Day 32 – Undara to Croydon (Fri May 25^th)

The clear, starry night didn’t last long, the sky opened up about 2am and it poured with rain.

So much for our sunny day today, it’s a bleak 16 degrees, with an icy strong wind! We had to dig out our bag of winter woollies, which we didn’t expect to be using until we were in the NT desert and Perth.

By the sounds of it though, we were lucky to get out of Cairns when we did. They have had some horrendous weather, including Port Douglas, with roads being cut along the coast north of Cairns. The Rex Range we came down the other day, was also closed due to landslides. So, we are thinking ourselves lucky that we missed all that!

The 2 hour Archway Explorer Tour we did this morning was awesome, and made up for the yukky weather. The 2 lava tubes we visited today were formed 190,000 years ago, when the Undara Volcano erupted. The lava flows here, are the longest formed from a single volcano in modern geological time.

We packed up after our enlightening tour, and were very lucky to get it packed up before it started to shower again. Phew, we like a nice dry camper!

At 11am when we left it was still 16 degrees, we wanted to drive until we found sunshine, but didn't think that it was going to happen somehow L

The road towards Normanton follows the Old Telegraph Line, the poles are all in good condition with most of their insulators still on. No one steals them out here.

We saw heaps of kangaroos today, and 6 Wedge tail eagles, they sure are impressive creatures.

Lunch was at a shelter shed in Georgetown, which is a small gold mining town. 20 kms out of town is the Historic Cumberland Chimney, which is all that remains of the gold crushing plant that was built by Cornish Masons. This is a nice rest stop, with a billabong which is home to many different birds.

We arrived at Croydon CP at 4pm, and yep, it’s still 16 degrees, Brrrrrrr!

Unpowered sites are $19.50/night for 2 adults, it’s a council run CP. They have 2 free washing machines, which I utilised. Dryer’s are the normal $3. The showers are really clean with slate floors. And the people are very friendly.

We opted for a pub meal tonight, it’s too bloody cold to be outside cooking, and along with the risk of rain, we trotted off to the Club Hotel for dinner. 

On the walls outside the pub, there is this great 60m mural, which was painted by Rod Lucas as a gift to the hotel. These pics are sections of the mural.

The hospitality from the publican at The Club Hotel Croydon was fantastic. She made us feel so welcome. She gave the kids balloons to blow up, and colouring pencils and paper, she even stuck Sienna’s picture up on the hotel door. 

When we were eating dinner, she went and got cushions for the kids so they could reach the table.

They had Toss the Boss on at the bar, and we ended up winning a free drink, yippie! and the chicken parmy was delicious to, which topped it all off.

We bumped into some people that were on the Undara Tour with us this morning. One of the guys said to Cam “are you following us”, to which he replied “no, we’re waiting for our dinner.”  Hehe, too cute.