Thursday 2nd September 2021
Well, the thunderstorm came during the night. We were woken at 4.30am with heavy rain, thunder and lightening. This kept us awake for a while with a couple of campers deciding to leave before the road got too boggy. We were okay except we had a leak in the roof coming through the fan.

We slept in a little and when we finally got up we headed for an exploration walk. We walked the water’s edge of the Corella Dam seeing many different types of birds – pelicans, egrets, little black cormorants, a pied stilt, a dart, white faced heron, a kingfisher and zebra finches. We love having our new camera. We heard a splash on the edge and we weren’t sure if it was a small crocodile or a big fish as we only saw the splash not the animal. As we headed further around the dam, doing some rock scrambling as well, David saw a 2.5m freshwater crocodile on the rocks but sadly it was dead – we wonder whether it may have been killed by the blue/green algae found in the dam or maybe it ate a cane toad. We continued to the Dam wall and then walked along the Corella River enjoying the birds here as well. It was a lovely walk only 6km but it took us almost 2.5 hours.

After much deliberation at lunch time whether to head on our way or stay another night. We decided to stay agin but this time by the river and have a rest afternoon. Some yoga, meditation, a little reading and David fixed the leaking fan. We also enjoyed another walk this time from camp along the river. We met a couple who had seen a jabiru along the river yesterday but unfortunately it didn’t return. We saw many more birds again this afternoon – a pelican, egrets and a rainbow bee-eater. A few chats along the way and the day was done. We had a lovely dinner by the river.

Wednesday 1st September 2021
Hi everyone, we are in Cloncurry this today staying in the Discovery Caravan Park just out of town. It was a very ordinary night’s sleep as it was right on the road and the road trains went passed all night. David looks like he has had no sleep at all. The caravan park is home to many, many miners – there are so many doings but they are very modern. They also provide a daily ally you can eat buffet for dinner for just $25 and it is apparently very good. Best of all was the old style shower nozzle and hot water. Yippee!!!!!

This morning we headed to the John Flynn Royal Flying Doctor Museum. We spent about 3 hours there reading so much information, watching a video of a couple of flights to the outback and a photo slideshow from John Flynn. It was very interesting. I have included a snippet of the information for you to read if you want to, or not id you don’t.

We then headed to Chinamans Creek Dam for lunch, then to the lookout and silo art. Then we were going to head east to Julia Creek but the Caravan Park was booked out so instead we headed west to the Ballara Heritage Mining Trail. We didn’t really look at the mining stuff but enjoyed the drive through the ranges to Fountain Springs which unfortunately the falls weren’t running but the reflection of the rocks in the little lake was spectacular – this was the location of  the crocodile attack on Linda Koslawski in the first Crocodile Dundee Movie. You could barely see the water. The ranges look very similar to the West MacDonnell Ranges in Alice Springs.

Then to find a camp because yet again we got talking at the springs and it was getting late. Arriving at our camp at Clem Walton Nature Reserve which is a freebie camp on someone’s property. We had our first bit of rain since we left Port Douglas this evening just after we finished cleaning up, we got everything packed away and it pretty much stopped. So it was light rain and short lived, only about 10 minutes. It is 8.37pm and is currently 30°C.