That's all folks.....

for the moment. We are off home to the UK for a while, leaving Betty in the caring hands of our Rotarian friends Joanne and Percy in Darwin, but we will be back in September to continue our travels. See you all then!

A Chilli night…..

In more ways than one. Daly Waters does a great “Beef and Barra”- wonderful steak and barramundi, completed by a really good salad and hot bread. For $27 it was excellent value, and as we ate we had great entertainment also! Chilli is a local comedian who tells stories about the outback, taking the mickey about people who come from other states, including the United States, and playing his own songs accompanied by the guitar. What a great night! We are usually in bed by 8 or so, (often with a video nowadays), but we sat up til 10 listening to Chilli and enjoying the company of the many other campers who were with us. The place was packed, and considering it is literally miles from anywhere it was unexpected. What a great night.

However it got very cold, here we are in the middle of the continent in the middle of winter so the days are very warm and the nights are distinctly chilly. Not only did we have an extra blanket on and all the vents closed, but we broke out our thick pyjamas too!

Next morning we took off to the Never Never Station, which was made famous by Jeannie Gunn, who rote We Of The Never Never, stories of her life at the beginning of the last century on a cattle station, which we have both read. We must get hold of the film, because where we stayed has the farmhouse replica that the film crew used to make it.

On the station are hot springs, and we bathed in water that was 34 degrees, (94f), very comfortable. The story is that the forces that were stationed there in the second world war took the spring and made it into a swimming hole for officers, but after the war a lowly private bough the place and opened it to tourists. He must have made a bomb because it was packed. We took a walk down to a river pool, which was lovely, but the water was very cold.

Late afternoon we were roused by the sound of a tiny gyrocopter which flew over us several times before landing in the field behind us. We went out to see him take off again with a trainee, he buzzed the field before he finally departed for the lesson.

After another cold night we arose this morning to be greeted by four peahens and a wallaby, the latter was after our fruit. We are always reluctant to feed them for their own good, this one was very cheeky and stole something from our waste bag when we weren’t looking!

We are nearing the end now of this cycle, tonight we are camped at a place called Edith Falls, where we have been before, there are three lovely pools with waterfalls between, and a good walk to the top of the hill with a great view of the surrounding bush. Anne tells me we are eating up all the scraps this evening- before we go home to the UK, I’m sure it will be delicious…..

Travelling on.

The first 75k after we left Kingfisher Camp was on very rough roads, many creeks as before, and gates across the road. As we reached the main road the surface improved, except that there were many very steep aproaches and exits from the creeks, which were quite wide at times. Invariably the bottom of the rivers were rocky, so had to be taken slowly in four wheel drive, in any case it helped to get up the steep hills going out.
All of it was gravel except for a little tarmac at Hell's Gate, a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere where we filled up with petrol at $2 a litre.

The owner's wife was dressed for the Siberian winter, with a thick topcoat, a hood and a wooly hat. We were in t shirt and shorts, it was not roasting but it certainly was not cold!

Much of the road ran through aboriginal land, in which the elders of the tribe restrict the use of alcohol, and pornography, and the penalties for taking it in are quite high. We have seen this regularly as we have travelled throughout this country, there is a great problem with alcohol and drugs in the aboriginal community, we heard much of it at the Rotary Conference we attended in Cairns a couple of weeks ago.

A lot of the land was being fired to keep down the undergrowth, that stops wildfires from getting out of hand, and encourages new grass growth when the rains come. It has to be done under license, and very carefully controlled in the right conditions, we came across many areas still smouldering.

Then disaster! We lost another tyre- the fourth that we have had to replace on our journey, at 90kph it sustained a cut from a sharp rock, so it's another new one I'm afraid. Altogether with this one we have replaced six tyres, two are on our spares, and are pretty good, so we were able  to change it for one of them.
I let Anne do the work- she needs the practice......

We've now crossed the border into Northern Teritory from Queensland, and we stayed last night at Boroloola, a small town about 100k this side of the border. What a difference from the previous night- we were almost alone on the site, but in Boroloola it was heaving. That's the result of being on tarmac again- everyone and his mate can get here easily!
So today has been a bit boring, 400k on Tarmac to the Suart Highway, the long road that runs from Adelaide to Darwin.






We are staying at Daly Waters, which avid readers of my blog will remember we visited on our way down, you know- the one with the helicopter on the roof and the bras and panties hanging over the bar! Then we were the only visitors, and we were looking forward to a quiet night tonight. We were soon disabused- arriving here the campers were queuing up to get on the site. It is packed! The owner here must be making a mint, he is serving about two hunderd meals tonight, he has entertainment on, and the happy hour sounds to be going like a bomb at 5pm. We are booked for 7, hope we can get a seat!

Lawn Hill and Kingfisher camp

We deviated from our main route today- we had been told that Lawn Hill Gorge was the most beautiful in the whole of Australia. They lied.

But the route down was great- we passed over savannah and through woodland, once again being rewarded with the sight of many kangaroos and wallabies, and of course large numbers of birds of prey.

One wedge tailed eagle sat in the road with his roadkill as we approached until we stopped just a few yards away, where we photographed him completely unconcerned, then lazily took off to join his mate in the sky above us.

There are huge amounts of cattle, mainly Brahman and Charolais cross, which appear to thrive here. Many times we have to slow right down for huge bulls stood at the side of the road, until we know his intentions. Usually he saunters across, and we don’t want an argument with him!.

It was a 200km diversion to Lawn Hill, mainly dirt roads, we arrived there around 11am, and decided to walk a couple of their paths before lunch. Despite the distance the car park was full, many people walking about, so we took off down a path to the cascades. As we crossed a bridge the views both ways were lovely, but the cascades themselves were a disappointment, as no water was running. Shame!

Another path took us to the lower gorge and some interesting Aboriginal rock art, some of it 10,000 year old. They don’t like us to photograph it, so we obliged by keeping the camera away.

Leaving Lawn hill we took another road towards our night stop, Kingfisher camp, a distance of 147 km, normally only around an hour and a half for us even on dirt roads. It took us over three hours, the road was pretty bad. There were ruts and bulldust holes  galore, deep sand and mud in places. Instead of cattle grids we had gates, about ten of them, and creeks and rivers galore.

 One of them was about 200 metres wide, and we couldn’t see where we went out of it as it was round a bend, with no idea how deep it was we plunged in. No choice. But we were ok as it happened, water came up to Betty’s bumper but no further.

Unfortunately I have to report that I accidentally ran over a snake in the road today. I immediately exited our vehicle and ran round to see if I could save it, giving it the kiss of life. Unfortunately (or fortunately, whichever way you look at it) it had expired. I gave it a decent burial in the anthill at the side of the road.

As we approached another creek we found two bikes by the side of the road, nobody about, so we stopped to make sure that whoever owned them was OK. Bear in mind that we had seen no other vehicle on this road, it was completely deserted. Eventually a lad in his twenties waded across the creek with a four litre bottle of dirty water in his hand, obviously from the creek. I asked if he needed water, and he said he has hoped to get some clean from the creek, but it was dirty, he would try to purify it with tablets for his cooking tonight.

 I told him we had plenty of water with us and he could have some, which he gratefully accepted.

It seems he and his girlfriend, both German, who joined us just then, had cycled from Darwin and we think are doing a full tour as we are. They will sleep where they happen to be at sunset, in the bush. Best of luck!.

Arriving at Kingfisher camp, we set up and took a walk to the waterhole. It is really very beautiful, we wish we could stay here a while, we can hire boats here as well as canoe down the river, and I understand there is a 4wd track that we can use on the station, to a swimming hole of great beauty. Maybe we can come back sometime,  but tomorrow we must move on again to meet our deadline in Darwin five days from now.