Day 444 | Gilbert River: a day watching the crocs
rest day
At 7 am this morning I finally consulted the map and worked out there was only 66 km of dirt road before I hit the blacktop once again.
Then 41 km day ride to Karumba and all that entails with encountering civilisation.
What’s the hurry?
107 km is the same distance as I rode yesterday but almost half is on asphalt, why don’t I just stay here and blat the whole way on Friday?
Good choice.
This campsite is a classic, a commanding view perched on the edge of the waterhole 6 m below, all day shade, kind of like one of my favourite recent campsites, the south bank of the Jardine River, but in this case there’s plenty of life in the water to keep myself amused.
I spotted a likely looking log in the river, a 2.5 m freshwater croc, it spent much of the afternoon on a circuit, warm up on a rock in the river over the other side, dive for 5 minutes, appear on my side and float along for 20 minutes, tail wagging imperceptibly, then once again warmed up dived again to complete the circle. Every now and again I’d spot more logs in the distance.
Lots of 180mm fish with black spots on the side, not Sooty Grunters, and some Garfish lookalikes except we’re 80km from the sea and these fish had opaque not transparent bodies. Then a surprisingly large turtle popped its head up for a few seconds.
Later some more campers arrived, there’s a heap of room here, there’s one bunch across the river with their inevitable camping trailer and some closer neighbours 200 m upstream.
The close lot had 3 teenage boys, looked like friends rather than brothers, who caught a whiskery old Catfish off the bridge. I pointed out a piglet coming on the bridge, they stalked it then when it caught wind of them started running, but the short legs were not so good in soft sand, the braver one of them grabbed the squealer triumphantly to take back to show Dad.
It was just one of those days, no clouds, not much wind, low 30s for the second last day of winter, all in all well worth sticking around.