Karumba and the Gulf

KARUMBA

Karumba will be affectionately remembered by us. The van park where we stayed was the friendliest place we have stayed in all of Australia. That could be due to the fact that it was more like a retirement village and we were the only 'young' ones getting around. The fishing was also great fun, and the temperature was a balmy 30 degrees every day. 

We decided there was more interesting things to catch out in the ocean, so we headed out there each day (instead of fishing the river). It was so incredibly smooth, like a lake, with a ridiculous amount of tinnies getting around... 

On the first day out, Geoff caught 4 nice Bream, all weighing between 1-2 pound. On the second day out, I caught my first Grunter (4 pounds/55cm). Karumba is apparently the Grunter capital of the world so it was nice to catch their speciality! Great eating too (even if my batter did end up stuck to the bottom of the pan instead of the fish). 

On the third day out, we followed a flock of birds feeding about 8km out to sea. Success!! Geoff always had faith in this roosta lure, even though in the past it had seen no action. He caught a 16 pound/101cm Giant Queenfish! 

Within minutes of dropping the lure back into the water it was my turn - a 17 pound/99cm Queenfish!

It was great fun!!! Again, within minutes of trawling the lure, Geoff caught his 2nd Queenfish. After that we thought we better stop as we didn't want to catch (or clean) too many!

Heading back to the boat ramp with our 3 big fish in tow...

Back at camp at the cleaning tables, we had 3 people help us clean up our fish! But when we offered them some, they all politely refused. Mmmmm... we begun to wonder if they were going to taste ok!

(A few days later, we ate some of the Queenfish and decided it wasn't bad to eat but it wasn't good either! Will have to drown it in a curry next time).

When we checked into the van park at Karumba, the owners had made some mistake, and ending up having to put us right next to the front gate in the entertainment area. This was great news to us as we had lots of room and no neighbours nearby! We also had some entertainment, watching the oldies attempt to belly dance, play bocce, cards, and bingo. 

On Saturday night though, the van park has a free fish BBQ and concert night. Considering we had 160 oldies sitting out front of our camp and the stage less than 10 metres away, we decided it was best to join in! This was the view from our camp...

It ended up being a great night with the best fish I have eva eaten and laugh-a-minute entertainment. (Every week the van park buys 30kg of blue salmon to feed everyone, 380kg per season! Blue salmon is NOTHING like the Australian Salmon from down south. It is a white flesh fish and absolutely delicious).

On our last day fishing, we had so much fun catching Spotted Mackeral. They fight incredibly hard. We lost count of how many we caught but most were undersized at around 50cm.  This one is bent like a banana but was the only legal one at 60cm - great eating fish!

Goodbye Karumba we will miss you!

THE DRIVE ACROSS THE GULF

It wasn't nearly as interesting as we had thought it would be. Just hundreds of kilometres of inland dirt roads with a few shallow creek crossings. The first night we camped at Leichhardt falls.

We found this hot water spring in Burketown the next day...

One of the nights on the road, we set up camp near the Robinson River. Just on dusk some Aboriginals drove a herd of cattle right past our camp! Was great to watch. 

Yesterday (Wednesday) we drove to the coast at a place called Bing Bong, so we could fish the Gulf again. It would have been a great place to camp if we had others with us, or a giant mean dog to protect camp while we were fishing. The clouds looked amazing too...

Deciding it was wise not to camp at Bing Bong we drove back to the Aboriginal town of Borroloola to spent the night. Today we are just relaxing here at Borroloola, having a day off driving. Below is our beloved map of Australia and where we have been over the last year... (also a close up of where we are at the moment).