Crocks, Snakes and Karaoke

2008-09-28 - Sunday

Ok, well maybe instead of mentioning every early morning (since they are pretty much the norm), perhaps I'll mention just the late ones! Just for clarification though...this was another early one! :-)

Today is our last huge driving day (770 km). To break it up a bit, we've stopped into the little town of Normanton for lunch. Normanton features both an historic railway museum and their bigger claim to fame, in my opinion, a replica of the largest Crocodile ever captured in Australia. Named Krys, he was an 8.63 meter (28 foot) estuarine crocodile captured in 1957.

Tonight we are camping in the community of Mount Surprise. Our host is Russell Dennis, owner of Planet Earth Adventures. Russell is an entrepreneur in the truest sense of the word, involved in a touch of everything. His sign reads "museum, restaurant, campground, gas, tyres, pool table, Internet". In addition, he sells organically grown produce from his garden and hosts "Russell's World Famous Snake Show". Walking around his property, it was clear that he shared my father's philosophy that there's no such thing as junk, only used materials waiting to find their next use - the ultimate recyclers.

So, for supper tonight, we ordered from Russell's menu, which included evening specials of Spagetti and meat sauce and personal sized "how ever you want it" pizzas. I went with the pizza.

After the pizza Russell ran his World Famous Snake show for us, where we were given the opportunity to get up close and personal with three of his resident snakes, Clancy, Tracy and Dolly. Clancy was a black-headed python, Tracy was Carpet python and Dolly was a yellow tree snake. We also had the opportunity to handle the Water Python, regarded by the Aboriginees as the Rainbow Serpent; one of their creation animals.

After the snake show it was on to the real entertainment: Karoke on the big screen. We were all treated to about two hours of each others mascaring of both new and older rock and roll songs...and trust me, the singing did not get any better as the drinking went on!