a counterpoint to the night. Today the temperature would top out at 37°C making every stop a hunt for shade.

At the start of the day we were focused on our role in a geo-location game we had agreed to play with Brendon. We were to hide some small treasure in the bush along the Gibb River Road and send him the GPS coordinates. The game was whether he could find what we hid. So for the first few hours of todays drive we were on the loolout for a suitable location. We eventually selected Bells Creek.