173 - Cloncurry to Bak Bank Free Camp

Chinamans Lake Cloncurry

Not being the worlds best blogger, one tends to fall behind quite a bit. With a lap top that is as old, and as slow as me, as well as lack of motivation at times, plus being in areas of no communication, it all becomes a little to hard to continually keep up to date..........but  today I am going to bring partly up to date. Well that's the plan

I am writing this blog at Bed Rock CP at Mt. Surprise NQ, and seeing that we have been here before, and being a guide at the Lava Toooooobes two years ago, we are not going anywhere, and having a lazy day. In saying that, I would have loved to have gone back to O'Briens Creek ( see Sept. Oct 2010), however the road would finally kill the Val and the RetroLiner.  Apart from that, the battery in the RetroLiner blew sky high in Croydon, hence we are unable to independent camp for that reason. So until we get to the Tablelands or Cairns and get a new battery, we are relying on the umbilical cord (240 v) to get us through, which means CP's.

The bride at the boat ramp @Chinamans Lake

So I as I mentioned in my last post, we got through NT from Daly Waters fairly quickly, and settled for three nights at Cloncurry. Now as before, we stayed at Cloncurry on our way to Darwin, where we met up with Doug, Jo and Beau. This time we met up with our friends Jeff and Margaret we met at Katherine.

However the bride was busy at Cloncurry, however we did manage to shoot off to Chinamans Lake on the outskirts of Cloncurry. We also took advantage of the miners mess at the park we stayed in. For $20.00 a head, eat what you want. Didn't do my rotund figure much good I assure you. Now I did mention before the Discovery Park on our first trip two years ago, was a pristine park with a million sites. Last time, there was major construction in reference to mining dongas to houes the mining workers. On our return this time more accommodation has been built, again reducing the available van sites. The word has it that within 12 months or even less, there will only be 20 available van sites, with the rest of the park all mining accommodation. No wonder us Geriatric Gypsies are now choosing more and more to free camp.

Pretty impressive lake this one

Afterr Cloncurry we headed to Burke and Wills Roadhouse, with the thought of going up to Gregory Downs and Lorne Hill NP.  We arrived at Burke and Wills Road House...and there everything went pear shaped. B and W was as grotty as ever, and  all we heard was the horror stories of the road and the difficulty in getting any free camping at Gregory Downs....so it was all to hard.

So it was off to Normanton...............so what is another 150 kays or so.............not much........mmmmmm. As we headed towards Normaton, the road deteriorated big time and our journey was slowed by single lanes of tar, causing us to continually head for the nearside shoulder on a zillion occassions.

Now checking the GPS and our arrival time in Normanton was going, to be much later that anticipated, hence seeing that Normanton was really quite busy, our chances of getting a park spot was not good. Weighing all this up, and at the opportune time we passed Bang Bang (a free camp). Stuff it, I said to the bride, we are going to stay here, and free camp the night. We have to bite the bullet sometime, and just do it. For God sake we have got everything we need to free camp, so with no hesitation we pulled into the camp where there were quite a few already there.....safety in numbers.

Our camp site @ Bank Bank

On selecting a site, I potted over to the near neighbours, and gave them the courtesy, that we will be needing to run a genny. All said no worries....phew that's a relief. To cut a long story short, a camp fire was organised most of the immediate neighbours we met, and we had a great time....and the bride didn't get raped, pillaged or murdered. Yahoo!!!!!!!!!!!!! we have finally broke down to barriers of free camping. And to add to this, two rivets that hold the lifting scissors to the roof on the pop top, sheared off, as we were putting down the roof. O'h shite.....here we are in the middle of nowhere, and can't secure the roof. But alas along came Mike with his tool kit, and along with a few nuts and bolts, Mike was able to fix the roof scissors, better than before may I add. I bet that wouldn't happen in a CP. The only down side of our first foray into free camping was the toilets were short of water, hence they were a bit grotty........which didn't excite the bride no less.

We got on our way with knowing we survived the night. We met some great new friends, and the pop top scissor arms are better than new. Yahoo!!!!!!

Stay tooooned for Normaton and Leichardt Lagoon.