Tocumwal

Tocumwal is a town in the southern Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia, right near the Victorian border. The town is situated on the banks of the Murray River which is why we visited it.

Tocumwal Town Beach Campground offers low cost camping right on the sandy banks of Murray River with basic facilities including toilets (BYO paper) and cold showers and potable water. A caretaker comes around each evening to collect the small $5pp fees. The site is reasonably flat and accessible to caravans, motorhomes, campers, and big rigs with area suitable for tents. It is a dusty ground which when we visited was a bit of a bother when the wind popped up or a inconsiderate driver drives past too fast.

Town Beach is less than 1km walking distance of the small shopping area. A small monthly Farmer's Market is held in the town park.

Whilst there we called our fellow motorhome friends, Wayne and Nini who live nearby to come and join us for morning tea. We introduced them to Gary and Joy who are traveling to the Painted Silos Trail with us.

Each evening we were entertained by the noisy Corellas. This video is not even a quarter of the show. Enjoy! 🍷

Gin Gin

Dave & Di's place near Gin Gin

We had met a couple from Gin Gin back at Wuruma Dam and we had been invited to come and stay on their property just outside Gin Gin. So even though it was only an hour and a bit away, this is where we had decided to spend the first 2 nights back on the road. Dave met us in Gin Gin to guide us to his place 20km out in the bush.

Double Barred Finch

Their place is quite secluded and is an oasis for the wildlife in the area. They have numerous birds and the occasional wallaby come and pop in from time to time. Already I have come across some birds I am not familiar with such as the double barred finch. We also saw the bright and marvellously coloured King Parrots coming in to feed. Apparently one is brazen enough to go up to the kitchen window and chatter to let them know that the feeding bowl is empty. LOL. It is so lovely and quiet here. We are parked with the door facing a nice little dam. The early morning sun reflects off the surface like brilliant diamonds that God has scattered haphazardly across the surface.


Before we left we found out that it was Dave’s birthday on Saturday and so we presented him with the first first Nifty Camp Oven Lid Lifter. He was so thrilled with it that he insisted on making his own copies of our brochure and he is going to be promoting them to his friends and future camp neighbours. We may have met our sales rep.

As we left, we went back into Gin Gin to visit the Gin Gin Historical Museum where Dave and Di were working as volunteers a couple of days a week. A good look around identified many articles that one or the other of us remember from parents or grand parents’ days. We even saw things we have never seen before, including various tools such as an electric chainsaw with an huge 300mm round motor. The museum covers also the railway station and the old cop house and station, including medical memorabilia as the cop’s wife was a nurse and ran an outpatient unit out of one of the rooms. I also saw up close, some handmade dresses from the 1800s. The stitching was exquisite.

Gin Gin Historical Museum (source)

Gin Gin is very RV friendly with parking in the middle of the main street with picnic tables & toilets in a wide grassy median strip right across the road from the local grocery store, fish & chop shop and others. We stopped here to pick up some supplies at the grocery store and splurged out on a delicious barramundi fish and chips for lunch which we had in the mini park just outside where the caravan was parked.

Ball Bay Campground

After a lovely few days resting in the caravan at Bowen, we went off to discover more of the Whitsunday’s mainland. First off we stopped by Airlie Beach. This is the main tourist centre of the Whitsundays and as such it is very touristy, very much like a mini Gold Coast, which is great if you like the cafe culture, boutique shopping & resort lifestyle. Personally I like a more subdued setting but we couldn’t be this close and not pop in for a look around. We had a marvelous picnic lunch in the park by the boat harbour and had a go at the outdoor gym along the way. We are so unfit. Note to self: I really must get out and resume my daily walks at least.

Outdoor gym in the park at Airlie Beach

From here we went through Proserpine and then continued towards Mackay, camping at Ball Bay adjacent to a lovely quiet beach. (Camps 6:89). 

Ball Bay's beach

Camping at Ball Bay

You had to drive some 15km off the highway to get there and then half way along, you come to a road sign that says not suitable for caravans. We persisted with caution and we discovered that whatever the original reason for the sign was, it was no longer relevant. For an unpowered site it is relatively expensive however it has other redeemable features. It is a lovely, soft, thick, green grassy area. The park is adjacent to a lovely calm beach with short walking tracks access through some trees. The park also has very clean toilets with a cold water beach shower outside. The covered BBQ and picnic table that is well lit up at night and it also has hot water in the sink and electricity. You are not allowed to run an extension cord to your van or campsite but you can make use of the electricity at no extra charge. We took advantage of this and ran the turbo oven and had a baked lamb and vegetables for dinner. There was hardly anyone else there and the one and only camper left early the next day so we had the BBQ area to ourselves.

Feeding the ducks at Ball Beach

There are 7 whistling ducks, 2 Burdekin ducks and 2 shy curlews that are ‘residents’ of the park. We both enjoyed feeding the birds especially hand feeding the whistling ducks several times over the 2 days of our stay.

 Star fish that we found at low tide on Ball Bay's Beach

Below are 3 of the unusual shells we found on the picturesque Ball Bay beach

 

The top of Cape York specifically Punsand Bay

Since we separated from the main group, due to not pre-booking, we were to meet up with the rest early the next morning. Yet there was some sort of misunderstanding of just where we were meeting and so we ended up being at the Ferry a good half and hour or more earlier than the main team. Still we are all back together again and the Ferry ride is pretty uneventful. Once again we lead but there is more confusion as our GPS had us going all over the place. Ian had to take over. We ended up going past Bamaga right up to the wharf for morning tea and a short walk and photo opportunity, but a light drizzle put a damper on outdoor activities (pun intended!). Some needed to get fuel and/or groceries and so we arranged to meet up about an hour later to give people time to get their stuff. Bob and I took ourselves off to find the Tourist Information Centre, which we couldn’t find and so we ended up at the bakery enjoying a cuppa and some pastry items. Fresh bread was not too bad at $4.50, but there was a shortage due to the flour not arriving as the barge had broken down somewhere and was several days late. Such is life in a remote location.

  A colourful sunset at Punsand Bay

Soon we move on to our campgrounds at Punsand Bay (Camps 6: 935) way out from Bamaga, I think it was something like 20km out and very slow to get to it being so rough. The camp ground is very rudimentary at best and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, however the beach is fantastic.   

There is only one toilet/shower block close to us with 4 unisex toilets, one is for staff only, one is out of order and thus leaving just 2 toilets for maybe 70 - 100 people and they frequently run out of toilet paper on top of everything else. There are just 4 unisex showers in the block, with one being reserved for staff use only. There is a family size above ground pool and a bar is nearby on site which also serves food.

Two of the lovely brown & yellow butterflies seen regularly at Punsand Bay

 I was fascinated by the lovely brown and yellow butterflies seen frequently around the campsite. We also we fortunate to see a Papuan Frog Mouth whilst there.

Papuan Frog Mouth just above our tent

Mt Carbine Caravan Park

We arrived at Mt Carbine Caravan Park (Camps 6: 210) a few days early in preparation for our 4WD trek up to Cape York.

Free caravan stoarge

We are able to leave the Robbiebago here for free. Well thre is a nominal fee of just $20 including a night’s stay. We decided to stay for 3 nights (at $20 per night) to pack the car and rest and relax before joining up with our friends from the Black Diamond 4WD club that were on their way up to Cairns. We will meet up with them near Mossman/Port Douglas early on Monday morning.

Bob and Jenny are the owner/managers of Mt Carbine and are very friendly. They keep the grounds immaculate and the amenities block is one of the cleanest I have seen anywhere.

Informal talks about the area

Each evening Bob hold talks about the rocks and mining around the area. His talks are very informative and interspersed with stories of the local history and folk associated with the rocks and/or community.

A bird lover's paradise

He also pointed out a group of 3 tawny frogmouth owls up in one of the trees. You would hardly know that there were there if you weren’t specifically looking for them, their camouflage is so good.

Tawny Frogmouth

At another time he also pointed out the red winged parrots and named the blue headed bird that I had seen but already i have forgotten the name! Gosh, I am so annoyed that I left my bird identification book at home. I keep saying that I will buy another, but it hasn’t happened yet!

Bird seen at Mt Carbine

As you can imagine there was a lot of re-organizing needed to be done to clear out the car and pack food and camping gear into the car, making sure we had sundry items such as cochlear batteries and chargers, my CPAP, turn the Waeco on and stock it. We heard that purchasing food and fuel was rather expensive and in some places non-existent. Fuel we just have to pay for as we go but the food we can preplan for as I had made up a list of menus for 3 weeks. (I will eventually get around to making my lists available as a guide for other s to use. I also have other lists as well as quite a few suggestions which I will also post at a later date).

Anyone for a drink?

Of course we took some time to relax and meet other visitors to the caravan park, many whom were also going up to the Cape. Monday comes and we finally put the Robbiebago into storage and left Mt Carbine. We will be back in about 3 weeks.

Walker's Creek, Normanton & Karumba

We stayed overnight back at Gregory Downs before moving on towards Normanton. We stopped at Burke & Wills for lunch; a pie and sausage roll with chips there (nice & a reasonable price considering the isolation). Then moved on to Bang Bang rest area (Camps 6: 258). Nothing really to comment on in our opinion and it is noisy being on the highway!

Wedge tailed eagle

The next day we fuelled up in Normanton ($1.67 per litre) as we were running on fumes the last 7km. However we found out later that it is around 10 cents a litre cheaper at the Depot in Karumba – oh well!
We stopped by the Tourist Information Centre here and checked out the history of the largest Crocodile caught here. A whopping 8.63 metres or such –a world record catch at the time. There is a life size replica on the main street.

Krys is a tad bigger than Rob

We camped at Walker’s Creek which is about 30km north of Normanton. It is not in the Camps 6 book but is camp number 256 in the Camps 5 book. It is anyone’s guess why it has been left out of Camps 6. It is a big area and apparently can be quite crowded there as campsites in Karumba are quite expensive and frequently booked out well in advance. There is a weir next to the camp. Apparently it doesn’t have water going over it but there sure was a lot of water running over the weir when we were there.

Looking at the weir from the road

Walker's Creek Weir

The toilet is old and decrepit and I wouldn’t use it in a pink fit. It is certainly not maintained by anyone – maybe that is why it has been omitted from Camps 6.

Sunset at Walker's Creek

Moonscape at Walker's Creek

We liked it here. If you are lucky and want shade you might get a spot that overlooks the river, but most are away from the water. Apparently you can fish there but you’d have to be patient, one small group spent all day there and didn’t catch anything!

One of the many Brolgas near Karumba

We made some friends here, esp Lorraine and Brian We enjoyed a happy hour with 4 others the first night.
We left our van here are drove into Karumba to have a look around and to taste fresh barramundi & chips which were absolutely yummy. I am not so keen on Karumba. Having said that, it is chocka block full. I have never seen so many fishing trailers as there. It must be a great place to kick off a fishing expedition that's for sure.

Karumba - looking west up the creek

We much preferred Karumba Point for scenic viewing but truly, unless you are into fishing in a big way, this is one town you can leave off your agenda.
We stayed an extra day at Walker’s Creek just for the opportunity to be lazy and do a few odd bits ‘n bobs.

Karumba - looking out at the Gulf of Carpenteria

Another reason we stayed an extra night in Walker’s Creek was that we could attend church before moving on. We forgot to check the time of the service and found that we were an hour too early, so I went to the Laundromat and Bob went and filled the Robbiebago with water whilst we waited for the appointed hour...10am rolled around and no one came. At 10 past we gave up the ghost. Obviously they had called off the service and hadn’t thought to post a notice to say so for visitors. We left rather disappointed and continued on. We stopped for lunch at Black Bull which is an old railway station that is also a campsite. It too, is not in Camps 6 but it is in Camps 5: 252. It is about 90km east of Normanton. It has toilets and some covered picnic tables. I would consider staying overnight here if we were here later in the day. As it was we kept on going!

Boodjamulla National Park (Lawn Hill)

We decided to leave the Robbiebago at the caravan park next to the Gregory Downs Pub ($8 pn) and also use this 3 night trip into Lawn Hill as a mini trial run for camping up in the Cape early in July.

The first bit of the road to Lawn Hill National Park is mostly bitumen or well graded dirt road that is maintained by a mining company near the park. We stopped at the intersection of the mining road turnoff as there is reception here for the mine and we had lunch whilst we check out our emails and phone messages since there is no phone reception and Gregory Downs nor at Lawn Hill.

After this intersection, the road quickly turns into deep rutted dirt tracks in many parts especially after the recent rains that would have made the roads a dickens of a drive. We had no real problems even though we also had to drive nice and steadily through a few large mud puddles that could have been dicey.

A tad muddy in places on the way in to Lawn Hill

Our friends were going to work for 4 months Adel’s Grove, so we decided to call into them first since it was on the way but we were advised that they had gone for a trek, so we continued onto our campsite. (By the way, Adel’s Grove is a private campground just outside the National Park - and expensive at about $48pn unpowered! Fuel is available here too for $1.98 per litre, but at least it gets you out of trouble if you were caught unprepared!)

We set up in a camping bay and then along came John & Kathy to see us after their walk and for a cuppa and chat.

Our site is home to nesting birds, unidentified by us at this point of time. It was great to sit back and watch them at times. We also saw black cockatoos and sulphur head cockatoos, kites, wrens and crimson .... whilst there. These little nest builders were so fast it was hard to catch them on camera. As you can see I have only 80% of the bird! The pick up an amazing amount of litter and fly it up into a gum tree for building the nest!

Unidentified bird collecting stuff for its nest

After our friends left, we went for a short but pleasant walk through tall palms and what not to the Cascades, only to discover a nice big pool of water with lots of little fish but no cascades as the water wasn’t flowing there at that time.

Both these above are of the pool area at the Cascades

The next day Bob did some fiddling jobs – there always seems to be something that could be done to make something work better or some minor repair. I am lucky to have a hubby who can do these sort of things that make life a tad better. Then we went kayaking with John & Kathy up the Lawn Hill River for a few hours. They came back to our camp and provided sausage sandwiches for a late lunch.

Kayaking up Lawn Hill Creek

On our last full day at Lawn Hill, we went on an ambitious 6 km walk (I reckon they have their distances way out and it is more likely 8km) to the Upper Gorge where we had a lovely view of the various levels of the river and gorge with its corresponding waterfalls. It was quite steep in places and that last kilometre seemingly took forever. I don’t have crook knees but they were sore for 2 days afterward.

One of the small waterfalls on the creek

The most disappointing thing about camping at Lawn Hill is that there are no hot showers. We could have brought in our solar showers had we known that it was cold water only. Nothing can compel me to have cold showers even in the middle of the day when it is the warmest! Finding out that no fires are allowed was also a tad disappointing especially as it wasn't a fire danger season.

Moonrise

Now we know a few more thing about camping and what to bring (and leave behind) when we go camping in the Cape.

All set up for a good night's sleep

Longreach

We opted to stay just on the western outskirts of town at a popular free camp (Camps 6: 355). The camp is alongside a river but basically you only get to see the river when you walk (or drive to it).  The area floods in the heavy wet season.

Longreach is going to be the largest town we will see before we reach Mt Isa and there were a few things we needed to do here including another visit to the doctor re my ruptured ear drum, purchase an additional battery for camping and a few miscellaneous things. We decided to stay here until Monday to allow us to attend church here.  It was not unusual to have 35-50 caravans and motor homes here each night, Maybe the fact that this was the weekend of the Longreach Show might have swelled the numbers a bit.

On the first day here we went to the Stockman’s Hall of Fame. It is a huge museum of the pastoral industry of this area. We also took in a horse show that we paid for in addition to the entry fee. 

This was cleverly done with the cowboy showing the various tricks that one or another of his horses can do. There was also a lot of story telling and a few jokes interspersed as part of the show. All in all we spent 4 hours here including a light lunch. 

On our 2^nd day here we did have a quieter day. Bob and Noel worked on their cars. Sandi and I catching up on the internet, reading or craft and such. Sandi even cooked us all some pofferjes for afternoon tea. (These are Dutch mini pancakes)

Noel and Sandi

Felt shapes for "In the garden theme"

Basically the Longreach Show is a local rural show, with a few markets, rides etc as well as cattle sales, baking and craft show competitions and horse competitions etc. Sandi and I went in early on Saturday morning and thoroughly enjoyed a few hours wandering around whilst the guys congratulated themselves that they did not have to come with us. Bob and I went for a drive up some rough river tracks after lunch, but it is nothing exciting to write about.

On Sunday, Bob & I as well as Sandi, went to the local Baptist church, which is a good size for all ages. Afterwards Bob & I went to the Qantas Museum which we thoroughly enjoyed, much more than the Hall of Fame.  The big 747 was unavailable as they had made a huge mistake of putting it on uncompacted ground and the 747 was sinking into the ground and thus deemed unsafe and therefore closed to the public. Someone made a big boo boo.

Bob is wondering if it is worth replacing the Landcruiser motor

Michelle is thinking she'll stay on the land