Normanton/Karumba

It is physically hurting my heart to write these last few posts about our trip, oh how I miss the days of adventure!  But, I realise there are probably several people out there following our blog who are just wanting to read the last few posts about the trip and wishing we would hurry the heck up and get on with it, so they can then ‘unsubscribe’ and no longer have to listen to our ramblings and be subjected to posts about Chocolate Slice!  Fair enough I guess, so here goes, today and tomorrow will see the last couple of posts about the trip published.

After surviving the Savannah Way, we popped back out into civilisation at Doomadgee and after a quick fuel top up we decided to head for Normanton and spend a precious few nights there.  It was a tough decision to bypass Lawn Hill National Park, but we didn’t think we had enough time left in our trip to ‘do Lawn Hill properly’ and we have decided that will be one of the first destinations that we head to when things finally start to slow down here at Blue Sky Produce.

The Savannah Way – pretty much the path we took back from Broome

Normanton is only a small cattle town, just south of the Gulf of Carpentaria and sits on the Norman River.  It is most famous for its enormous saltwater crocodile ‘Krys’ who was shot in the Norman River.  He is the largest crocodile ever taken, at 8.6metres long, and there is a replica statue in the main street of Normanton to give you an idea of how big he was!  We couldn’t believe how massive – we sure wouldn’t ever like to come across one of those out in the wild!

The kids with ‘Krys’ the croc in Normanton

We stayed at the Normanton Tourist Park and loved it.  They had a great swimming pool (huge!), hot pool and lovely shady sites (albeit a bit dusty), as well as nice clean amenities.  We had our second ‘Are We There Yet’ blog spotting here at the caravan park and got to meet Kevin and his girls who had been following along on our journey – it was so nice to have a chat to another traveller – thanks Kevin!

We had a very relaxing time in Normanton.  We walked downtown and checked out the information centre – it was great!  Heaps of interesting information in there and plenty for the kids to look at too – I think we spent an hour or two just wandering and reading in here!

The outside of the information centre in Normanton

We loved this seat out the front of the information centre – might have to get Matt to have a go at making one!

Pictures of enormous crocodiles in the information centre

And another enormous one!

As well as spending heaps of time relaxing by the the pool – we were trying to eek out the last of our ‘holiday’ before it was over – we took a just under one hour drive one afternoon and checked out Karumba, a small fishing town which sits on the ocean in the Gulf.  It was really lovely there, just such a bummer you can’t swim in the ocean due to crocodiles, but we had plenty of fun walking along the beach collecting shells.

We really ‘lived it up’ with a spectacular final ‘treat’ dinner at the Sunset Tavern right on the beach.  It was a really memorable afternoon for us and a special way to close off our trip!

I think Karumba and Normanton will always have a special place in our hearts – definitely stop in there if you ever get the chance!