Sep 2 (Day 215) - Normanton to Leichhardt River

Our attempts to leave Normanton promptly were once again thwarted. First I went for a morning run, and then we decided to go back to the library just to see if one of the two other books had arrived. When we arrived, Jason victoriously brandished a book for us to see - it was one of the ones we'd been waiting for and it had arrived in the morning's post! The kids were so pleased! There was still one book to come but it looked like that wasn't going to make it sadly.

We stayed and I did some more work. It's so lovely and cool inside and they have free wifi too which is a big bonus when your mobile data is reaching its monthly limit!

After we left we had a quick photo by a replica of an 8.5m saltwater crocodile which was caught in Normanton in the 1950's! Just as well he's not still swimming around!

We headed back to the Bakery, and so delicious was our last meal that we almost all chose the same pies we did yesterday!

We filled up with fuel at $1.36/L - pretty good for such a remote area! While I was doing this, Jason from the library phoned to say a courier had just dropped off the last book! We raced back and collected it - it turns out it was mistakenly sent by courier instead of by post, which meant it arrived a lot faster than expected. So we now had all the books we'd been looking for! These will be returned at Burketown Library in a few days God willing.

We left Burketown and drove south west along Wills Development Road while the kids were deeply occupied in devouring the books they'd borrowed, wanting to make sure they got them read in time to return them in Burketown. The plan will be to go to Burketown, then down towards Lawn Hill, then back up to Burketown on our way across to Northern Territory. So they have a few days to do it.

A termite mound cemetery!

The view from our van over Leichhardt River

We stopped for the night at Leichhardt River. There was a free camp here by what's left of the river (just a lagoon on the dry season). There are often freshwater crocodiles here although we didn't see them while we were here. But we saw some fairly obvious tracks where they'd been the day before!

Croc tracks!

-- Greg