The Ways - Matilda and Savannah

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We left Longreach to drive northwards to Karumba and then cut across Northern Queensland to Cooktown, however on advice from several of the Tourist Information Centres we changed our plans and came back down after Karumba and headed out eastwards on the Savannah Way, 


Personally I was pleased as it was 410C in Karumba!!  What a diverse landscape we have seen.  We did not spend much time exploring the towns on the Savannah Way as they generally had a roadhouse/motel, petrol station and store.   We were often the only car on the road.

Winton


Cloncurry/Four Ways



Normanton


This was our first experience of the road disappearing into single track dirt track.

Karumba

Several of our hotel rooms have not had wifi or a tv but at least they have all had air conditioning - even our $57 basic room in Tambo.  Lovely town with loads of wildlife.  We drove out to Karumba Point to watch the sunset; on our way back we had to be really careful of the kangaroos keep crossing the road in front of us.  We decided to leave before at dawn as well in order to get to Mount Surprise in a dsy.


Sunset:

Savannah Way

As we drove through we were amazed at how many creeks and even rivers were totally dry as the following photo shows - we were driving over the bridge.


We had a 464km journey but the terrain was totally different.  We got dry and burnt to lush rainforest.  The road itself also went from tarmac to red dirt which hardly fit one vehicle in width.  Got quite scary when you met a large truck on this!




Wow the Atherton Tablelands are beautiful - like driving in Scotland and the weather is the same too - it has just started raining but it is still hot!!  Atherton will be the subject of the next post. 









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