Very original, I know, but it’s the only way I can remember that it’s Karumba and not Kuranda. Last week, Hubs had 5 days off and we decided we needed (needed) to get out of our wee townhouse or we would go crazy. So we decided to look into Karumba. Family friends of ours used to go up there every year for the fishing season, catch their fill, and travel back down to their home in Townsville. They loved it, and within minutes of arriving, I could see why.

We set off Tuesday morning around 10am to drive the almost 600km, and the kids were in good spirits and being rather cute and delightful!

I wish I could say these happy faces lasted the whole 8 hour trip, but all of you parents out there wouldn’t believe me. On the whole, they were really great, especially considering how boring the drive is!! We arrived just after 6pm, and this is one of the first things we saw:

This was our first look at Karumba – the sun setting over the water. What is it about water that energises and feeds the soul? I’ve never considered myself a particular lover of water, but this made my heart sing. And things just got better from there. We arrived at the caravan park and were shown to our on-site caravan, named Frank.

It was nothing fancy, but very comfortable and much more roomy than I was expecting, with the permanent annexes on either side.

We were going to throw some snags on the BBQ for dinner, but then we saw a sign saying “prawns $20/kilo”. Um, yes please! So we ate prawns for dinner instead. Big, fresh, tasty prawns. I was pretty happy about that choice.

The next day I sent Hubs and Chanbe out on a fishing charter in the afternoon while Quindy and I had a little nap. They didn’t catch any keepers, but had a good time out on the water. And one of the other guys on the charter who caught a few, gave us one of his blue salmon.

The kids weren’t overly excited, but Hubs smoked that fish beautifully on the BBQ, and there’s nothing quite like fresh fish! We had booked in for the Croc and Crab tour for the next day, which Hubs was a bit ho-hum about (too touristy) but I was SO excited! Mainly because they serve fresh cooked prawns and mud crab for lunch as part of it. The tour went from 9:30am til 1:30pm, and considering the kids were in a confined space, they did really well. I even got complimented towards the end on their behaviour, which is always nice.

The tour was run by a married couple and they were just lovely and full of interesting facts about the area. Some photos? Sure.

They took us to see a couple of resident crocs which the kids were pretty damn excited about!

And after catching a few mud crabs in the pots, they showed us how to tie them up and gave us all a “pat”. Chanbe was not interested at all, and asked very kindly “please put it back in the bucket Dadda.” This one didn’t even have any claws!

Quindy was much more interested in finishing her Cheetos first,

And then of course she was interested in “patting” the crab’s claw! Girl is fearless!

And then, the feast was brought out. Everyone was given half of a (cooked) mudcrab each, and there were 3 big bowls of prawns to help ourselves to. There are no photos of this, as I was in the zone. That seafood was some of the best I’ve had in SO LONG! The kids were given a can of softdrink each – Quindy’s first serious taste of some orange sugary drink – and that kept them occupied for the next hour. Just you try to take it off them though! I think I’d fancy my chances with the crab more!

I’ll leave it there for now as this is already a long post, and there’s a fair bit more to come!