Cairns to Normanton

Summary: Tropical Rainstorm, The Australian Savannah, urban Dakotas, update from the wide world of animals, and 28-ft Crocodiles.

Hello from the edge of the Gulf of Carpenteria. Today we drove from Cairns to Normanton, cutting across the Cape York Peninsula. It was a good drive, marked by a certain symmetry. When the sun rose this morning, it was windy and there was an air of a looming storm. After driving through sunny and clear weather all day, we spotted a storm on the horizon and met that storm as we arrived in Normanton. We could see lightning strikes ahead, although it was still sunny where we were. It rained a little and then let loose right as we got into Normanton. Whatever your image of a tropical downpour is (mine would be those “Paradiso Lluvioso” Volkswagen ads), we got one… but I am getting ahead of myself.

Today was essentially a driving day. We drove out of Cairns right past Kuranda (by the way, I want to make it clear that did not mean to belittle the town in yesterday’s post, I only wanted to emphasize that the transport to and from Kuranda is unique and exceptional). Driving up to Kuranda it was drizzling with more storm apparently coming from offshore, but at Kuranda the rain cut off and stayed off for the next 7 hours of sunny/partly cloudy driving. The first area after Kuranda was the Atherton Tablelands – starting with a string of small towns in pristine settings. This was completely unexpected – I really thought it would be jungle comparable to Kuranda for a while, but things quickly broke up to lush green rolling hills and meadows surrounded by mountain ridges. This is very pretty countryside. Had our timing been a little later, we would have certainly visited one of the several coffee plantations. The route we are taking (at least to Normanton) is called the “Savannah Way” and what we drove through for most of the day was truly like pictures I’ve seen of Africa’s Savannah. It was mostly flat and rocky with lots of trees, but not remotely jungle or swamp (OK it was swamp those last ten miles). Earlier, we drove over tiny creeks with large trees bent over in the direction of the flow of the water, so those creeks are certainly capable of flooding. As we approached Normanton, the water was higher.

En route we stopped for lunch in Mount Surprise, which is noteworthy primarily for this sign (If you can’t read the fine print, it is “Tastes like shit… but you can live on it”- it may be a quote from Crocodile Dundee). For the record, the lunch was fine. The woman serving us was very friendly and had lots of questions about America. Regarding the population density of Australia, she said “you guys have your empty parts too, right?” “Well, yes and no, some people think states like North Dakota are pretty empty. But Fargo still has over 100,000 and Bismarck has another 50,000 or so. Same basic story in the other ‘empty’ states.” She was surprised. If I had said 15,000 lived in all of North Dakota, it would have seemed about right.

Wildlife: I did not see any Kangaroos until we were almost into Normanton, as the dark skies may have reminded the roos of dusk (which is when they get active). However, we saw more than our share of cattle grazing next to the road. All of the cattle seemed to have a healthy fear of the road. OK, almost all of them. This bull was in no hurry to get off the road and enjoyed standing right in the middle. The fact that a car might come every hour or so was not going to deter him - for some reason he was focused on that termite mound 10 feet in front if him.
I have been asked if that “no travel at night” rule is really a “hard and fast” rule. Sure, it is best not to drive at night, but it is no big deal, right? Honestly, there is no way I would have any comparable “rule” regarding travel at night in the US. Most people know that Australia is well populated with Kangaroos (to the tune of 4 roos per human, from what I heard, but estimates vary). Let me illustrate this night driving rule with someone else’s story. On the way back from Kuranda, we spoke with an Englishman doing the same sort of thing we’re doing. He is taking 5 months to travel around Australia (clockwise) on a Greyhound bus (aside: he wishes he drove). He had a few stories, but this one is quite salient to the wildlife. He said the buses (and road train trucks) are the only vehicles driving at night because the drivers are up high and they have massive “roo bars” on the front of the trucks/buses to keep their front ends from being destroyed. Every night he heard “bam” several times. The buses would slow down or go around when possible, but they would not “swerve” at the risk of their passengers. He said at night they would go for hours on end and only pass one or two other buses or trucks in a 10-12 hour span. There were simply no cars out at night. I’ll follow the pack on this one.

One last bit of wildlife that I want to point out would be the insects. Given how hot and humid it is, you would think it extremely buggy. Actually it is buggy in Normanton, but it wasn’t in Cairns or at any stop along the way. Better yet, we have yet to see any mosquitoes (not that they aren’t there, but we have not seen them). I have not seen any cockroaches, which (like most people) I have a special dislike for. Amazingly, we have yet to see any flies. On previous trips to Australia, I have been amazed at how many there were. One last insect that I have not seen but whose handiwork I have seen all day is the termite. There are little termite mounds (looking like anything from posts to boulders) the whole way. They are just strange looking, all taking on the color of the soil directly beneath them for obvious reasons. We’ll pass tan sand-colored mounds and red ones. Squint at that second photo just above and you’ll see it has about 50 termite mounds in the background among the trees.

Normanton is really quite small (1500), yet it is the biggest dot near a straight line on the map from Cairns to Darwin. To stay on paved roads, I have to swing 350km south, go over to Tennant Creek, then go north to Darwin. There are non-paved roads and even they swing south. To put it mildly, as wet as I think Normanton is, the stuff between here and Darwin is simply marshland or part-time flood-land. Normanton is a sort of gateway to the Gulf of Carpenteria. There is another town, Kurumba, right on the water, but it is even smaller and the road there is indirect on a good day (70km by road, 20km straight line). Winding through potentially flooded roads through swamps during a downpour is just not appealing right now. One thing that put this town on the map is that back in the 1950’s the largest saltwater croc ever caught was captured right here on the Norman River (8.63m). According to Bruce, the tourguide on the Daintree, it is extremely rare to find a crocodile over 5m. In honor of “Krys” the croc, the good people of Normanton erected this statue. It looks so cartoonishly large it just does not seem possible that it is life size, but it really is.

We rolled into Normanton and found that most all of the accommodations were pub motels, so we are staying at just such an establishment – The Albion Hotel. Nice folks, pretty good food, a roof & walls between me and mother nature. I like the place. The pub looked like a cast of extras from the next Crocodile Dundee movie - I mean that as a compliment, but these guys were the genuine article. This Hotel/Pub was clearly the hotspot in town as seemingly one third of the population came through (between 5 & 7pm when we were there) to hang out or buy a 30 pack of XXXX Gold Beer. Every town (at least in Queensland) has at least one bar with XXXX written in garishly huge letters on the outside of the pub - sort of like how every town in Wisconsin has no less than one bar with a little Old Style sign. Another interesting note from this pub that jives with what I heard was that in the Deep North of Queensland, people talk really slow and their accents are more pronounced so it is hard to understand them. Let's just say I certainly said "beg your pardon" a bit more than usual and I suddenly had empathy for non-Southerners not understanding folks in the deep South.

This pub has a colony of cane toads living on the property and Alex loves them. Cane Toads are a pest introduced from Central America to kill another pest (it failed), but one that reproduces wildly while killing off its predators. It secretes a poison such that animals that eat it die and animals that eat its eggs die. I read an article in one of the local papers about people organizing ventures into the swamps to kill them (humanely, but how bad must anything be to make you want to venture into swamps with Taipans, Saltwater Crocodiles, etc etc etc to kill a venomous toad?). They may be terrible for the ecosystem, the environment, various crops, and more than a few crocodiles, they may be brown and ugly, but Alex loves them (at a distance). Still, I hope those trying to stop its progress succeed.

Anyhow, I am not sure when I’ll get to post, but I look forward to keeping things fresh as we roll to Camooweal.