The athlete woke up at 3.20am and decided to hit the Macadam. So Spike and I got up and organised breakfast and a bon voyage ceremony. She got away about 4 to take advantage of it being cool with almost no traffic.
We did our chores and overtook her for morning tea at about 8.30. It was interesting to note that with all the flashing red lights on her and the bike, she is very visible from 3 or 4 kilometres away. The flashing really catches your eye – apart from the good looking cyclist that is.
We got to Normanton about 10, caught up on a bit of sleep and have been doing jobs since (some of us).
Normanton was “discovered” from the sea. At least the Norman River was, by a guy called, Norman of course. He was leading a party in search of Burke and Wills but got jack of it, found a nice big river, sailed or rowed up it for 50 miles and then pegged out a town which he also thought just fitted the name of Norman Town perfectly. This was in the gold rush days. Fairly quickly a settlement was established and then a rail track built from the goldfields at Croydon to Normanton. The gold then went by boat down the river to the Gulf of Carpentaria and then to Brisbane and points beyond. The narrow gauge train track is still in use by a funny little weekly train called the Gulflander.
Burns Philp had a hand in it all and there’s the last Burns Philp building in Australia standing proud in the centre of town.
Of course all this fell to pieces with the decline of the mines and the pastoralists moved in. They “re-homed” the aboriginal population; as labour on the stations, or to missions and also to the next life in some fairly dark moments.
Normanton is not a bad sized town with quite a few facilities. The population is now 60% aboriginal and everyone seems to get along well, although I imagine the past is a difficult topic of conversation. We might find out tonight when we go to the pub – but I won’t be bringing it up.
Normanton also has a “Big” thing. In this case a Crocodile and it’s fricken big. There was a female shooter here in the late 50’s who shot the biggest croc ever verified. They called it Kris. There’s a replica of it built to scale. You can’t really tell from the pic but it was measured at 9.63 meters!! and they estimated its weight at over two tons. I asked Spikey to sit alongside it for reference but he wasn’t going near the damned thing.
A day off tomorrow and we might go up the track to the Gulf and see some of Kris’ rellies.
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Really enjoying the tour of Australia – all the bits you don’t see in the media. Keep up the commentary and give Spike a belly rub!
Spike’s probably thinking “You sir next to it.”