Purple Pub Brolga Palms Motel, Queensland, Australia
We got up early to do one of the shorter walks from the village and we got this one right.
There were lots of birds including the green parrots again, but again my favourites were the rosellas. Somewhere along the track there was a cattle trough attracting a huge number of birds. Lots all around it including galahs. One thing there was everywhere from the Atherton tablelands west was ant mounds. Literally millions of them. Big brain shaped ones, tall uneven ones, and the ones we liked the most, conical ones, that ranged from inches to nearly two metres high.
On the walk we crossed the road in and took a picture of the corrugations in the road.
This brings me to what you should and shouldn't drive into Cobbold. Anything with high sidewalls and decent ground clearance is good. Most of the vehicles in the car parks were 4WD utes and large 4WD wagons like ours. There were some smaller SUVs - X-Trail, Sportage and a Mazda CX-5. I don’t know that I would have driven to Cobbold in them and def not in ours with its 45 profile tyres.
We also saw a Honda Civic and a Skoda Octavia. We wouldn’t but clearly they had no issue. Drive carely and to the conditions.
What you shouldn't drive there is anything close to the ground with low profile tyres. Exhibit A - a MB C class shooting brake. There really are some dumb people around. Besides the fact it was NSW registered and they just screamed 'we’ve crossed the border and we shouldn't have’', they had destroyed the sidewall of one of the front tyres and just kept driving. I overheard one of them saying on the phone that they had no spare and no repair kit. I have no idea how a replacement tyre was going to get to them and just couldn't care. Idiots.
It was another long drive from Cobbold to Normanton. On the way out of Cobbold we stopped at the Quartz Blow. It was the first bit of road we actually needed a 4WD for.
After topping up the tank at visit number two to the Georgetown roadhouse, we got back out onto the increasingly crap road. We stopped at the Cumberland Chimney and wetland. We called into Croydon for lunch for the first of three visits and just like at Mount Garnet, all that we could find in the only open cafe/shop were a couple of meat pies.
It was 90 minutes to Normanton from Croydon on a wide, smooth, fully tarred and very boring road. It was getting hotter the further west we went and it eventually hit 40!
We stayed at Normanton only so that we would be there for our early departure on https://www.gulflander.com.au/. We'd booked a room at the Purple Pub and Brolga Palms Motel Accomodation - Purple Pub but as we drove into town we saw the train at the station so turned back to have a look.
It was very, very shiny!! Looked freshly painted actually. They sure look after this train.
The Purple Pub was a hoot. something to consider if you're heading to Normanton. A very funny sign on the wall above the bar advising that they would not accept money taken from your bra or undies. Hahaha! They even had ginger beer on tap, cheaper for a jug than at home in Brisbane!
A young guy working as a fencer chatted to us for a while. They’d been out pig shooting a few nights before when their ute broke down. It was a 25km walk back to the station that they had to do before the sun came up. They had just one bottle of water and a carton of beer. The water was for the dogs. He was talking to us so they made it.
The motel rooms were out the back, as was the pool. We hadn’t even noticed it had one when we booked. Dinner was a very decent steak and an ok pizza, washed down with our new beer of choice, Great Northern Super Crisp, although we did have a couple of jugs of Brookvale Union ginger beer
2025-05-23