20th September – Lorella Springs Station, NT

 

 I don't think you ever quite get used to the sight of a giant, green tree frog in the toilet, but over the last few weeks it has sure become a common sight. Sometimes, if you're really lucky you get one under the rim and one swimming in the bottom, both clinging on for dear life to the porcelain when you flush. Of course I don't want to see them flushed, but over time I have learnt two things. One, they certainly don't want to be turfed out into the 40 degree day and two, they are perfectly adapted to suction themselves to the walls of toilet bowls. Strange things animals will do out here to survive.

 

After leaving Karumba we passed through the pretty much nothingness town of Normanton where you can have a beer at the pub at 8am but can't buy takeaway anything till 12pm. So much for a big resupply! We left town with only half the goods we really needed and headed into the isolation of the Gulf towards Lawnhill National Park.

 

Lawnhill is a National Park renowned for its gorgeous waterholes and gorge as well as the 'Riversleigh' section that houses millions of year old fossils. We visited both, and to be honest were a little disappointed after hearing so much about the place. But it was lovely to have croc free swimming and we got to cruise the waters of Lawnhill Gorge with our inflatable dinghy. Swimming with the fish under the shade of palms was beautiful.

 

After leaving Lawnhill we went north again taking the back roads up to Barraloola. We crossed over the border into the Northern Territory after nearly three months exploring Queensland. The township of Booraloola was a disgrace to say the least but like all outback towns you take what you can get and move on. In our case it was some frozen bread, milk and a bin to dump our oil in from a scheduled oil change. Here they didn't sell takeaway beer till  2.30pm, so again we left town without valuable supplies, but this time we had no backups.

 

As we drove north we crossed into the newly formed Limmen National Park that houses a huge stretch of natural springs. Many of these springs also feed billabongs on the 960,000 acre cattle station, Lorella Springs. After hearing a good word about this place from another couple, we took the 30km deviation off the main track to visit it. Well…we thought we had landed in heaven.

 

It is a working cattle station but has a beautiful camp with green grass and huge eucalyptus trees and best of all, croc free swimming in a thermal pool. The place is run by a funny little bush character named Daryl (that Max managed to do an under counter deal with for two 36 can blocks of XXXX GOLD) and was occupied by only three other groups of campers. Fred…the talkative, yarn spinner from 4WD Action magazine, out there to do a magazine story. Rick…the bizarre metrosexual that drove out there in a Suzuki Swift only to fish from his sea kayak in croc infested waters, rifle across his knees. The most placid, girlie spoken man that I had met in a long time, but he did dangerous stuff neither of us would dream of. The last mob were a couple that had driven up from Alexander in Victoria on a THREE week holiday….Go figure??? Anyway god knows what they thought of us but it was a wonderful few days of good company, good conversation and a great environment.

 

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