Distance to date 13,195 kms
We recovered the bikes from the dog compound and packed them up. The dogs were useful guarding the bikes but they kept Alan awake all night talking to their mates down the street. Alan has had a thing about barking dogs ever since he was a teenager and came roaring out into the garden in Belfast one day after a hard night on the turps, lifted the ear of our family dog, which had been barking rather a lot , and yelled "shut up" into it.
We had breakfast at a little cafe down the street which was nice except that they made Colin's coffee with one of those ubiquitous coffee making machines that used some foul powdered milk. Colin had the gall to go back and ask them to make it with Nescafe and use fresh milk. Alan expressed the desire to have a look around the town before we left but there wasn't much more than what we saw the evening before. The exception was a huge bronze statue of a crocodile called Khyrs.
This was claimed to be the largest croc ever shot in Australia and measured 28ft 6in (8.7m) and estimated to weight over 2 tonnes. The big excitement in town was happening at the weekend when the annual Rodeo was on, reputedly the biggest ever. There would be a circus, boxing tent, rides and a big market as well as the bronco riding and bull riding.We heard the whistle of the Gulflander as we left town - the Gulflander is a strange little train that runs from Normanton (nowhere) to Croydon (also nowhere) for an unknown reason. We dashed down the highway to catch up with it but gave up when we found out it only ran to Croydon on Tuesdays. The first 150 kms to Croydon was across the channel country which was very flat and had lots of swamps and billabongs due to the recent rain. We filled up in Croydon and found this warning at the petrol pumps.
As we filled the bikes the sound of a radio wafted out of the garage workshop playing jazz and I was reminded of the movie The Great Gatsby and the service station in it.The countryside changed after we crossed the Gilbert River east of Croydon. The vegetation was more dense forest than we had seen for a long time and the place became much drier. The Gilbert River was very wide with a single track bridge across it and a small water flow under it.
The road we were on was called the Gulf Development Road and was built to open up the cattle stations dotted along it.
Building it cheap was the order of the day and single track seal and bridges were still common. We stopped in Georgetown for fuel and lunch at a RH run by a Japanese couple. They had a very comprehensive shop for such a place and Alan got his dental floss and I got some more Aspro as I was nursing a cold.The land changed again after Georgetown and became hilly and craggy with a fairly uniform woodland cover.
We found out later at Undara why this was so. The volcanos 150kms away covered the granite hills with a layer of basalt as far Georgetown. This basalt cap was uniform and lead to a uniform vegetative cover. The road was getting worse at this stage with long single seal sections which were breaking up badly. The road was gradually being rebuilt to dual lane standards and we were stopped for roadworks several times.Alan had managed to get us a booking at Undara Lodge in a safari tent.
They were fibreglass and canvas igloos with two beds in them and a light. There were also old railway carriages converted to bedrooms available at a much higher price. 
We had come to Undara Lodge to see the Lava Tubes which are large tunnels through the basalt formed when the lava cooled on the top and bottom allowing the continuing flow to pass through relatively well insulated. Alan booked a couple of tours for the next day. We had dinner in the resort restaurant which was fairly ordinary but no big surprise. There was a talk after dinner where one of the guides gave a slide show on snakes and other poisonous stuff that inhabits the bush. We all learnt how to treat a snake bite with a compression bandage and the difference between this and a viper bite that can't be treated: scary stuff.
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