Author: Joel

Had a stab at Townsville-style mountain biking in the morning. They have quite an extensive network of single-track routes, but they are quite gruelling and hilly – much like Perth’s Goat Farm. They had a green route that went up and up and up, but then it just ended with no return to the parking lot, so I was forced to take more difficult blue and black routes down to the bottom.

Douglas Mountain Townsville Single Track

After heading north a little while to get to my next camping spot, it started to pour like I hadn’t seen since… The last time I was in the tropics. I had a nice swim in the rain at a great swimming hole next to my campsite, but decided to take a bit of a cruise in my car up to Ingham to get out of the rain and away from the very persistent mosquitoes.

Hike to cool off

The first few days I spent on the east coast had me a little concerned. After enduring weeks of temperatures hovering around the 100F mark, I was now being drenched in constant downpours – although in much cooler temperatures. I camped at a few spots on my way north to Cooktown, including Paluma Range National Park, but the rain got a bit tiring, and the mosquitoes were extra intense. I did manage to get a few little hikes in to check out some waterfalls and swim in a swimming hole.

Paluma Range National Park Waterfall Hike

Today’s Drive

Rolled into my first coastal town, Townsville, in the morning. Maybe about the size of Darwin (not too big)? It was POURING rain when I got there, but none of the locals seemed to care about carrying umbrellas. I visited their aquarium for a little while before heading to my very first actual pre-booked Queensland national park campsite. I have been skipping all the others due to heat, isolation, or simply finding better spots so far – but I think I will try sticking to my itinerary now for at least the next few weeks due to the Christmas / New Year’s holiday madness you usually find in Australia. A bit disappointing, my campsite was located right next to a large suburban house, it poured rain the whole time I was there, and the mosquitoes were vicious.

Today’s Drive

Spent a night at a caravan park outside of Charters Towers, which was basic but cheap, with very eager-to-please staff. Found this huge 10 cm (4-inch) cicada bug on my tent in the morning.

The drive from Porcupine Gorge to Charters Towers

Porcupine Gorge + White Mountains National Park: Porcupine was gorgeous (sorry, Ithaca) and a nice place to camp. I couldn’t book the campsite in advance, but fortunately, there were plenty of spaces available. Only 2 other couples camping.

Like Carnarvan Gorge, Porcupine Gorge seemed to have its own micro-climate of lush green tropics, even though the surrounding landscape was brown. It’s an odd name for a national park in Australia that has no porcupines (just echidnas). The name came from European explorers who were referring to the native spiky grass (Triodia) found in the area. The camping was on the ridge at the top, but there was a 1km trail I hiked down to visit the gorge floor first thing in the morning (while it was cool).

Afterwards, I headed for White Mountains National Park to re-evaluate whether I wanted to camp in the hot, dry, isolated (snake-infested?) place and decided to just mountain bike the 10 km 4WD track in there instead. Racked up 25km round trip (including a little side exploring in the forest), which felt good for a change from driving all the time.

Exploring Porcupine Gorge National Park

White Mountains National Park Mountain Biking

The drives from Canarvon Gorge to Porcupine Gorge National Park investigating isolated campgrounds along the way.

Stumbled across one of the best, most spectacular places I have seen in Australia so far: Carnarvon Gorge. And to think I wasn’t even planning to visit the place. They only had official park service camping available after a 10km hike in, so I had anticipated giving it a miss. But seeing how most camp sites I have been to have been far less crowded than expected, I decided to call Takarakka Bush Resort, a private campground within the boundaries of the national park that I had read about, to see if they might have room for me and my tent – and they did.

The drive into the park was really quite spectacular, starting with a pretty ordinary, dull brown flat drive (it had been pretty average since I left Wilcannia, NSW), then a noticeable greening of the landscape, and finally a full-blown, rich green forest sitting in a micro-climate with spectacular drops into deep gorges. I did a few short walks on the first day, including one into a nice, cool rock pool for a swim that evening, before doing another short hike up to see some cool old Aboriginal cave paintings. On the second day, I did a bit of hiking up into the beautiful gorge. It was an extremely beautiful place. I would definitely say it’s one of the top things to see in Australia!

A few hikes around the area

The drive from Charleville to Carnarvon Gorge

When you travel around from town to town, they rarely seem to be what you expect when you get there. They are usually much bigger or smaller than you expected. Often, towns with little information available about them seem to be pretty cool places to hang out for a bit of wilderness recuperation. On the other hand, towns that seem to get the most hype in Lonely Planet often seem way overrated, a bit run-down, and past their prime (with boarded-up shops, etc.).

One such town was Charleville, QLD. Charleville had numerous boarded-up shops and not much to see in the area. It was also extremely hot and very difficult to cool off in. There was nowhere to escape the heat – no real shade, boiling hot water coming out of pipes, and even a hot swimming pool.

Charleville did have a good astronomy show on at their local observatory, which was pretty modern compared to the rest of the town. They treated us to a nighttime show featuring telescope views of the bands on Jupiter and some of its moons, distant gaseous galaxies forming, the moon up close, and other stellar stuff. Very cool show and the best I have seen in a while.

One funny thing about Charleville is that it seemed as though no one had ever seen a bike being transported on the roof of a car before. My bike seemed to attract endless fascination from the locals there. Very odd considering every other town I’ve come through didn’t really seem to care.

Today’s Drive