If you’ve only got a weekend or only a few days for a break away, where would you go?My beloved and I like to travel and as we are time poor, for extended time away, we go in short bursts. As we aren’t the type to go to the normal tourist haunts, too often, we like to go to out of the way locations just like the “grey nomads”. With this being the case travel has to be properly coordinated.
Travel extends the self, opens perspectives and perceptions and puts you in touch with something far deeper inside and is very enriching and it does make you feel like you’ve had a complete break from the normal humdrum of everyday life.
Recently we had the chance to go to central far north Queensland before the wet season started.
We flew to Cairns in the evening after work. Stayed at a hotel we found on the “Wotif” website for last minute sales.
The next morning we flew from Cairns with Skytrans Airline to Normanton. Skytrans flies to many inland and out of the way places in Queensland. Even right up to Bamaga, which is the closest mainland airstrip to Thursday Island and the Torres Strait. I may never drive there myself like a lot of the nomads but maybe taking this flight would be an option.
We flew to Cairns in the evening after work. Stayed at a hotel we found on the “Wotif” website for last minute sales.
The next morning we flew from Cairns with Skytrans Airline to Normanton. Skytrans flies to many inland and out of the way places in Queensland. Even right up to Bamaga, which is the closest mainland airstrip to Thursday Island and the Torres Strait. I may never drive there myself like a lot of the nomads but maybe taking this flight would be an option.
We rang the airport in Normanton regarding a hire car, before leaving home, but it seems that someone is only at the airport when the planes are due. We did do a bit of a chase around and found a car through the local caravan park. I think it was their personal car. We didn’t have much of a choice although we found out later that there is another car hirer.
It was unseasonably warm when we arrived there. Try 37 degrees! That’s over 100 in the old scale. Having come from 18 degrees we did feel a bit warm. Out came the shorts and thongs. And of course the hat and sunscreen!
The one thing that caught my attention in Normanton, besides the local institutions such as the Purple Pub, the Gobble & Go take away, the historic railway station with its Victorian architecture and the Gulflander train, was the “Big” statue in the main street. You know the “Big Thingamabob” or “Big Whatchamacallit” that a lot of towns have at the entrance to their towns commemorating their greatest gift doesn’t do much for me but the statue in Normanton surely demanded my attention.
In 1957 a little lady, or should I say a lady short of stature, but big of heart, confronted and shot an 8.76 meter, or as it was then a nearly 29 foot long salt water crocodile in the main street. The model of it is at the entrance to the park. That creature is a remnant of the dinosaurs. What a monster! I’m not a little bloke but it would have eaten me in one bite.
To think there are people, mainly tourists sadly, who still go for a swim in the Norman River paying no attention to the warning signs saying not to! Some have paid with their lives.
Normanton was a river port for the cattle industry and was important for the shipment of gold when it was discovered at Croydon [100 km SE of Normanton] in 1885. That’s how big the river is. It’s quite a sight flying into Normanton over this river and its flood plain. In the wet season if big rains flood the area, as they did earlier this particular year cutting the hinterland off for nearly 3 months, the outline of the river can still be seen from above because the trees show the rivers course.
The explorers Burke and Wills epic last push to the Gulf saw them approximately 20 kilometres west of Normanton. Evidently there are plaques commemorating their visit to the muddy mangrove swamps where they turned around for their fateful journey south.
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