3 NORMAN RIVER AND MUTTON HOLE WETLANDS
NORMANTON offers free camping alongside the Norman River with permits available from the Visitors Centre which must be picked up before you find a spot to set up. Take care near the riverbanks as a 5m-long salty has been spotted here and that’s not something you’d want chasing you. The tracks that lead to the campsites are very dusty and if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, your campsite could cop it whenever someone drives past.
There are a myriad of tracks that lead into the Mutton Hole Wetlands Conservation Park, a tropical savannah wildlife sanctuary. Take care as some can be boggy when wet and, when dry, the bulldust is ridiculous. The Mutton Hole wetlands cover 78.6km² and are part of the largest continuous wetland in northern Queensland, with fauna including more than 120 species of birds, fish and amphibians, wallabies, wild pigs and dingoes.
You are likely to spy brolgas, magpie geese, sarus cranes, Australian bustards, and great and little egrets. Saltwater crocodiles inhabit the wetlands and enjoy eating humans. Move away if you see one and remember they can run as fast as you can walk, but it isn’t worth trying to race them. While canoeing is acceptable, it is precarious, and the locals call canoes ‘croc lures’.
The Gkuthaarn and Kurtijar people have lived in the Normanton area and hunted across the wetlands for thousands of years, trapping fish in the shallows, holding ceremonies, and resolving disputes. This changed in the mid-19th century when Normanton was established as a port town with coastal shipping skirting the wetlands journeys up the river to the old wharf near the bridge.
A meatworks operated near Goose Lagoon from the 1890s to early in the 20th century, mostly to slaughter cattle for tallow, which no doubt would have been attractive to the crocodiles. There are no traces of the meatworks these days.