Day 447 | Aye Karumba!! Time out called

rest day

I’ve finally found the spot: shade, power, a picnic table handy, reasonable internet connection, what more do I need in life?

Actually it seems a miracle I can even work on the computer connected to the net, plugged in to The Grid, ain’t had that situation since those fabulously restful days in Bamaga with Andi and Susie. Time for a monster blog catchup.

But I haven’t been concentrated on tapping out the blogs yet, thought I should spend time getting acquainted with this outpost.

I checked out the murky Norman River. One of the features of this sprawled out collection of various building types, (are they modelled on the common or garden shed,) is the huge number of large informative signs scattered around. One by the river has photos of the February 1974 flood caused by Cyclone Wanda which ripped through “town” and just about swept everything out to sea. The towns 129 inhabitants were evacuated to Weipa by sea.

Another sign indicates Karumba is one of the classic fishing locations around the world helped apparently by the lack of tidal movement here down at the head of The Gulf, that’s Carpentaria by the way, water has to move from the Indian Ocean to create the tide due to the constraint of Torres Strait up at The Tip and that can’t happen either.

I biked around to Karumba Point skirting around a Road Closed sign and later find myself with a team building small bridge over an equally small channel. The foundations are in place but access is currently via two overlapping 6m aluminium scaffolding planks which have been joined together using 3 clamps. One of the non-heavyweight kids takes pity on me and wheels the bike across the 200 mm wide plank letting me create my own significant bend in the structure.

Karumba Point is where the bulk of the tourists are stationed, bulk in both senses of the word, it’s the end of the road, bit like Cooktown or Darwin, and they congregate here while they make up their minds what to do next in two large, congested caravan parks, one of the few locations to observe the sunset over the Gulf waters, there’s really only Weipa and here where there is access to the sea due to vast wetlands and mangrove swamps stretching forever in each direction.

I watch pelicans feeding, 20 silvery fish gulped in a few minutes, no wonder they find it so hard to take off with that ballast.

I’m not going to be taking off in a hurry either, after this sojourn there will be a whole heap of pedal rotation until I next dip my feet in the sea, Glenelg Beach in Adelaide is my guess.