Croyden Visitors Centre
Queensland's oldest shop
'Krys the Savannah King'
The kids went for a play at the park while we packed up. The friendly owner of the caravan park had told us to check out the short documentary at the info centre which gave a bit of a run down on the history of the town - so we did. Croyden experienced a huge gold rush in the 1880s and during this time was a very busy town with 36 pubs. When the gold ran out most people left - these days it only has a population of 255. We checked out the Heritage Precinct including the police station, gaol, courthouse and town hall built from 1886. We visited the General Store which has continuously traded since 1884 and claims to be the oldest shop in Australia. We went for a drive to the nearby Lake Belmore which was built in 1995 to supply the town water. We continued on to Normanton with a quick stop at the huge replica crocodile "Krys the Savannah King" shot in the Norman River by Krystina Pawlowski in 1957. It is thought to be the largest estuarine crocodile in the world. We bought a not so fresh loaf of bread from the not so friendly bakery and had vegemite sandwiches for lunch. We continued driving the 75km on to Karumba. The roads were good but the scenery was very barren. We did see a couple of wedge-tailed eagles and lots of whistling kites hovering around the abundant road kill. It was hot. When we got to the caravan park I took the kids for a swim in the pool and we meet the Nixon family, who funnily enough lived about 500 meters from us back in Mt Martha and the kids went to the same school. They were traveling for a year having left in January and had come from the west. We went to the pub for dinner to watch the sunset and had a beautiful seafood platter. After we had put the kids to bed we had a drink with Karen and Greg and discussed trip highlights.
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