Day 34 Karumba to Croydon

It was about 270 kms from Karumba to Croydon all on bitumen but there were a lot of travellers going the same way. I’m sure that at the moment as soon someone moves out of a camping place someone else moves in. We were booked into the Croydon Caravan Park so didn’t have any need to hurry and made a couple of stops along the way. The first was Normanton Traders where we picked up some fresh fruit and salad greens, it was the shop I liked best there. Our second stop was at Black Bull Siding an old railway station but now seems to be a picnic stop for the Normanton to Croydon tourist rail line. It was the first place metal sleepers were used because termites destroyed the wooden ones. The rails were bolted to the sleepers and placed straight onto the ground, when floods came the water simply washed over the top.

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Our next stop was at Belmore Creek where an old rusty boiler caught our eye there was other railway detritus there too.

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Luckily we came straight to the Caravan Park before we went investigating the town because we were able to pick our spot and found a great site shaded all day by big trees. There was only one other like it left and that was soon taken. There is so much to see in this little place and the way it’s presented is a credit to the townspeople.

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We went to check out Lake Belmore so we could sit in the car AC for a while since it was 33 deg. – it’s only 4 kms out the road. There were trees I think are Kapoks, the fluffy cotton-like material in the seed pods was used to stuff pillows and mattresses.

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I’ve been curious about weird web structures we’ve seen in trees and had the chance to check one out. I expected caterpillars or little spiders. It was very hard to pull apart even using a stick and I’m still not sure what makes them.

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On the way back from the lake we called into the site of the Chinese Temple which now has interesting plaques telling the stories of some Chinese people who came to the area in the late 1800s Gold Rush.

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Tomorrow we’ll check out the old Courthouse and a few other places because we’ll be here for another night.