Day 35: Karumba – Normanton – Croydon – Normanton – Karumba

We did something today that we haven’t done for … maybe 6 weeks. Something really unpleasant.

Something that I’d hoped never to do again.

We set the alarm to wake up at 6.00am.

Sunrise here in Karumba today is 7.03am. For context, sunrise in Brisbane today is 6.35am. So our sunrise is 30 minutes later. Which means it is dark for 30 minutes longer here in Karumba.

Old habits die hard. I was awake at 4.00am wondering what time it was, and worried that if I had slept through the alarm?

No, not yet.

I went back to sleep and woke again at 5.15am, wondering the same thing.

Nope, not yet.

I woke again at 5.57am, and realised that I may as well just shut off the alarm and get up, because near enough is good enough.

Unless of course you are performing brain surgery, in which case I’d suggest that near enough is NEVER good enough.

But no brain surgery here in Karumba. Today we are going on the Gulflander.

I’m not going to bore you with yet more sunset photos. 

Nope, no sir.

Today we were lucky enough to witness the sunRISE.

We needed to be at the Normanton Train Station by 8.00am, and Jolene tells us that trip from Karumba is about 51 minutes or so, so by a process of deductive reasoning, we figured that we needed to to leave Percy by about 7.00am.

My mate Jack Reacher reminds me, “Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

So I advised MBW that we needed to leave about 6.50am to be in Normanton in plenty of time. That gives a nice “Geoff buffer” to allow for anything that could possibly go wrong.

Flat tyre, roadworks, meteor crashing to earth. You never know what could happen.

Unlike MBW, who likes to taunt me with “just one more thing that needs to be done before we leave” … which makes me very nervous when we leave much later than I am comfortable with.

Now if you do the math, if we leave at 6.50, and sunrise is 7.03, then we will see the sun rise on our way.

And rise it did. In the east, where it always rises. And which way were we headed?

East.

So the sun rose directly in front of us, astonishing us with its beauty, and blinding us with its brilliance at the same time.

Another thing that happened on the way in to Normanton was that we hit a bird. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that the bird hit us. Straight into the windscreen. Ka-boom!

This is the second bird that we have hit. 

MBW didn’t see the first one happen the other day because she was doing something important on her phone, but I was looking out through the windscreen and I saw this pretty little coloured bird smack into the windscreen and literally explode in a kaleidoscope of colour as it bounced off the glass and flew over both Elsie and Percy.

It looked pretty spectacular to me, but I imagine that it was fairly catastrophic for the bird. I didn’t see it land, but I expect that it didn’t get up again.

Today’s bird was the same cause and effect – too slow, hit the windscreen, feathers go everywhere – except that this one was a little black and white bird.

I’m not proud of this BTW, but I am glad that I didn’t run Elsie off the road and crash trying to take an evasive manoeuvre.

So the current tally is Geoff 2, birds 0.

I’m sure that if I hit a slow-moving pelican it will be a different story, but I’m trusting that won’t happen on this trip.

Anyway, today is Gulflander day, and we had to be at the Normanton Train Station at 8.00am for an 8.30am takeoff.

We checked in, got our souvenir coffee mugs, took photos, looked at the museum, and found a seat – right up the front with the driver.

Well, just behind the driver.

The Gulflander was built in the early- to mid-1900s and has a 102HP diesel engine with a 4 speed crash gearbox.

Let me put that in layman’s terms for you. Big noisy diesel rumble, lots of double-declutching, and lots and lots of crunching and grinding of the gearbox.

And lots of rocking, rolling, and shaking going on.

It was a 5 hour trip from Normanton to Croydon. We travelled at a top speed of 25mph (that’s 40km/h) with frequent slowing down to 10mph (about 16km/h) due to flood plains or for other safety reasons.

Safety reasons, like ensuring that we don’t go flying off the track and being derailed.

Garry – our driver, and station master at Normanton Station – gave us a great running commentary and pointed out all of the interesting features along the way. 

Like the 1974 flood marker.

You may recall that in 1974 Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin (you will have to go back a couple of weeks to read about that), but the same cyclone dumped so much water in the gulf that they had the worst flooding ever.

That flood level in 1974 would have been 2 or 3 metres above the top of the train.

We stopped at a place called Black Bull siding and met up with an “over 50s” bus trip, who then joined us for the remainder of the trip to Croydon.

Honestly, they could have called it an “over 70s” bus trip and they still would have been correct. It was walking sticks, wrinkles and blue rinses everywhere you looked.

No air-conditioning on the Gulflander, and it must have hit 32 or 33 degrees today by the time we hit Croydon. And it was a rough and bumpy trip … so I’m kinda glad that we are only going the one way and catching the bus back.

It was a great experience, but I have to say that it wasn’t built for either speed or comfort.

It was so bumpy, in fact, that my watch reported that I’d done about 1000 steps, while I had only been sitting in the Gulflander looking out the window.

Oh, and the return trip isn’t until tomorrow anyway, so we would have had to pay for a night’s accommodation in Croydon while we waited to go back again.

Garry and his guard Kiwi (yes, his name-tag said “Kiwi”) did an excellent job looking after us all and serving morning tea.

It wasn’t the most comfortable trip on the Gulflander, but you don’t do it for comfort. You do it for the experience.

As they say, it’s the journey, not the destination.

And it was an excellent experience, and a lovely day. And MBW and I had a lot of fun.

We arrived in Croydon around 1.45pm and were given a quick tour of the township by the local council representative, whose job it is – apparently – to pick up passengers at the train station, give them a quick loop of the township, and then drop you off so that (I presume) you can spend your money there.

So we got dropped off at the pub, and had a lovely lunch of a BLT and chips. By the time that was done, it was time to wander across the road to the spot where we were due to be picked up by the Cairns to Karumba bus service, to drop us off back at Normanton.

$73 for that experience (Senior’s rate), and while the bus was air conditioned and made the trip in only about 90 minutes (compared to the Gulflander’s 5 hours), the seats were sooo uncomfortable and narrow that I completely lost all feeling in my derrière.

So seriously uncomfortable that my bum went to sleep.

We were dropped off back at the Normanton Train Station, and we hopped into Elsie around 5.15pm and started the trip back to Karumba. Remember how we drove into the sun all of the way from Karumba to Normanton this morning? We drove into the sun all the way back to Karumba this afternoon.

Over the last couple of weeks, not only have we hit a bird or two, but we have also copped some serious rocks into the windscreen from passing trucks. Fortunately no obvious damage to the windscreen though …

… until this afternoon when we arrived back at Normanton. An enormous crack in the windscreen from the top of the glass (under the spot where the rear view mirror attaches to the glass), away in both directions and up towards Elsie’s roof.

Not ideal, but I’m pretty sure that we get a free windscreen with our RACQ car insurance … unless they removed that benefit the last time they jacked up the premium.

But I can’t do anything about that until we get back to Brisbane, unless the windscreen completely shatters, or I get a stern talking to by a police officer.

But if that happens, I’ll just use my charm. Flutter my eyelids. That kind of thing.

They say that you have to be careful driving at dawn and dusk. We saw a few kangaroos at the side of the road heading into Normanton this morning, but there were dozens of them feeding at the side of the road coming home tonight at dusk.

Dozens and dozens.

And I certainly wouldn’t want one of them to bounce of the bullbar and crash into the windscreen.

We have eaten way too much today, and eaten out too much generally, so we had breakfast cereal for dinner tonight, along with coffee and chocolate, and it’s almost time for bed.

It’s been a great day, and a great experience riding the Gulflander. It’s a “must do” if you find yourself up this way, but I’d urge you to consider only going one way as it is quite a long and taxing trip. And bumpy, And hot.

Off towards Cairns tomorrow, with some more fun stuff planned. We have about a 410km (4.5 hour) drive from Karumba through Normanton and Croydon to Forsayth for a couple of nights.

We are going to stop off in Croydon tomorrow for a while on our way through, so I’ll tell you more about it then.

Stay tuned!

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife