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!