Day 53: Burketown to Karumba via Normanton, 290km

Aye Karumba! Although these towns are both on rivers in flatlands on the Gulf of Carpentaria, Burketown was very quiet but Karumba (the other barramundi capital of Australia, apparently) is a full-on tourist town full of caravan parks and holiday letting.

On the way back from the sunset cruise off Karumba

Sunset on the Gulf - this sandbank was in the middle of the water, way off shore (an hour by boat)

Normantown was pretty cool. Once the biggest town on the Gulf, it had an old train station (one of the oldest lines in Queensland and still running) and museum. Once a week, the Gulflander (a 70 year old train) runs from Normanton to Croydon and back - the only isolated line in Queensland. I love engineering stuff so I read with interest about the design of the line. Instead of doing the (expensive) usual way, by laying tracks on timber sleepers and then on ballast that is raised above the floodline, the designer used steel sleepers laid directly on the ground. There was no timber to use locally, and termites were a big problem, and this was much quicker and cheaper. The sleepers were U-shaped in cross section so as the weight of the train pushed them into the ground, they impacted the sand, firming up the base. They covered them in pitch to prevent rusting. This was in the 1800s and those sleepers are still there today.

The original sleepers still in place

Close up of the steel sleepers that were laid directly on the ground

After that highlight (pretty hard to beat, I know) we got to Karumba and had a nice drink and snack in the pub overlooking the town boat ramp, then set up camp at Karumba Point (a few km around the corner) and went on a sunset cruise.

One interesting point about Karumba is that it used to be a stop for the flying boats that Qantas ran from Sydney to London - it was the stop before Darwin. The main business now (apart from tourism) is prawning, and there is a port facility for an inland zinc mine, which has run out of zinc. The ships here have to navigate 14km of channels to get into the gulf proper, because the land around here is so flat, it extends into the water which is very shallow for a long way off shore, with heaps of sand banks popping up at low tide.

Fishing off Karumba Point 

Lots of these guys on the way to Normanton. Interestingly, the roadkill were mainly cows and pigs!

The captain of our cruise boat - see his little uniform?

Michele taking pics on the sandbank in the Gulf

The road to Normanton wasn't all that great. Water crossings are fine, but the mud made it a bit slippery.

Normanton railway museum, and working station

Gulf prawns on the cruise