Day 24 – Mon, 2 Aug to Lawn Hill NP

Overnight the wind blew in gusts. Around 3am I thought my washing was being blown off my line so I got up expecting to find it all in the trees, but no it was okay just my bike cover being blown about. So I took my washing down anyway (what a great little housekeeper he is) and back to sleep.

I simply crashed last night. It must have been all that work at fishing, getting some sun and just tiring work, bringing home the catch.

I left Karumba mid morning and headed back to Normanton – yep still seems to be closed – for the biggest town in the region there is not much happening here. It is supposed to have a great Visitors Info Centre – but hey you can’t call that a visit.

So I took some photos of Rhys the Croc, refuelled and headed out of town. The croc is an exact life size replica of one shot in 1957 by a female shooter in the Norman River just near town - well if it came up next to you in your tinny the line from the Jaws movie absolutely applies – We need a bigger boat.

The thing was 8.63m, yes that is correct (28ft 4ins) and is the largest ever captured in the world.

I was heading for Lawn Hill and it was SW. I could have travelled through Bourketown to the W and then S, but this would have involved hundreds of km on gravel. Not for me.

So I travelled S to the Burke & Wills Roadhouse then W to Gregory Downs before doing the last 100km on the gravel road to the Lawn Hill NP where I am camped for the night. In total around 516km today.

Generally the scenery was consistent with the last few days of travel -Savannah country with termite mounds, cattle, kangaroos but also an amazing number of birds – really small ones that fly like the wind, but predominantly Kites, These were everywhere, soaring on the breeze, attacking road kill or simply flying around.

The only real issue for the day was the strong gusting wind from the S. This was with me all day and had to be accounted for in some of the more open areas.

I crossed the Leichhardt River and stopped on the bridge to take a photograph. Well there must have been some 50-70 kites in the air soaring over the trees  and water – spectacular (sorry the photo didn’t capture the birds).

I hit a small grasshopper plaque - I simply put my head down behind the screen and rode through it. A few splatters on the screen, bike and boots but thankfully over in about 50-100m. I’m not looking forward to that down S across the plains if they have a plague this year.

The ride from the Roadhouse to Gregory Downs needed a good lookout for cattle, As this was about 142km of unfenced cattle country and they were everywhere – well remember the stocking ratios are probably 50+ acres to the head of cattle – but hey they were all along the road as far as I was concerned.

The gravel road wasn’t too bad – in fact it would have been a great ride except that for the first 30 odd km they were regrading the road so there was lots of loose material on the surface. There were other terrible stony sections but these were handled okay.

Overall another enjoyable day on the road, but I am looking for an early night – so I’ll post again tomorrow.