June 2009

After 12 months of careful planning with my father things were all set for a fishing trip up to the Gregory and rivers around Burketown in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

I left Beerwah towing a tinnie with my 1990 L Series and traveled via Yarraman and Dalby to Roma and on up to Injune. I left the boat at a friends place and went on out to work where I spent an impatient couple of weeks before I could get away on the trip north.

When my hitch was over I got an early start and picked up the boat in Injune and headed for Emerald then west through Longreach and Winton and camped just north of Kynuna at about eight o’clock. The kangaroos were too bad to keep going. Distance traveled for the day was about 1200 km. Fuel use pulling the boat varied between 12lt / 100km and 14lt / 100km traveling between 90 and 100 km/h. EA82s were not made for long distance towing!

Next morning went on up to Cloncurry and stocked up supplies for the next two weeks and went on up to the Burke and Wills Roadhouse, then across to the Camooweal Burketown road and up to the Gregory Hotel, arriving about lunch time. While fuelling up my father arrived from Streaky Bay (near Ceduna in SA) in his Nissan Navara.

We finished fueling up, had a couple of ‘cool drinks’ and then crossed the Gregory River and followed it north on the western side through open savanna country through several gates to the same camp we used several years ago. There was a lot of growth and debris left from the previous wet season. We set up camp and put the boat in ready for some fishing the next day.

We stayed six days here and fished several large waterholes. We caught a couple of good barramundi and lots of black bream and fresh water catfish. We found gold coloured lures the best. We trolled and cast into snags. There were lots of fresh water crocodiles and the whole area was inundated with small cane toads at night. There was supposed to be a big salt water crocodile living in one of the waterholes but we didn’t see any sign of him.

Camp was packed up, the boat pulled out and we had to go back to the Gregory Hotel to cross the river as the northern crossing was still too deep. We traveled up to Burketown 116km north and called into the tourist information centre to make sure that the river was still ok to camp on since the flooding. All was good so headed out of town about 5km and found we had the whole river to ourselves.

We fished the Albert and caught lots of grunter although it was difficult to find anything of legal size. Mud crabs were also scarce. We tried the Leichhardt River about 70 km out of town for no result so settled for a wander around the spectacular waterfall. There was no access to the Nicholson as the mudflats were still too wet. No barramundi here!

I stayed for 5 days then went back down to Julia Creek and Richmond and then north and spent a couple of days with friends on a property. Dad was going to stay at Burketown for another couple of weeks with the boat and return it to Beerwah when he was done.

From the property I traveled back to work for another two week stint via Winton and Emerald then home via Roma and Dalby. Dad showed up with the boat a few days later.

The L series did the trip without any problems and I’m looking forward to the next one!

Bill Greenwood

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