Daly Waters – Atherton
25 September – 3 October
To head over to Qld and Cape York we decided to take the ‘Savannah Way’ a route which a number of people that we had crossed during our travels had mentioned as being particularly scenic. We thought that we would be able to get across the bottom of the Gulf of Carpentaria in about 6 days ready to make our assault up the York Peninsula. Unfortunately it didn’t pan out that way…
We opted for the sealed option from Mataranka mainly so that we could stop off and check out the famous Daly Waters Pub. A watering stop used by explorer Stuart on his third attempt to cross Australia from south to north. One of its attractions is the Stuart Tree where he supposedly carved an ‘S’ during his stop. We followed the signs from the road in anticipation, only to find what we would rather call Stuart’s Stump, a rather uneventful dead tree stump reaching ~1.5m high which if you squinted just right could just make out an ‘S’. Oh well onto the pub for us.
With the ac still down it was nice to find a cool spot to enjoy a couple of beers. Daly Waters Pub’s hay day started when there was a WWII base adjacent to it, and has gone on since then being a ‘must stop’ on the trip from Darwin to Alice Springs, arguably it’s hay day continues, though it was a bit quiet when we were there. It’s a typical Aussie Outback Pub, reasonably basic, with the walls, ceiling, bar and rafters plastered with things left by passing travellers including ID Cards; T-Shirts; hats; Stubbie Holders; underwear; badges and patches; Money; stickers.
Savannah Way heads east from Daly Waters and the road quickly narrows to a single sealed lane, can’t really complain really, at least it’s sealed, you’ve just got to get off the road in a hurry when a roadtrain is barrelling down the road towards you! Our roadside stop that night was pleasant, but in the morning we were greeted with a swarm of bees around our tent. Needless to say we got out of there pretty quickly. Another notable group of wildlife we encountered that morning what we have dubbed Minion birds. Medium sized greeny-Grey birds, approximately 20cm tall who moved through the camp chirping away and cleaning up anything left by campers. They weren’t particularly interested or worried about us madly rushing around to pack up, just moved through, around, under, and on our vehicle. Quite entertaining.
The end of the bitumen is at Borroloola, so we opted to stay the night at their local fishing club grounds at King Ash Bay. Arriving early I decided to quickly check out what was making the occasional clunking noise from our front left corner when we went over big bumps. With the wheel off I couldn’t see anything, everything seemed to be in order until I caught a glint out of the corner of my eye, and looked over at the back of the leaf spring pack to see a nice shiny bit right next to the eye. The main leaf had fatigued and broken. Bugger. The secondary spring had been supporting the front end, probably since the Gibb River Road. I’m a bit annoyed that they didn’t pick this up when it was in the workshop in Darwin two days ago. Now I’m 1000km away from spare parts.
That night we discussed what our options were; stay there and get the parts delivered; take the long way round to Cairns on the sealed roads; take our chances that the secondary spring would hold and continue on our way on the dirt road. We opted to stay and fix it there, because if it got worse, we would only be further away from help.
Two days of waiting for parts to arrive from Darwin ensued, dousing ourselves in DEET to keep the millions of mozzies at bay, and putting up with the flies. We kept ourselves occupied by reading, going for a short drive to the coast to see the Zinc Ore loading facility and boat ramp, and just generally trying to keep cool in the hot and humid environment.
On the fourth day there, the new springs arrived, and I had negotiated with the mechanic there to use their hoist to change them out. It went relatively smoothly, won’t bore you with the details, and we were on the road by 3pm. We stopped on the banks of Wearyan river which was the first river crossing along the unsealed 500km towards Burketown. The next morning I got up early to check the oils in the gearboxes and diffs, correct the steering, and check the wheel bearings as we had heard some funny sounds the day before. To my dismay the front right wheel bearings weren’t sounding too happy. Again, a bit pissed off that the mechanic in Darwin changed out the front left, but failed to check the front right properly. Another 3 hours later we’d changed out the bearings with our spare and we were off again.
The country to the Queensland boarder was pretty unremarkable. Just sparse treed savannah country, which unsurprisingly continued on the other side of the welcome sign to Burke Shire, Qld. Rather fittingly, the first place we came to across the QLD border is ‘Hells Gate’, thus named by a relatively small rocky ridge with a gap in it which the road goes through. This was once where the cattle drovers were left by their police escort to fend for themselves in the wild west.
The shire is called Burke Shire in honour of the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition to find an inland route from the southern states up to the gulf of Carpentaria. After a long ordeal through some of the driest country the finally made it to the coast. Well, almost, when they got there they were hampered by huge swampy plains and thick mangroves, so they never actually saw the ocean, it probably didn’t help that it was the middle of the monsoon! Their last camp, camp 119, lies just outside of Normanton, where we could look at some of the trees they had ‘blazed’. I figured that that meant that they had burnt them, but apparently it is when you skim off the bark from the side of a tree and calve something into it like B CXIX (Bourke camp 119). Crazy to think some of these trees are still around 150 years later.
We decided that we’d go and check out Karumba (Ay Karumba!, as Estelle kept saying) which is the only town on the coast of the gulf serviced by a sealed road. It was a pretty cool little holiday village with a river mouth, nice beach and its pub looking due west straight at the setting sun.
The last stop along the Savannah way was Undara National Park, famous for its 160 odd km of massive lava tubes. Formed by lava flows running along the surface after exiting a volcano, the lava on the surface cools and hardens relatively quickly, insulating the lava flow below and allowing it to continue further along the volcanic plateau. Eventually when the volcano stopped erupting (in Undara’s case 18 months later) the lava slowly drains from the tubes and leaves them hollow. These tubes are incredibly large in some places greater than 30m in diameter and have been conveniently boardwalked for your viewing pleasure. Cheeky tree roots poke through the roof of the caves and reach down to the silt covered floors, while other small pockets of rainforest capitalise on the collapsed tubes which generates the microclimate they enjoy. Brush turkeys scurry along in the leaf litter and butterflies float around the group as if they aren’t even there. The walls of the tubes are covered in different minerals which have been leached out to the rocks by water and provide a smattering of colour to the otherwise grey basalt.
We had another breakdown at Undara, however this time it wasn’t the car. Let’s keep it classy and just say that the beef Tikka Masala we cooked up the night before our lava tube experience didn’t quite sit right with us, and it would take a few days to recover.
The savannah way technically ends in Cairns, but we chose to end it in the Atherton Tablelands instead, camping out the back paddock of a local farm outside Atherton and feeding the local wildlife in their purpose built feeding hut. We were absolutely taken by being back in super productive green land when you compare it with the semi barren land we had come to expect since leaving Perth. With breakdown way behind us we crossed our fingers and prepared to tackle Cape York Peninsula.
M