Bramston Beach - Lightning Ridge

Bramston Beach -  Lightning Ridge (Sept 5^th – 18^th)

Updated map

We had a pleasant couple of days relaxing at Bramston Beach – walking along the beach, collecting shells, reading. We decided to slowly move our way down the coast towards Townsville, so our next stop was about 40kms south of Innisfail at Hull Heads. We had stopped off to visit Sonja’s brother, Garry and Jill who were staying at Kurrimine Beach, about 20 kms south of Innisfail. Our stop was in a small park beside the Coast Guard building. When the bloke came to collect the fees for the night ($15 – toilets and hot showers) he had some photos of the area after the cyclone had been through. Our van would have been well and truly underwater. He also had a photo of the resident 4m crocodile that lived in the river mouth just beside the park.

Mt Bartle Frere at sunset from Hull Head

That points out the problem with tropical north Queensland – beautiful beaches – all of them with crocodiles, making swimming a no-go. If you’re not worried about the crocs, the rather poisonous jellyfish arrive around October and hang around for a number of months!!!

Our next stop found us in a large park just behind the sand dunes at Toomulla Beach. Another pleasant free place to stop – very quiet, grassed and a good beach to walk along. Unfortunately, the mozzies and sandflies took away some of the paradise side of things!

Toomulla Beach

The Beach at Toomulla

After travelling about 20km down the highway, we next found ourselves at Saunders Beach, about 20kms north of Townsville, where we spent a couple of nights again, just relaxing. It was a small spot, but had a great grassed area where we spent a large part of the day in our chairs overlooking the beach. We decided to use the generator on our first day here – again, because we hadn’t used it since Gregory Downs. At around 6:30pm each night, 1000s of bats took off from nearby and filled the sky for ages as they took off in search of food for the night. A really amazing sight!

Saunders Beach

Thousands of bats on the wing at Saunders Beach

Having decided we would move back inland again, we did a quick drive around part of Townsville, hoping to stock up on some perishables, only to find, being Sunday, the supermarkets didn’t open until 11:00. We found a hot bread shop and decided we could wait another day for the rest. Around midday we pulled into a free camp area called Marcossan Park overlooking the Burdekin River. We decided, wanting to continue to do things on the cheap, to spend a couple of nights here and do a day trip into Charters Towers (about 20kms away). When we left Saunders Beach in the morning we had discovered the gas bottle we were using for the van fridge had run dry at some stage during the night. On arriving at Macrossan Park we discovered the fridge had obviously started to defrost and so we used the generator to make sure it got a really good going and also to allow the solar panels to do their thing as we haven’t had power for about a week and been in some shade over that time.

Our site at Macrossan Park on the Burdekin River

Flood levels on the Burdekin River - 21.97 metres being at the top (1947)!

We spent two nights at Macrossan, with a day trip into Charters Towers. Whilst here we did a bit of a walking tour around the place, David had a hair cut and we decided to have lunch at one of the hotels. Usually, a roast pub lunch is quite good. This was the worst we’ve had – cauliflower and broccoli were overcooked, limp bits, whilst the pumpkin was so uncooked, we couldn’t cut it to eat it. The spuds were definitely NOT roasting potatoes. VERY disappointing.

From here we headed down to a delightful camp spot at Theresa Creek Dam and then on to Rolleston (where we took 15 minutes to walk around the town) before heading to Carnarvon Gorge.

We are now obviously out of the tropics – it’s amazing how cool 22°C is after having been up in the 30s for the past few months. David even had to put on a windcheater at night when we reached Carnarvon Gorge!

Theresa Creek Dam

Our site at Theresa Creek Dam

Our two nights at Carnarvon Gorge was quite busy. After our arrival, David went out and walked through a couple of the gorges and side-tracks from the main Gorge track.

Warrumbah Creek Gorge

A small part of the The Amphitheatre (very narrow entrance)

The Moss Garden

On the second day, we walked the length of the walking trail – 20kms return trip with 30 river crossings! There is a small campsite at the end of the trail, and a fabulous Boowinda Gorge just near the end. The river crossings required a lot of rock hopping activity. Unfortunately, Sonja had a bit of a problem on one of these and bruised an ankle and caused a bit of lower back problem when she slipped on a rock that decided to move when she applied weight to it. All was fine on the inward journey, but wasn’t all that great on the return, which took us twice as long as Sonja was in considerable pain. A couple of massages and some strong painkiller over the next couple of nights helped bring things back to ‘normal’ again.

Sonja on the first crossing into the  Gorge
- A fabulous way to let you know you are entering somewhere special!

Kangaroo and joey in the park

Sonja on another river crossing

David at the entrance to Boowinda Gorge

David - Boowinda Gorge

Sonja partway into Boowinda Gorge

David at one of the river crossings 

After leaving Carnarvon we made a couple of free camp stops by dams and the Balonne River before reaching Lightning Ridge. Here we had to deal with thunder, lightning (Lightning Ridge living up to its name!) and some rain. As the weather was going to be dodgy for a couple of days we decided to stay in a caravan park just opposite the thermal pools. We also had a second spectacular, noisy thunderstorm late on the second day – being very glad we had solid, compact stone under us, not the soft, easily turned into mud, soil where we have been free-camping recently. The weather will determine if we free-camp or caravan park on the rest of our journey.

Our first day was just a bit of rest and some washing. David was up early on the second day for a quick whip down to the thermal pool for a dip. The temperature of the water is around 41°C, so there were a number of short dips and some walking around to cool off!

Lightning Ridge has four self drive trips around the town – each drive marked by different coloured car doors. Car doors and bonnets seem to be a popular form of signage around the place – there must be a number of door-less, bonnet-free vehicles hiding around the area!

It is different to Coober Pedy – here it’s quite hilly, compared to the flat area of Coober Pedy; It seems to be a different soil type here, although there are still the hillocks of white tailings from each mine site in both places. Coober Pedy seems to have more blowers (large trucks with a huge vacuum on the back for sucking up all the rubble) and larger constructions around each mine site. Most of the mine sites here tend to have a caravan and shed construction on them. They use diesel, solar or wind generation for power. We quite enjoyed our time here, but have decided it’s too much hard work (involving a lot of luck) for us to consider taking up fossicking at any time!

We managed to spend an hour or so dipping in and out of the thermal pools later in the afternoon – right through the thunderstorm. Very pleasant watching the dark clouds overhead, lightning flashing (off in the distance), thunder rolling overhead and rain cooling us down from the heat of the water in the pool.

Approaching storm at LIghtning Ridge

We move on again tomorrow – not sure where we will end up, but not worrying about stopping for anything we haven’t seen before. This will probably be the last entry before we get home. I’ll include another one when we do finally arrive – mainly to finish off the map!!