Day 56

 Day 56 Derby – Fitzroy Crossing

Old Canoe

Old Exchange

We started the day by packing up Girt at Derby, we said our goodbyes to Peter and Henny and hit the   as a museum and it has a collection of all sorts of bits and bobs from the different eras. They had 1 room for the towns history, 1 for communications were they had an old exchange and explained how it all went from telegraph to digital and 1 room for aviation. Derby has an airport and it had the old control towers console set up in it. It was decommissioned when all air control was reverted back to Jandakot a few decades ago. They had

Derby Air Traffic Contro;

some great history of flight there as Derby was quite a centre for commerce such as cattle trade and so on. You wonder what keeps it going today but it does. They had another room for the nurses that were there showing all the medical work the nurses did there over the years.

road all the way down to the Tourist Centre to pick up the key to the local museum. We let ourselves in to an old house that has been setup

Lunch - Note shade behind us

Having locked up the museum and returned the key we set off down the road to Woolies to get some last minute food such as vegies and fruit, but the truck had not come in and there was not much there so we gave it a skip and then really hit the road for Fitzroy Crossing. The land again has changed with more open country here. The sad part is the locals have taken to lighting fires and burning off sections of the scrub so the view is not as nice

The road ahead

as it could be as you see the bits that have not been burnt, but never mind, you certainly see a lot more huge Boabs off the road where the scrub has been burnt. I am not sure if the burning off is controlled or approved or if it is done on a whim by the locals but we spoke to one guy today who had heard that the fires were bad up along the Gibb River Road that they have closed some of the gorges due to hazards.

We drove without any problems and stopped for lunch along the way. We pulled into a parking bay

Girt and Trude Fitzroy Crossing

Safari Tents

with one tree in it for shade and a car pulled in at the other end and raced over to the tree and parked in the shade. He got out, grabbed a can out of the eskie and lit a fag. We meanwhile organised lunch in the open and within a few moments he was back in the car and gone! We had lunch and stretched for a while but it was too hot to just sit so we then hit the tarmac. We drove into Fitzroy Crossing just before 3 and called into the Tourist Centre. Our plan is to have 2 nights here and we wanted to do the Gorge tour and

Resort

Flower

thought we would book it first in case we missed out. The young girl there was excellent and soon had us informed that we didn’t need to book as they have a number of boats and use them depending on crowd. Maureen also asked about what caravan park she recommended as there are 3 in town here. She said that if she were to use one it would be the one just out of town called the Fitzroy River Lodge as it has a pool – sold!

We had a quick drive through town and it is surprising. What sustains the town is anyones guess but

Pool

The resort

the town is growing and has heaps of new homes of very good quality both being built and already here. They have a big school here sponsored by the Clontarf Football Academy group and it looks brand new too. We drove out to our park and what a surprise. We had been told that Fitzroy had a good park but this was not what we expected. It is a 4 star location with lawns and trees and cement roads and laid out with big sites. There is hardly anyone here so it was ‘pick a site and let us know’ from the front office. It was a bit too much after driving all day to make a decision. We went round and round trying

Small unit accommodation

Sunset over Fitzroy Crossing

to decide which area was the best. We opted in the end for some in between the ablutions blocks with shade and then we haggled over which one was the best of these. In the end I left it to the navigator to choose and we picked that one.

We setup Girt and settled in and then ran off to the pool. There is a resort here as well with Safari Tent, units or hotel rooms with tennis courts as well as the pool. Getting into the pool was a bit tricky

Fitzroy River

The Beast awaits me at the pool

as everything is built up for when the river floods so steps are a hassle but between us we managed to get up the steps and into the pool. We floated around for a while and caught up with the other travellers. One is coming back from Jabaru near Kakadu after 2 years there and said the fishing was not so good this year. Last year he could not miss at any road crossing or pool there were barramundi jumping out of the water, this year the rains did not come as well as expected and although you can see the schools f them, they are not biting.

We staggered back to Girt and Maureen rustled up a lovely roast Turkey dinner and I started the blog. Tomorrow we head off to Gykie Gorge for a tour.