After stocking up on supplies at Karumba and as we passed through Normanton, we set our bearing towards Burketown. About thirty kilometres west of Normanton is the site of Burke and Will’s Camp Number 119, the most northern campsite of their ill-fated journey.

Travelling along Australia’s National Highway No: 1 towards Burketown, as expected the sealed bitumen road ended and the Jayco Journey caravan experienced its first taste of gravel and red dust.

After crossing the Leichhardt River on a very narrow partially flooded bridge, we found the Leichhardt Falls Free Camping area and navigated the sand and rocks to find a spot to set up our camp. The falls are located approximately fifty kilometres upstream from the point where the river discharges into the Gulf of Carpentaria. The falls, renowned for their stepped nature and breadth, vary in intensity from a raging torrent of water in the wet season to a mere trickle towards the end of the dry season.

The falls and river are named after Ludwig Leichhardt (1813 – 1848), a German explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia. Ludwig Leichhardt mysteriously disappeared during an expedition from Queensland to Western Australia and may have perished somewhere in the Great Sandy Desert of the Australian interior, possibly at the hands of the traditional owners.