Gulf Country Queensland (Oz) trains.

[mcropod]

I've got myself to Cairns on the Pacific Coast of Queensland in Australia. Cairns sits high in the tropics, and is the gateway to the northern parts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

I'm not here for the reef, but Cairns will be my base for exploring three oddball trains in the vicinity. I'm using vicinity in an Oz context, as the first one starts out at Normanton, a small town at the SE of the Gulf of Carpentaria - the big bite taken out of the top part of Queensland, which gives us Queensland's distinctive pointy shape. Normanton is more than 700kms away, and I'll be there after a ten-hour ride on a regular scheduled bus serving the route.

But that's tomorrow and it'll take me from this tropical rainforest town and tourist hotspot, well into savannah country which is not often on holiday-makers' lists.

I'll post details and pix of my rides over the next few days. I've been enjoying the warmth of the tropics after travelling about 3000kms by air from my home town in the chilly southern state of Victoria yesterday.

I want to post this pic which presented itself to me as I flanneurred myself about this morning. I reckon it says a good bit about us Aussies.

Australian and British troops fought a major WWII battle in the desert sands of north Africa against Rommel's Afrika Corps. They endured all the privations of a desert campaign, far from home, and with supply-lines frequently broken. It's fair to say they often didn't have much water.

So this is how Cairns has commemorated their service:

 

[mcropod]

I'm now in Karumba, a fishing port on the Gulf of Carpentaria, after yesterday's full day busride across the base of Cape York from Cairns.

The journey started with a short walk to Cairns Railway Station, which sensibly is also the terminal for some of the area's bus services to regional and remote locations.

The station was deserted at 0600h before the sun rose. I'll be making a few visits over the next days as it's one arrival point and two departure points for some following train rides.

A quiet station:




But our bus arrived shortly after and we were loaded and off. I suspect many are also making the same outback train trips as I will be, so there was time to suss out my prospective travel companions. As I suspected, they were all older Aussies (like moi) taking a chance to get out after a long period of travel restrictions.

We were a mostly mobile bunch, most in couples. One was with a guide dog which happily sat in the back of the bus alongside me the full twelve hour journey. It was a 53-pax capacity bus and most seats were occupied. I had a spare beside me for which I was thankful.

We first climbed the range west of Cairns through the rainforest on a windey road with views east over the Coral Sea. This area was a staging point for Australian and USA forces during WWII in the battles in New Guinea and the Coral Sea. There were many airstrips set up on the tablelands beyond as well as the largest military hospital of the time at Ravenhoe. Mareeba was also a major camp, so if you have relloes who were involved in the campaigns in the 1940s, chances are they'll know this country.

Pics:

1. Cairns Railway Station at 0600h.

2. The bus at a morning rest stop.

3. Crossing the Gilbert river in the dry season.

4. Savannah country.




After the climb, the rainforest gave way and agriculture took over. There's sugar, avocado, coffee, bananas, mangos, grown here because of the fertile volcanic soil and bountiful rain.

After a few hours we'd moved into grassland country, the savannah. Beef grazing took over, with brahmin and santa gertrudis looking prominent. There were cattle roadtrains coming the other way, huge long things - a prime mover and three trailers at a time take up a bit of road and kick up some mighty dust at 100kph.

There were a couple more stops, at some we picked up passengers on this regular scheduled service. I discovered the dog wasn't the only animal passenger. A young woman at the front was carrying a cat with her.

We continued west into much drier country and through settlements whose best days were in the late 1800s after the discovery of gold, tin, silver, and copper in these parts - which was also the initiative for the outback trains I was up here for.

Eventually, as the sun sank below the trees, we finally reached the Gulf and the tiny fishing town of Karumba, where we found our lodgings for the next two nights. Today I'll have a little walk around and see what I can see. One place on my list is the Barramundi Discovery Centre which is also a hatchery.

 

[mcropod]

Morning walk over, as it's moving into the high 20s, and I have a few places to visit yet.

Looking west over the Gulf from Karumba Point, and checking out a marooned coconut which might well have started its journey in Papua New Guinea to our north, then passing shoreside of a pub overlooking the Gulf before the drinkers arrive.

 

[mcropod]

Train day tomorrow early

 

[mcropod]

This is what awaits

 

[railiner]

This is what awaits

Amazing that small engine can power that train...no wonder there is no air-conditioning. I imagine it gets a little warm there....

 

[railiner]

That's a serious bumper on that bus...must be some wild livestock along the way. And it seems a bit small to cram 53 seats into...must be a bit 'tight'....

 

[caravanman]

Looks an excellent trip! I could do with some tropical temperatures myself!

That Gulflander is a real rail bus.

Do you know what the line was originally built for?

I looked up the area on Google maps, so will be able to follow your adventures.

I drove from Alice Springs up to Darwin a few years back, that was some distance!

 

[mcropod]

Looks an excellent trip! I could do with some tropical temperatures myself!

That Gulflander is a real rail bus.

Do you know what the line was originally built for?

I looked up the area on Google maps, so will be able to follow your adventures.

I drove from Alice Springs up to Darwin a few years back, that was some distance!

The Alice Darwin drive is a great one, going through some iconic settlements like Tennant Creek and Katherine along the way. I came south that way a few years ago, and on one occasion an unexpected rainshower came over the desert, drawing scores of Big Red Kangaroos out of the bush onto the road, to take a drink out of the puddles which formed on the road - there'd have been no puddles able to form anywhere else. That brought the speed down from 130 to walking pace very quickly

The Gulflander run on rails put there to get the gold from the then new discoveries in Croydon to the port at Normanton. Croydon is now a tiny settlement of a couple of hundred people.

 

[mcropod]

Amazing that small engine can power that train...no wonder there is no air-conditioning. I imagine it gets a little warm there....

Its run is almost due east to Croydon, so here, south of the equator and although north if the tropic it's not near the December solstice - I'll look for a seat on the south side

 

[mcropod]

I haven't been eaten by a croc or anything, it's just that there's no connectivity at any of the places we've gone through, or stayed at. I have a run from Mt Surprise to Cairns tomorrow (Sat), after which time I'll have a room with wifi and time to post some details and pix! I'm cribbing some leaking wifi from the (closed) camp office here at 2012h after a fab day on the Sanannahlander, past cattle, 'roos, loadsa birdlife, and through spectacular country. Stay tuned.....

 

[mcropod]

Hooley-dooley! The two wacky train-rides over, and I'm now safely back in Cairns where I finally have connectivity again. Visitors to Oz should be prepared for large parts of the country to have some level of comms difficulties, certainly not a signal strong enough or with the bandwidth to blithely stream away. None of the places I stayed at had wifi, at least as much because it wasn't available to them to offer us.

You'll likely get a decent signal from Telstra, at least enough to make a call or send a text. Telstra used to be the publicly-owned national telecommunications provider, until a crazy wave of selling-off public assets hit governments around the globe, including - sadly - here. Visitors should look to get a Telstra service if they buy connectivity, especially if out beyond our capital cities.

I'm sure I could have got technology which allowed me to be on-line for most of the time, but that wasn't mission-critical for me. If it is for you, suss things out, get Telstra access, and away you go. If you are heading to serious remote Oz, check out satellite-connectivity if you need to see the rest of the world.

Anyway, I only started to get a bit itchy when I thought I'd left something behind in Kanunda Point as I vanished from Normanton on the Gulflander. I'm sanguine about these things, and was not certain I had, but sure that if I had, I could call the operator and work out how to get it back. But as the day got longer and I couldn't get a mobile line, I thought I'd still be able to work something out. It did mean, though, that I couldn't tell my partner how and where I was, and I knew that'd not be the best.

However, the Tin Hare was boarded, in Covid-plan assigned seating, and we rattled through the grasslands.

 

[mcropod]

It's the end of the Wet season up here, and the grasslands are still in good condition, so the grazing cattle are in excellent shape. The predominant breed is Brahmin or Brahmin-Droughtmaster cross. Most were looking sleek of coat, and fat of girth. The calves were present in good numbers. It'll likely be a good season for the Top End graziers - the local car dealers will do well, too.

We stopped for smoko (Oz for morning or afternoon tea) - an important custom in rural and regional Oz, and the train crew set up a hot-drink area at what had been a station and loco-watering site in years past. We were more than 50 of us, most of whom I recognised from the bus ride out, including the seeing dog and his human guidee.

after smoko, we proceeded east, stopping off at a delivery-point where a local cattle-station owner came to collect her delivery. The homestead was about eight kilometres south of the line, and the train was the only way she got supplies and post. We passed through many cattle-stations along the way, and made a few deliveries to trackside mailboxes. This was the reason behind us seeing so many head close to the rails along the way. Several times, the drivers had to slow as cattle crossed the line, or just walked unconcernedly along it.

 

[mcropod]

 

[mcropod]

After about five hours we arrived in Croydon, and then by bus to Forsayth for a couple of nights before boarding the Savannahlander bringing us the rest of the way to Cairns. One of the days at Forsayth allowed us to visit a fabulous bit of the country - Cobbold Gorge. This is also part of a cattle-station, and knowledge of it had vanished after the area's Indigenous people lost their connection to the land. So it was only recently 'discovered' and its natural wonder made more widely known. It involved a bit of a bushwalk, and some of our party were not well prepared for it. Our fab guide Zee took us through and showed us various items of bush tucker, useful leaves and fruit Indigenous people used as food ('tucker' in Australian) and medicine, or in other productive ways.

There were areas of Indigenous significance, as you'd expect from such a natural resource as permanent water and secret passages, but the guide explained the arrangements with the traditional owners didn't allow her to talk to us about them. In Aboriginal culture there are things that only initiated men should know, and things that should only be known by women, and this should be respected, and their stories and sacred places should not be "explained" by someone else.

We did see rock art, as well as a grinding stone however on one ledge affording a magnificent view across the land.

We sailed the gorge where we saw a small (about one and a half metres nose to tail) freshwater croc swimming towards us, walked across a glass bridge, and bushwalked our way back to the entrance, where we reboarded our bus back to Forsayth.

A

 

[mcropod]

The croc!

 

[mcropod]

Well, that's up to Wednesday, and the next days are on a different train......

 

[mcropod]

Two days on the Savannahlander as it went from Forsayth to Cairns, cattle to coral, with an excursion to have a squiz at the lava tunnels at Undarra and an overnight stop at nearby (in Oz terms) Mt Surprise.

This is another motor-driven train - two motors actually as there is a driving position at both ends of the train. Each motor is an eight litre six cylinder diesel, driving a single axle at its rear through an automatic gearbox. The train and its engines are maintained locally, but get sent down south to the QR workshops near Brisbane for their annual stripdowns and rebuilds.

it's in lovely condition, gloriously 1950s/60s in its interior and with a corrugated curved roof. beautiful timber panneling, and openable windows, perfect for camera duty. It had three crew, all of whom had a stint in the driver's chair giving commentry on what we passed through.

the run was all on single track, with remnant passing loops and sidings by abandoned railway stations scattered here and there. The line served various mining operations from the first gold operations to subsequent zinc and tin extraction. Then it became an important in moving cattle from the huge cattle-stations to markets on the coast.

Much of the route was through cattle-station land, over now dry rivers, most still with water running under the sand, and able to be pumped out for stock and human consumption.

If there are any cattle-farmers on this forum, check out the condition of the beasts, nicely fattened-up after another good Wet season, and likely ready for market. Our partway stop was at Einasleigh, where the bush hotel, which had provided lodgings for cattle-folk and travelling salespeople over the decades, put on a spread for us to get us to our day's end.

We travelled a full day until our overnight stop at Mt Surprise

 

[mcropod]

Our Thursday afternoon was spent at a spectacular geological area, once filled with flowing lava from the multitude of volcanoes in the region. Some had formed lava tubes, and we explored a couple of them, each large enough to be triple-track tunnels.

You can't take a good image of a tunnel with the only lightsource being the entrance - we were too far from the exit of one of them, and the other had silted up it end portal over the millenia.

I did get a good couple of pics of a banded python - quite a small one - as it made its way out after its likely meal of a microbat or two. This is not one of our killer snakes (unless you are a bat), and it remained unmolested on its journey.

We then returned to our cabins for a feed, and it was there I realised I'd lost my cabin key, and suspected it had fallen out of my pocket in the bus, but couldn't find it on my return to check. I did however have a welcoming green tree-frog on my step as I got back from the evening meal, so not everything was bad. I then couldn't find my mobile phone, and figured I'd left it at Forsayth, or it too had dropped out of my pocket that day.

The phone was a worry as that number is linked to so many things I need when on the road, and was also my last link to any possible connectivity.

 

[mcropod]

As I approached the bus I thought was going to take us back to the station on Friday morning for our last day on the Savannahlander, I saw a small tube of sunscreen under the front seat I'd occupied the previous day. I'd not been aware I'd lost my sunscreen, so I checked and it was the one! So I then went behind the seat in case I found the ketyor my mobile, and there the phone was, sitting in a little crevice in the bodywork! How fab!

But still the key remained lost, so I was only running at three of four so far - sunnies (from a couple of days before), phone, and sunscreen.

Now it was back to the train which had altered its seating arrangements as we were down about half of our previous passenger-load. I was shown to a seat one behind the covid-vacant front one which had comprised the driver barrier protection of yesterday.

This was very suitable and gave me a view through the driving positions out the front as well as the left (northern mostly) side.

We encountered lots more cattle, sending them off on a run through the bush whenever we spooked them enough. A bustard haughtily sauntered up the line ahead of us at one point, displaying as if to encourage a mate, or provoke a fight. It disappeared into the dry grass to my left.

We had wallaroos bound across the tracks at various points, or regard us with a stand-my-ground glare if in numbers. At one stage the drivers announced a rock wallaby perched on a rock in the cutting ahead, but it had hopped away before I could capture an image.

There were wedge-tailed eagles, one at train height to my left as it flew through the trees. These are magnificent birds with two-metre wingspans, effortlessly climbing in the updrafts as they search for small animals in the bush.

I did get one on camera the previous day at Einasleigh station by accident as it flew over the resting train. And I'm sure I also caught its mate circling not far away as I walked to reboard.

Much if the day's travel was through old mining operations, but with few remnants still on view. There were sidings and trackbeds which had been used for the purpose at various stages along the way. But it was cattle country nowadays, and that dominated. There were sidings for cattle loading purposes here and there, all fencing and loading structures were made of wood and well weathered.

We had another couple of refreshment stops, one at the Railway Hotel at Almaden, a tiny bush settlement, and another at Dimbula where the local historical volunteers out on a cake and cuppa for a fiver. One of the volunteers was a local cattle-farmer whose only real social interaction is with Savannahlander passengers such is the isolation of country life around these parts.

We probably supplied the Railway Hotel's main income for that week, and we were always happy to support such remote businesses. It can't be easy to get the right number of fresh supplies in for such a short rush of folk.

(pics to follow)

 

[mcropod]

Except for a couple of sections of the track, permission to enter is managed by radio and in-cab computer IT confirmation. On one section, the old token system is used, and I have a pic (see the bunch above) of one of the train crew standing by the door with the big metal token in his hand as he prepares to exchange it.

At the last bit of track nearing and beyond Kanunda, semaphores are still used, and once down on the flat, some automatic train recognition system keeps the larger number of trains apart. But from Karumba on the gulf all the way to Cairns on the coast, we passed or overtook no trains nor had any pass or overtake us.

We go tin to Cairns after 1800h on Saturday (yesterday) and I took myself and my bags the kilometre or so walk back to my billet. I was looking forward to more rail travel today, but early this morning I was advised today's run up the hill on the Kuranda Scenic Railway, and the ride back down again on slung wire had been cancelled. What a bummer - and even more so for many others as I read in a local paper last night that today was to be the annual race up the mountain by runners trying to beat the train.

it's a bit of a fund-raiser for local charities, so that'll be a big disappointment to many :-(

 

[mcropod]

There's a short video on this page full of info on the Kuranda Scenic Railway:

https://www.kurandainfo.com/info/kuranda-scenic-railway/

 

[mcropod]

I was on the Kuranda line yesterday evening, so got a chance to see the line's highlights, including the Barron Falls when the Barron river crashes over the escarpment on its way into the Pacific, as well as an evening elevated view of Cairns and the sea leading to the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef.

On the run across the Atherton Tablelands, heading to Kuranda from the west, we went through fertile agricultural country where sugarcane, mangoes, and other tropical fruit is grown.

Kangaroos are not stupid and know that the best grass is found on watered land, and the best watered land is golf-courses. As we passed by one course, several score of 'roos was present in seeming conference, readying the selves for the night ahead.

We then move into the deep rainforest, part of a world heritage listed region, which protects what is thought to be the oldest continuous rainforest on the planet, with a reputed greater biodiversity within one hectare than exists in the entire UK. You should come here and check it out if you don't believe me

 

[mcropod]

(double deleted)

 

[mcropod]

(double deleted)