2010/10 Australia trip - Kalpower Crossing in Lakefield |
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At Musgrave we left the Peninsular Development Road and swung east through Lakefield national park towards Cooktown and the coast.
The road into the park was narrower but quite good. We saw these pampered cows at Violet Vale 
homestead and then came upon the Lotus Lagoon. The lagoon is owned by a resort but we were able to get close enough to see magpie geese, darters, and herons.
Then we were in the park. Lakefield is a vast park of rivers, creeks, and ponds, with a single road and lots of rough tracks leading off to campsites. Our plan was to drive through looking at the sights until we felt a need to camp. So we stopped at lagoons and at [Breeza homestead], a derelict farmhouse, now surrounded by 100 year old 
mango trees. We looked at its corrugated iron roof and wondered what life must have been like there in the height of summer and during the weeks of pounding rain in the Wet.
We crossed the wide and rambling sandy Morehead River, now with just a few pockets of water. 
Then there was the North Kennedy River, even bigger with just a single stream to cross, but that one was rocky with lots of steps and ledges not simple when you can see them, but much harder if they’d been under a couple of feet of flowing water.
The Red Lily Pond was just that, a large pond completely smothered by water lilies with deep pink 
flowers. The Nifold Plain was an area of very few trees, much grass, and thousands of gigantic termite mounds.
Termites mostly feed on grass so that makes sense but there were some areas of the plain that had just grass with no termite mounds. Perhaps there are zoning rules for termites? If you look on the left side of the picture you’ll see a mound that’s completely different; built by another species perhaps?
Kalpower Crossing campground looked to be the best bet for us. It has water and toilets, and it would be nice to put the shovel away for while. It’s on the Normanby River and the causeway there is the only access to Cape Melville park and a lot of the more remote campsites. The causeway was underwater but that didn’t seem to be bothering the traffic.
We found a campsite and Sandie took a chair and sat there to reserve it (we’d only seen one other vehicle in the whole park but you never know) while I drove to the registration kiosk to pay for it. As I was doing so a thunderstorm rolled in, just a wall of water advancing up the road. By the time I got back Sandie had retreated to the toilets but she was already soggy all over.
I went exploring when the rain eased up for a few minutes. I met a couple of guys carrying a large and somewhat crumpled fish down to the causeway “Bit late for catch and release isn’t it?” “Croc bait”, they said, slicing it up and laying the bits at the water’s edge. An easy way to see a croc I suppose, but illegal as it encourages the crocs to hang around campgrounds. I doubt that the campers nearest to the causeway were pleased by this.
I started a walk around the trail behind the campground and met this fist-sized cane toad, obviously not scared of me. Nor does he need to be, as he’s poisonous.
Then another storm rolled in and I got soaked in a few minutes. The rain pounded down for about four hours while we sat inside our steamy Troopie and pondered which river crossings would be filling up, and which road we’d be able to get out on, and would the rangers close the roads until they dried out?
Another thought was how much food did we have as we’d been running the fridge down to nothing, partly for the quarantine and partly because it needed a clean out. Normally we carried enough food for a week but not this time.
There were some very different nighttime sounds at this campsite. They were probably from frogs or toads but we thought they sounded like crocodiles gargling
Sunday October 17th
The storms eased up in late evening but came back repeatedly during the night. When it was still raining at dawn we were convinced that we were going to be stuck at Kalpower for a while. We had two major river crossings behind us and two more ahead of us, but our neighbours were busy packing up to drive back to Cairns and they didn’t seem to be worried.
Finally the rain stopped and we walked a trail through the bush for while to give our stuff and the roads a chance to dry out. The bush there is jungle-like, and full of wildlife.
I was trying to get a close-up of these bugs that were swarming up in the tree canopy, and one landed close to my feet. As I was focusing on the bug, I noticed this lizard just as interested as I was. As the camera clicked on the first picture, the lizard took off, so I saved the bug’s life and ended up with one frame focused on the lizard and one on the bug. I combined the pictures to show both clearly.