Karumba to Borroloola (& the end of our Savannah Way journey - for now)

Stage 2 of our Savannah Way journey took us from Karumba in Queensland (QLD) to Borroloola in the Northern Territory (NT).

Just a short drive from Karumba is the town of Normanton.  Normanton is famous for being the location in which the world's largest crocodile, named ‘Krys The Savannah King’, used to live (it was shot in 1957).  To provide some perspective, today, a saltwater crocodile is considered large when it is 4m in length, and HUGE if it is 5m long.  Krys, was 8.6m long (28ft 4in) and weighed 2 tonnes!  A scale replica is one of the key attractions on Normanton’s main street along with ‘The Purple Pub’.

Heather beside a life-size replica of 'Krys The Savannah King'

'The Purple Pub' in Normanton.  I wonder why they call it that?

After Normanton we stopped for a night at Leichhardt Falls before continuing on to Burketown for fuel then to our next overnight stop at the Hells Gate Roadhouse.

Interesting name and quite apt given the road we were about to drive!

With over 300km until the next available fuel we topped up the tank once again - this time at $1.95/litre! and then hit the dirt road that joined Hell’s Gate in QLD and Borroloola in the NT.

The road from Burketown was great.  The road in the NT...not so good!

After 3 months on the road we had finally made it into the Northern Territory!

Well, to say the road was rough would be an understatement!  Corrugations kept us company the entire way with the last 30km being particularly tough!  By the time we got to Borroloola five & a half hours after we had set-off we climbed into the caravan to set-up for the night.  It was then that we discovered the following list of issues had developed during the trip:

• Numerous internal screws had come loose and / or fallen out of window and door frames;
• The metal frame holding the microwave oven in place had cracked in 4 places with the microwave now sitting loose within its housing;
• Caravan battery ‘hold-down’ brackets (4 long bolts with ‘nyloc (won’t vibrate loose) nuts’) had vibrated loose and the two batteries (35kg each) had shifted within their frames;
• A cooling fan at the rear of the fridge no longer functioned;
• A grey water plumbing line had cracked;
• Front window cover strut had broken off;
• Two of four shock absorbers were weeping oil after having been given a rigorous workout

It wasn’t just the caravan that had been shaken up.  The ute had a few loose nuts and bolts too.  It was time to stop for a while and clean out the caravan, to tighten what was loose and to try to repair any of the damage where possible so that we could continue towards Darwin.

In the next post, WTF? - Where are The Farrows?, get some news that sees us changing our direction of travel.