Lawn Hill National Park

Sitting in the mid-afternoon shade under palm trees at Lawn Hill, a national park in the far north-west of Qld. Hopefully I will be able to load this to our little blog this afternoon, as to our surprise the Adel’s Grove camping area where we’re staying offers Internet access (computer not provided) via a satellite phone connection at a ‘flat rate’of $5, with apparently no time limit…

It got up to 38 degrees this morning, which we spent paddling a canoe up the beautiful Lawn Hill Gorge, having lunch at the permanent spring at the source of the gorge. Big red cliffs over the narrow gorge, rainforest along the edges and masses of birds. It’s very beautiful, and quite an oasis in the midst of some fairly remote and arid country around. There’s even crocodiles (just the innocuous fresh-water variety) – but we haven’t seen any yet.

It was a 420 km drive up here from Cloncurry, through Quamby, the Burke and Wills Roadhouse and the settlement of Gregory. Gregory has a population of 25, which makes it the biggest town between here and Cloncurry, and the 2^nd largest town in the entire 40,000 sq km Burke Shire (total population: 400).

We were in Gregory for five minutes when a Land Cruiser pulled over and Brendan asked us: “Would youse two be looking for a coupla days’work?” Brendan (plus Sally and children) are fencing contractors up here for a few months – and he must be pretty desperate for help! We politely declined and then had a good long conversation about everything. He was pretty scathing about Canberra and public servants, so I told him I worked for the Tax Office and asked if he’d been audited lately. Two days later after coming back after a bushwalk we found the words “Tax Man!” written in the dust on the side window of our car!

Meeting lots of interesting and friendly people as we travel, all sharing advice, information and stories about where they’ve been and asking for information about places down the road. Most of them are older than us, and most are travelling much more elaborately than us, with big 4WDs, campervans, trailer-campers and caravans. It’s been funny seeing little Astro Boy sitting in some parking areas, with every other vehicle looking much bigger than him.

A couple, Keith and Linda, from Mareeba that we met while hiking yesterday – he is a retired entomologist, and they both have a great knowledge about the flora and fauna of this area. Tomorrow we’re going to share a vehicle with them on a tour down to the Riversleigh fossil site, 50km south of here.

Then we’re off on Wednesday on the road up through the Aboriginal settlement of Doomadgee, and west around the Gulf to Borroloola. It’s a long drive so we’ll take two days with an overnight camp beside the road somewhere. No settlements after Doomadgee, no petrol, lots of creek crossings all rough dirt between them, so hopefully with out one spare tire we’ll get through OK. We have heard of people last week coming through there with two tires stuffed full of spinifex!