Lakefield NP, to Kalpower Crossing

We headed towards Lakefield NP and met a lovely young couple from Townsville – she heads up Townsville Enterprise or something like that, responsible for economic development and marketing of Townsville. She talked it all up well but admitted that unemployment for young people was high. The Adani mine HQ and the FiFO HQ is going to be in Townsville and that will bring in a lot of money. and that is bringing conflict with Rockhampton and Mackay. She said that protests from Left and Green groups are difficult but part of life. Her perspective is that the environment restrictions on Adani are such that it won’t threaten the reef.  

Before arriving at Kalpower Crossing we came across hundreds of red tailed black cockatoos, eating on the ground. They flew away when we stopped the car, but flew in front of us so we could see how many there were and see their magnificent tail feathers.

We had booked for 4 nights at Hann’s Crossing but it was 430 and we still had 30km to go (at 25km/hour that was over an hour) so we decided to try to find a spot at Kalpower. Fortunately site 18 was free and remained so. We met some other travellers who told us we were lucky because Hann’s is tight and not pleasant. Next morning we walked the 4km track and saw loads of birds including the olive backed sunbird. We thought about going to Bathurst Head but we’d seen SO many utes with boats go there that evening and next morning that we decided to leave it to our return trip when hopefully it would be less crowded (this is the last week of NSW school hols).  I had read that the roads to Cape Melville open around 31^st July so we’re too early for that too.

Red Lily Lagoon - sadly no birds but lots of lovely water lilies

The most enormous flock of red tailed black cockatoos were grazing on the ground and we managed to get a few photos. Russ is very proud of this one.