560 klms of dirt road, no fuel, no anything except for a few cattle stations along the way. And no wonder noone could give us any information about the road. The station owners don't like people camping on their land and most people would not choose to travel the direction we took. They would drive to Atherton.
The first stretch of road was the normal corrogation. However between the two mine sites, one at Kowanyama and another some 30 - 50klms to the east the road "is shit" ( a description given to us by the jillaroo that we met well past this stretch). This stretch is deep sand with meandering tracks around the deep pits to try to find a better and safer route. Sometimes the "road" was al least 30m across.
Had we known, we would have been best to take the road from Gamboola to Drumduff and onto Koolatah before crossing the Mitchell River. But we didn't know! Wikicamps tell us there are several delightful places to stay along this road alongside the Mitchell River.
Just before we reached Dunbar Station, we took a right hand turn towards the Mitchell River and drove a further 18 klms to find a beautiful campsite just above the Mitchell River wet crossing. Here we stayed for two nights.
This is a very wide river with fast running fresh water. Each day the two local helicopter pilots and the jillaroo would bring themselves and their dogsfor a swim. Yes there are crocs here! They would drive their vehicle to the furtherest end of the causeway and park in the shallows. The dogs would be let off first and then they would roll about in the shallow lower end. Crocs love dog meat and will take a dog in preference to a human.
Just below from our camp they set freshwater prawn (cherabins) nets. They only caught three whilst we were there, but they are large and very tasty we are led to believe.
We did collect fresh water from the river for washing and washing up, so one of us was on "spot-the-croc" duty whilst the other fetched water. We did seea croc here, but it was only small and of the freshwater variety and therefore harmless.
The two pilots work for Dunbar Station and Rutland Plains Station, mustering during the season. It was interesting to find out that the homesteads are only really fully used for four months of the year. This is when the cattle are mustered, sorted and branded. The steers are taken on road trains to Cloncurry for fattening up, the bulls are de-sexed and then also sent to Cloncurry and the heifers set free again for breeding. A stud bull is left with the heifers. So basically the herd does not see a human for eight months. No wonder they are not domesticated like our herds. A caretaker manager maintains the generators and fridges etc during the wet months.
Dunbar Dtation is enourmous. It is 1.6 million areas. It took two hours of driving to go through it. It starts near Gamboola and goes as far as the Staaten River.
The jillaroo gave us some information about the road ahead, telling us that two cattle trains had recently become bogged in the sand. So we moved expecting to find the road as bad as before. We were pleasantly surprised to find that there were only two sand patches and not nearly as deep or as wide as previously.
Our next camp was beside the Gilbert River. This river is not marked on the Hema maps. Again fresh water and running.
Here we saw at least 5 crocs, mostly we think they were fresh water.
By now the sandfly bites on my arms and legs had become an allergic action. So we were forced to go to Karumba, the only pharmacy from here to Atherton that could give me some antihistamines.
Normanton and Karumba are sandfly heaven, so we drove to the historic Croydon.
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