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Across the Gulf Savanna
In the tracks of explorers in Far North Queensland
We drove along a two-lane road, smooth and straight, with the rising sun in the rear view mirror. To the north were the wide, serpentine curves of rivers in no hurry to reach the Gulf of Carpentaria. But from the car, all we saw was savanna — tall grass punctuated with termite mounds and smooth-stemmed mallee gums. Had we not already known about the slow rivers and the tangles of mangroves along their banks, we would never have guessed they were just a few kilometres from the road.
Twenty minutes or so from the town of Normanton, we turned down a dirt track. Dust rose behind us. We stopped near an empty billabong on the Bynoe River, where Desert Bloodwoods and Gutta Percha Trees gave speckled shade. In 1861, explorers Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills camped here.
Their expedition had left Melbourne in August 1860, with a goal of reaching the Gulf of Carpentaria, about 2,500 kilometres to the north. They arrived at the Bynoe River in February the following…
