Mt Isa to Adels Grove (Lawn Hill Gorge)
Our stay in Mt Isa was mostly stocking up on essentials and
getting any necessary things done.
It’s always busy as it’s on the way to and from lots of places.
The sites at the caravan park were tiny and we camped next to the
children from hell. The 2 little
boys screamed from dawn till dusk, and the parents didn’t seem bothered at all.
Grey nomads in surrounding vans agreed that they would have sorted the
kids out long ago.
On the list of things to buy were some summer camping
clothes. For a large town, Mt Isa
is really lacking in clothes stores, but it’s amazing what you can find on the
racks when your choices are limited to Kmart, Best and Less and a couple of
other options.
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We’ve just come back to our camp at Adels Grove after
canoeing at Lawn Hill Gorge. Adels
Grove is a private camping area 10 kms from Lawn Hill National Park, but much
nicer, with shady camp sites and its own picturesque creek, but the people
camped at the National Park are baking in the sun.
Lawn Hill Gorge is along a beautiful river lined with
pandanus palms and a red rocky escarpment.
There’s a stand where you can hire canoes and then can paddle about 2 kms
before you reach a couple of waterfalls, and what appears to be the end of the
river. There you lift the canoe out
of the water along a set of rails, drag or carry it 50 metres through the scrub
along a strip of muddy carpet and then relaunch it to continue paddling another
3 kms until you reach the very end.
If you’re lucky you can do a ‘canoe swap’ so nobody has to carry their boat
through the scrub. We were lucky
one way, but had to drag the boat coming back.
Our arms were destroyed by the time we’d paddled there and back.
On our way back from canoeing we drove off into the scrub
to stock up on firewood. We swapped
our thongs for our safety Crocs to make sure we came to no harm from snakes,
spiders, ants and the chainsaw blade and went off on our merry way to chop up
some firewood. We filled the back
of the car up with precisely cut pieces of timber, although a fire is the last
thing you need in this weather, but fun anyway.
Back at the van the thermometer is showing 49⁰C outside and
we just had a toasted sandwich for lunch.
It would have been toasted anyway, even if we hadn’t cooked it in the
frypan.
To cool down from the heat everyone gravitates to the creek
where there’s an assortment of car tubes, so you can bob around in the water and
chat to the other campers while you cool off.
All it takes is a gold coin donation which goes to the
Royal Flying Doctor Service. We
upgraded our membership this year to Custodians as we’re certain if we ever get
into any strife, they’ll be the ones to rescue us.
We met Marcel and Lorraine in Longreach who also own a
Kedron caravan and they’re camped near us here.
They’re basically heading in the same direction as us for a while, so we
told them where we were headed next, so I guess we’ll see a bit more of them
along the way.
We’re looking forward to heading further north into
Kingfisher Camp on the Nicholson River in the remote reaches of Gulf country.
There’s plenty of green grass for camping, taps and toilet/shower
facilities, and the river is just a short walk away.
We camped there 3 years ago, and it’s where I crunched the remaining
cartilage in my knee joint going up the step into the caravan.
It was bone on bone for a while and as you know, resulted in a total knee
replacement as soon as we got back to Sydney a few weeks later.
This will be the first chance to put our little boat in and
try and catch some fish. There’s
word out that now the water is warming up the Barra are biting, but we’ll
believe this when we see it.
Anyway, we’ve stocked up on lures so we’re all ready for some fishing.
