Day 1 - Scarborough - Tara, QLD 31 May, 2023
This trip's primary purpose was to get away from the cold at our place and to head north to warmer climes, and obviously to enjoy some more adventures and see new places.
We had a leisurely start to the day and got away from home about 9:00 A.M. after doing the final packing.
The day wasn't going to be exciting at all, just going as far as we wanted to comfortably travel on our first day.
The only stops we had were at Biddeston for a stretch and toilet break, and at Cecil Plains for a takeaway lunch of sandwiches, which we ate in Mata.
Our first night's stop was at Tara, QLD, in the Lagoon Parklands Campsite, which has large gravelled sites, toilets and showers, and which only cost $5.30 for the night on an unpowered site. If we had chosen to, we could have stayed there another two nights for no extra charge.
When we first pulled into our preferred site we were approached by two older gentlemen who told us the man in the adjacent campsite has two large dogs that bark a lot, which prompted a move further away from him.
We caught up with our socials, had a walk around the showgrounds, and chilled for the rest of the day.
Day 2 - Tara - Mitchell, QLD 01 June, 2023
Got away from Tara at our usual time of around 9:00 A.M., headed eventually for Mitchell, about a 350 km drive for the day.
Our first stop for the day was at the Myall Park Botanic Gardens, for a leg stretch and a walk around the gardens. Unfortunately we discovered that there was a $5 entry fee per person to the gardens, with nobody else in attendance, and we didn't have anything smaller than a $20 note to leave in the money receptacle. We had a quick snack, read the information boards, then got back on the road to Roma.
We grabbed a pie for lunch in Roma then continued our journey to Mitchell, where we stopped at the Great Artesian Spa for a soak in the hot pools. Entry to the hot pools was only $15 for the two of us, and we enjoyed a good soaking and chatting to other travellers for half an hour or so.
Then it was off to the Neil Turner Weir, just outside Mitchell, for a one-night free camp.
The camping area was huge, and highly populated with other travellers. We found a shady spot not far from the weir and got set up for the night.
I tried my hand at fishing for half an hour in the weir to no avail.
The temperature was dropping quite dramatically when the sun started going down, so we partook in one of our favourite pastimes, cranking up a jolly good fire to keep warm.
With the fire keeping us warm we ate outside and enjoyed the spectacular night sky.
Day 3 - Mitchell - Tambo, QLD 02 June, 2023
After several failed attempts, we finally figured out how to get the diesel heater to come on automatically at the appointed time, so Mata was nice and warm before we got out of bed. At around 5 degrees overnight, we were very pleased about that.
We got away from camp at our usual time and drove first to Mungallala, where we stopped at the Warrego Wildlife Rescue, an operation run single-handedly by a pensioner (Kangaroo Jack) using his own resources, out of his house.
Jack brough out two joeys in carry bags for Meg and I to hang onto and interact with, while he told us about his operation, which normally includes a coffee cart, but he'd run out of coffee beans so we didn't get the coffee we'd hoped for.
Moving on we drove to, and stopped in, Morven for that coffee we'd missed out on in Mungallala.
We both got coffees from a coffee van in the main street and drank them while we wandered around looking at what Morven had to offer, which included a small park with metal animal sculptures, an ANZAC Memorial, bottle trees, and a very nice information centre, which we visited to found out more about the area.
Walking back to Mata we were surprised to meet up with two other Explorer owners, Kevin and Sue #236TV and Cheryl #18TV, all of us travelling independently.
Next up we drove to Augathella to make use of their dump point, fill up with fresh water, check out the water tower art and the meat ant sculpture, and to have lunch.
The last drive for the day was to Tambo where we stopped in the main street to fill up with diesel then continued on out to the Stubby Bend Free Camp just outside Tambo.
We had plans for the evening, Ben's Chicken Racing at the local Royal Carrangarra Hotel, so we got setup and caught up with all of our usuals before wandering up to the camp access road to be picked up by the hotel courtesy bus around 4:30 P.M.
The concept of chicken racing sounded weird, but it was undertaken admirably by Ben, the licensee of the Royal Carrangarra Hotel, and half of the profits of the chicken auction were given to the Windmill charity for disadvantaged children.
We sat outside for a while waiting for the racing to start, chatting to other travellers and having a couple of drinks.
Ben was very amusing introducing us to the event, with any chance for a bad chicken-related joke taken. After also being introduced to each of the chickens, and their recent form, we had the opportunity to "buy" the chickens for the duration of the race, through an auction process. The person who purchased the winning chicken received half of all money received by the auction process, and the remainder was donated to the Windmill charity.
After half an hour or so, and a couple of drinks, the 4-lap race started, and was eventually won by Bumble Bee, the yellow chicken that we had bid on until the stakes got too high for us.
After the racing it was back into the pub for more drinks and to order dinner, which we ate sitting outside as it was a pleasant evening.
The courtesy bus took us back to the Stubby Bend campground around 7:00 P.M. and that was it for another day of adventures.
Day 4 - Tambo - Lara Wetlands, Nr Barcaldine QLD 03 June, 2023
We were away from the campsite a little earlier than usual, with our first stop only a few hundred metres away, at the first Qantas crash site, which occurred in 1927 killing all three people aboard.
Then it was a short drive into Tambo's main street where we parked up and did an approximation of the town's historic walking tour, all along the main street.
There was a lot to see including historic houses, the old post office, the old court house, the Tambo Teddies shop, a wooden racehorse sculpture and loads of bottle trees lining the middle and sides of the street.
Back on the road again we drove about 100 km to Blackall, where we stopped to use their dump point and to top up a few supplies. But not far out of Tambo, we smelled what we thought was gas leaking, so we pulled into a rest stop to check it out. As soon as we stepped outside the smell became stronger, so it was coming from some sort of vegetation. I read the information boards at the rest stop, one of which was about the local flora. One of the trees mentioned on the board was the Gidgee Tree (various spellings were noted), which was also known as the Smelly Wattle. Mystery solved!
With no more touristing to do we drove another 100 km or so to the Lara Wetlands campsite, where we planned to stay for two nights.
Lara is a working cattle station that also provides a huge camping area based around the wetlands, and provides full amenities including toilets, showers, kayaks, trolleys of firewood and even a traditional camp oven cooked meal in the camp kitchen on Saturday nights. Luckily it was Saturday!
After setting up we had lunch, had a wander around our section of the campsite, and chilled for a while catching up on our socials and blogging etc.
One unexpected feature of the campground was their own outdoor thermal pool, supplied with water from the Great Artesian Basin. It was a lot more basic than the thermal pool we'd experienced at Mitchell a couple of days earlier, with a muddy bottom to the pool, but also a lot hotter. The access end of the pool was hotter than the Mitchell pool, and apparently the opposite end was even hotter, but we didn't get down that far to check that information.
We headed up to the Saturday Night Camp Oven Dinner at the appointed time of 5:30 P.M. loaded up with our own plates, cutlery and drinks.
We were early enough to bags a table, which we were eventually joined at by two more couples who were travelling together, and who were from Caloundra.
While waiting for dinner, and during and after the meal, we were entertained by a talented duo playing guitars, who we took to be a mother and her teenage son.
After half an hour or so we got the nod to to go up to the cooking area where our plates were loaded up with a very nice beef casserole, potatoes and a slice of damper to mop up the gravy. The meal was very tasty, well cooked, and everybody's plates were clean once we'd all finished eating.
There was a second course of dessert, but we decided that we didn't need that and headed back to the ranch for the evening.
Day 5 - Lara Wetlands, Nr Barcaldine QLD 04 June, 2023
Even though this was only our fifth day on the road for this trip we felt the need of a down day.
After a leisurely start to the day, we set out to do the 2 km bush walk around the outskirts of the wetlands campsite. The walk was nothing spectacular, walking on a sandy track in fairly open bush, with only a few birds for company, but it was nice to get the exercise and fresh air.
The walk brought us back to the camp reception area where we bought a trolley of firewood, for $20, to have a fire later in the day. It was a very generous amount of firewood, but most of it was too large to fit in our small firepit, so we relocated one of the camp's firepits to our camping spot.
The rest of the morning was spent doing some cleaning, rearranging of cupboards, dealing with our socials and blog, and just generally relaxing.
After lunch we headed over to the thermal pool and spent a leisurely hour or so soaking in the hot waters and chatting to two other couples who were also enjoying the experience.
More relaxing ensued for the rest of the afternoon, until it was time to crank up the fire and start making an impression on the large load of wood we'd purchased.
The campsite firepit we relocated to our camping area was brilliant, and we burnt about the half of the wood we'd purchased.
Once the sun had gone down we checked out the night sky and were surprised when we saw a satellite sky train of 15 or so satellites.
Day 6 - Lara Wetlands - Middleton, QLD 05 June, 2023
After trying to book a river cruise on the Thompson River at Longreach for tonight, and finding there were no spots available until two days later, we decided to skip staying in Longreach and do this experience on the way back home.
Also, after looking at some of the things we wanted to do in Winton, and finding out how expensive they were, we made another decision to also skip Winton for this trip and to do it at a later date.
This led to the decision to drive nearly 500 km to the tiny town of Middleton, population 4, where there was a donation camping area across from the only building in town, the Middleton Pub.
After taking off from Lara Wetlands, we drove through Barcaldine and carried on to Longreach, where we stopped for about an hour to buy a new Bluetooth speaker, because our previous one wouldn’t charge any more, stock up on supplies and to have lunch beside the Thompson River.
Once all that was done it was back on the road for the drive to Middleton.
On the drive from Lara Wetlands to Middleton we had our first sighting of Emus, a family of five. We also saw flocks of budgies, Nankeen Kestrels, Brolgas and wild pigs.
We only made the one stop along the way, just outside Middleton, at the Goldstone movie set, which was a run down tin shed/house, in the middle of nowhere. Haven't seen the movie yet, but maybe we need to!
At Middleton we parked up in the rough, dusty, “Hilton Hotel" camping area, then wandered over the road to the pub for a cold beer, because the temperature had risen to the low 30s during the day.
The publican was a very interesting character who, taken at face value, you would maybe assume a person who wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Turns out he was a helicopter pilot for over twenty years, owns the Middleton Pub and surrounding 13,000 hectares, on which cattle was raised, owns other properties, and had recently survived cancer treatment.
Then it was back over to Mata for a while to setup and catch up with our chores before heading back over to the pub for our evening meal.
We had a couple more drinks and a nice feed of Barramundi and roast vegetables, which was a nice change from the usual chips and dodgy salad.
While waiting for, and eating, dinner we were treated to a wonderful sunset.
Day 7 - Middleton - Boulia, QLD 06 June, 2023
A beautiful sunrise woke us up a bit earlier this morning, so we were on the road before 8:00 A.M., headed eventually for Boulia, which was only about 200 km away, so a nice easy driving day.
The roads were mostly single lane, which meant slowing down or stopping and pulling right off the road when a vehicle approached from the other direction, or wanted to pass us. Fortunately we only had one vehicle pass going in the same direction, and not too many going the other way.
Because it was such a short drive we pottered along at 80 km/h for most of the journey, taking in the changing landscape and looking out for whatever wildlife the countryside had to offer, which included flocks of budgies, smaller Kestrels, Wedge-Tailed Eagles and various other birds we couldn't identify.
Apart from the Wedge-Tailed Eagles flying around, we encountered a pair sitting in the middle of the road, which initially refused to get out of our way, causing us to slow right down until they took off.
Our first stop was the impressive Cawnpore Lookout, about 50 kms out of Middleton. The lookout looks over what was the Eromanga Sea, a shallow sea that covered inland Australia 110 million years ago, and is now the arid interior of Australia. There was a short, very steep climb up to the lookout, but it was well worth the effort for the panoramic 360 degree views around the area. Rocky outcrops, or mesa, were interspersed with flat country extending to the horizon.
Carrying on, we stopped briefly to take a pic of the "Legend of the Min Min Lights" sign that also had an information board explaining what the Min Min Lights are.
Our last stop before Boulia was the Hamilton Hotel ruins, but we were disappointed to not find any ruins of the hotel at all, apart from what may have been an original fireplace and chimney that had been turned into a stone monument.
The Boulia Caravan Park was on the main road approaching Boulia, so we decided to stop in there to check in for the night, and have lunch, before exploring Boulia.
Once we discovered that we could do a walking tour of Boulia without having to drive, we setup properly for the night, put a load of washing on then wandered along the road into the township of Boulia.
Our first stop was the Min Min Encounter Visitor Centre, but unfortunately it was temporarily closed while the staff had lunch.
Next up was a walk in the hot, dry sun to the Boulia Heritage Complex to check that out.
Another "unfortunately" as they had had a power failure earlier in the day and were going to close early, 30 minutes after we arrived there. After a quick introduction from the indigenous volunteer, we did a whistlestop tour of the centre, which I thought was very impressive for a small country town. Apart from historical displays that included a world war room, police, communications, hand tools and dozens of machinery exhibits outside, they had a very good fossil room that included dinosaur skeleton fossils, other fossils such as ammonites and troglodytes and many local examples of rocks, both raw and polished.
The centre also included the Stone House, a house that a draper from NSW had built in the mid 1880s.
We then wandered back to the main street and along to the information centre that included a Min Min Lights experience. Unfortunately it was a day of 'unfortunatelies' as the Min Min experience wasn't running because of the earlier power cuts and there was no indication of when it might start again. The information centre had a lot of pamphlets about places ranging from the local area to Moreton Bay, Ipswich, Gold Coast and many others. We stocked up on all the pamphlets that covered the areas we would be visiting, had a read of other displays around the centre, then headed across the road to the local shop for a few supplies, before walking back to camp.
Spent the rest of the day relaxing, while inhaling the wonderful aroma of camel poo from the resident camel, Abby, who wandered along behind the campground in a fenced-off area.
Day 8 - Boulia - Tobermorey Station, NT 07 June, 2023
We were woken early again, mostly by fellow campers starting their days early, banging, clanking and talking, getting ready to hit the road for the day.
We decided if we couldn’t beat them, we might as well join them, and we headed out of camp before 8:30 A.M.
Our first stop was just along the road at the servo to fill up with diesel, as we were heading into unknown territory where fuel stops could be few and far between. After that we headed out of town, onto the Donohue Highway towards the NT, stopping first at the town dump point.
Back on the road, which started out sometimes 2-lane, sometimes 1-lane, with a really good surface, we pottered along at 80 km/h because we only had about 200 km to drive to Tobermorey Station, which was just past the QLD/NT border.
Along the way we stopped at an information board that was dedicated to a local council engineer who had been responsible for sealing much of the Boulia to NT border road, a flood marker that documented all the recent floodings of the Georgina River, and also had morning tea there, and our last stop for the day was at the QLD/NT border sign to take some pics.
Part way along our journey the road turned from sealed to well-maintained gravel, that allowed us to still travel comfortably at 75 km/h.
Obviously, as soon as we commented on how good the road condition was, it quickly turned to shit, with a coarse rocky surface, large sharp stones and corrugations that forced us to cut our speed to as low as 20 km/h at times.
We maybe averaged 30 km/h on these sections, which occasionally changed back to sealed road for a few kilometres before going back to gravel of varying quality. This continued for the rest of the drive, until we turned off to Tobermorey Station Roadhouse and Caravan Park about 1:30 P.M.
It didn’t take long to get checked in, to find a semi-shady spot under some trees, get setup for the night and to have lunch.
It also didn’t take us long to realise we didn’t have any internet, which meant an afternoon of analogue activities.
It was quite pleasant sitting outside in the shade and breeze, but the flies were rabid and wouldn’t leave us alone.
Also, I was looking forward to having a good fire later in the day, but we were only allowed to use the campground’s firepits, and we couldn’t find a camping spot close enough to one, so that was the end of that source of entertainment!
There was a bar, however, that opened at 4:00 P.M., so we moseyed over there and had a cold one before returning to Mata for the night. When walking over to the bar we chatted briefly with some grey nomad motorcyclists, who were riding trail-type bikes, and who were going to watch the Finke Desert Race, which started on the coming Friday. They laughed when I asked them if they were competing, saying they were far too old for that.
The only other excitement we had was when the station's chopper took off and landed a couple of times close to where we were parked.
The first part of the next day's drive involved about 200 km of gravel/dirt roads, so I took the opportunity to lower the tyre pressures to cope with that, and to make the ride more comfortable.
Day 9 - Tobermorey Station - Gemtree Campground, Plenty Highway NT 08 June, 2023
We only had a loose plan of how far we would travel for the day, but the ultimate goal was to get to the Gemtree Campground, which was about 470 km west of our current position because it was the only place east of Alice Springs that had internet.
The motorcycle riders camped next to us were early risers and making plenty of noise, along with many other nearby campers, so we were awake and on the road by 8:00 A.M., expecting a slow drive on the crappy roads, at least for the first 200 km to Jervois, where the information we had indicated that the sealed roads started and continued all the way to Alice Springs.
Turns out our ambitions to get to Gemtree Campground were looking unlikely because the road surface deteriorated early into the drive forcing us to slow down to as little 20 km/h at times to navigate the corrugations and bedrock surfaces.
There were patches that allowed driving at 70 km/h, but these were few and far between, so we probably averaged around 30-40 km/h for most of the drive to Jervois, and it was around lunchtime (4 hours of driving) before we covered that first 200 km.
To break the tedium of the bone-jarring ride, Meg attempted to get some photos of the fast-flying flocks of green budgies that flew around us for the entire trip, but they were too fast to capture. She had to resort to taking a photo of a brochure we picked up in Boulia, to make it look like she snapped a flock!
Relieved to be at Jervois, we stopped at a rest stop, had lunch, and reinflated our tyres to their normal pressures, ready for the sealed road.
Talk about disappointment when we continued the journey, expecting sealed roads, then discovered after a few kilometres that somebody had been telling porkies and the road surface was actually worse than it had been all morning! We made the decision to stop and reduce the tyre pressures again because the ride was very uncomfortable at full pressures.
More shocking roads ensued, that took hours to cover, until we finally came to the sealed road, which we drove along for some time to make sure it didn't run out before stopping and reinflating the tyres once more.
Twenty kilometres later, guess what? Yep, more shit roads! We decided against stopping again to reduce tyre pressures because that was getting really tedious by that point. We just hung for dear life and put up with the shaking, rattling and rolling until we got to the point where the sealed road started and continued to Alice Springs.
By this time the sun was starting to get low in the sky, but we only had 80 km to go to Gemtree, so decided to carry on and made it to the campground at 5;00 P.M., nearly 9 hours of driving to cover 470 km!
Thankfully the office was still open so we checked in for an unpowered site for the night. Because it was latish we didn't bother unpacking the outside stuff, and stayed inside for the night, partly because the flies really seemed to like us, and we didn't want to deal with them after the long day we'd had, and partly because it was a lot colder than we'd been used to for the last few days.
Thankfully we had good internet so we were able to catch up with all the messages we'd missed over the last couple of days.
Day 10 - Gemtree Campground, Plenty Highway NT 09 June, 2023
The previous night we'd discussed where we would stay tonight and after tossing around a few options we made the decision to have a down day and stay at Gemtree another night, which would give us the opportunity to catch up with stuff we hadn't been able to the previous couple of days because of the lack of internet.
It was so cold when we woke up I had to dash out of bed and turn on the diesel heater before racing back into bed.
After a leisurely start to the day we wandered up to the office, booked in for another night, had a look around the gem shop, grabbed an information folder for the nature walk, and set out to do the 3.5 km walk. It was an easy walk on well-formed dirt tracks through mostly open bush, with markers indicating trees/plants of interest along the way, with the folder supplying information on those.
One point of interest was a Mulga Ant nest, which they cunningly build a levee around to prevent the nest being flooded when it rains.
At the end of the walk we arrived back at the office area, where there is a museum documenting the history of the surrounding stations, and which is housed in an original settler's house built in 1928.
Back at our campsite we relaxed for the rest of the morning, had lunch, did some cleaning and relaxed some more for the rest of the afternoon, until it was time to crank up a fire in the large firepit beside our site.
Once the sun started heading down we cranked up the fire in the camp’s firepit, and it was such a great fire we burnt all of our firewood supplies by the time we went inside for dinner.
Day 11 - Gemtree Campground - Point Howard Lookout Namatjira NT 10 June, 2023
We woke to 4 degrees this morning, so it was a quick run out of bed to turn on the diesel heater, then back into bed until the temperature had risen closer to 20 degrees inside.
Before leaving camp we filled up with fresh water and visited the camp’s dump point, then headed out onto the Plenty Highway towards Alice Springs.
The Plenty Highway ended after a while and dumped us out onto the Stuart Highway, the first 130 km/h road I’d seen. We had two quick stops along the way, at the Tropic of Capricorn statue, to take a pic and have a toilet stop, and at the Alice Springs sign a few kilometres out of town.
In Alice Springs we filled up with diesel, went to the visitor information centre to purchase a pass for the Mereenie Loop Road, visited Woolworths and BWS for some supplies, went up the Anzac Hill Lookout where we had lunch and went to Supercheap Auto before heading out of town on the Larapinta Drive towards the Mereenie Loop Road.
A few kilometres out of Alice Springs we turned off onto the Standley Chasm Road and drove about 10 km to the chasm.
We were surprised how many people were there, including backpackers, caravans, motorhomes and tour buses – YUK! – that’s not what we came here for. The area provided camping for caravans/motorhomes and tents. We were also surprised to see another Explorer in the carpark, so after parking up we went and had a chat to Glen and Peter, #321 TVX, who were from WA, 3 hours south of Perth.
After visiting the kiosk to purchase tickets for the chasm walk, which cost $20, we walked about 15 minutes to the very impressive canyon, where we vied with other tourists to take some decent photos without other people in them, to no avail.
Back on the Larapinta Drive we were still debating how far to go for the rest of the day, and decided to check out a free camp at Point Howard Lookout, despite reviews not being very good saying that people had left toilet paper lying around.
We expected to see loads of other free campers there when we arrived, but there was only one other vehicle, which left shortly after. We found a nice spot beside a firepit, in the event that we would be able to find some wood to burn, and setup for the night.
Once setup we wandered over to the lookout to get a couple of photos and discovered a small tree that looked like somebody had cut down and put the bottom of the trunk in a fire, so it was only partly burnt. We hauled it back to our campsite, got out the virgin, baby 20cm chainsaw and proceeded to cut the tree into manageable pieces.
With no internet access, we just had to chill for the rest of the day until it was time to light the fire.
With the temperatures dropping I got the fire going and we sat outside until we’d burnt most of the wood, only going inside to eat dinner.
After dinner we went back outside to check on the fire and to look at the night sky, but unfortunately low cloud cover prevented that apart seeing Venus to the west.
During the night the wind picked up, which forced us to bring the awning in most of the way as it’s not designed for anything other than light winds.
And then, of course, it started raining but it was light enough that our outside stuff didn’t get wet.
Day 12 - Point Howard Lookout - Glen Helen NT 11 June, 2023
Not having had a very good sleep we were on deck early, packed up and out on to Namatjira Drive by 8:30 A.M.
Our destination for the day was Glen Helen Gorge, which was only about 70 km away, but there was a lot to see and do in that short distance.
Our first stop just a few kilometres along the road was the Ellery Creek Big Hole and the Dolomite Walk. As we got out of Mata we were lucky to spot a couple of Ringneck Parrots in nearby bushes. It was raining lightly when we arrived so we put on the rain jackets, hats and took the backpack with medical supplies in case of accidents. The Ellery Creek waterhole was just a few metres from the parking area, so that was the first stop. It was very picturesque and, on a hot day, you would be able to swim in there.
Back at the carpark we set out on the 3 km Dolomite Loop Walk, following small red triangle signs that were few and far between. The walk was pleasant enough, but unfortunately devoid of wildlife apart from a few birds. The ground started off sandy, walking along the creek bed, then turned more to gravel and rock later in the walk. The views of the surrounding MacDonnell Ranges were impressive, particularly from a lookout along the way.
We were particularly impressed with the myriad wildflowers growing on the sides of the track, most with tiny flowers of yellow, red, purple and lavender, and one that had small currant-like fruit on it.
We managed to get back to the carpark without encountering any other people, which we should have enjoyed more at the time because the rest of the day would be quite the opposite.
A little further along the road we pulled into the Serpentine Gorge carpark, which was really busy. The walk to the gorge was only 1.1 km long, but we made the crazy decision to go up to the lookout at the top of the gorge, which it turned out was one of those “it seemed like a good idea at the time” things. It was a very steep climb over gravelly/rocky terrain, that meant we had to watch every footfall very carefully to avoid disasters like falling over the unprotected sides of the track. The effort was well worth the views at the top though, looking down into the gorge, which was a bit scary, and also the view of the surrounding ranges. Once back down to a sensible altitude we walked the short distance to the gorge itself, which again was extremely impressive with towering sides and a rock pool at the bottom. Along the way we were treated to the sight of hundreds of Zebra Finches flitting around the trees along the side of the path.
It was getting close to lunchtime by that time so we drove another short distance to the Ochre Pits carpark where we had lunch before wandering the 300 metres to the Ochre Pits for a couple of photos and to read the information boards about how the Aboriginal people used the ochre, sometimes mixed with Goanna or Possum fat to smear on their bodies!
Second last stop for the day was at Ormiston Gorge, that was thankfully just a short walk from the carpark as we were starting to flag from the unprecedented amount of exercise we’d done for the day. The gorge, with its large rock pool at the base, where people were swimming, was another impressive example of the local geology.
With no more touristing to be done for the day we drove the last few kilometres to the Glen Helen Gorge campground. Driving in we passed the unpowered sites that appeared to be very exposed, gravel sites, whereas the powered sites were down at a lower level and looked to be more sheltered, so we decided to fork out for a powered site for the night.
Weren’t we surprised when we checked in and were told the cost of a powered site for one night was $84! We didn’t want to be in an exposed position for the night so stumped up $84 and got setup for the night. The literature we had read suggested that the campground had “other” mobile reception, i.e. not Telstra, but we soon proved that to be incorrect. However, the reception area offered free wi-fi, so we thought we could make use of that.
After disappointingly cold showers we wandered over to the reception area, expressed our displeasure to the reception staff about the extortionate cost for our campsite, and then to find the showers were cold. We sat outside, got connected to the wi-fi then went and ordered coffees from the bar. While the wi-fi initially looked to be passable, by the time the coffees were ready the flies and lack of reception drove us inside, where the wi-fi refused to work at all, so it was back to our campsite for the rest of the night.
Day 13 - Glen Helen - Kings Canyon NT 12 June, 2023
We had a bit of a mission in front of us today, as we were going to be driving the Mereenie Loop Road, which traverses Aboriginal land, and for which there were some conditions of thoroughfare.
Travellers aren’t supposed to stop on the road, however a rest break is permitted if required, and no open bottles of alcohol are allowed to be carried on that part of the drive. No overnight stays are permitted and the recommendation was that we should be off the road before dusk. The other consideration was that that part of the road was gravel in poor condition, for about 150 km, so we were expecting a slow drive. We had already bought a permit to pass through this road in Alice Springs a few days earlier.
With a big day expected ahead of us we were up early, topped up with fresh water and emptied the toilet cassette, and on the road just after 8:00 A.M.
Our first stop was only 300 metres along the road at the Mount Sonder Lookout, which was ok, but nothing near as impressive as the views we’d had the day before.
Our second stop was the Tylers Pass Lookout, for a great view of the Gosse Bluff, an Uluru-like rock formation, with the rising sun highlighting its more prominent features.
A little further along the road we turned off towards the Tnorala (Gosse Bluff Conservation Reserve) Lookout, and endured our first rough dirt/rock roads of the day, for about 5 km into the parking area.
After reading the information boards we set out on the 20-minute loop walk, that included a northern lookout and a southern lookout. We came to the northern lookout first and wondered where the track was! Turns out it was roughly carved out of rocks, and really only suitable for mountain goats. Although it was almost straight up, we persevered and eventually reached the top for a spectacular view of what was the remains of a crater formed by a meteor about 150 million years ago. The meteor was powerful enough to fracture the sub-strata 4 kilometres below the earth. Back down on terra firma we walked the rest of the loop stopping only briefly at the southern lookout where an information board described how Aboriginal peoples viewed the area.
That was all we had lined up for the touristing side of things for the day, and it was time to tackle the Mereenie Loop road.
Initially we thought we’d check the condition of the road before, perhaps unnecessarily, reducing the tyre pressures to cope with the rough road, but it only took a kilometre of driving over rough corrugations to make us realise that we would have to reduce them.
With that done we settled in for the 150 km drive on dirt/gravel/rock/corrugations, averaging less than 40 km/h in most parts. We were aiming to complete most of the drive over the rough road before stopping at a rest area for lunch around noon. As the drive continued the timeframe kept changing because of the poor surface condition, and we were looking at getting to that point later and later in the day.
As with the best laid plans of mice and men, you shouldn’t count on them too much. Around the halfway mark our trusty TPMS (Tyre Pressure Monitoring System) alerted us to a punctured right-rear tyre, our first since taking ownership of Matariki.
It wasn’t a lot of fun obviously, being first-timers at changing a heavy wheel, in full sun, surrounded by rabid flies and finding out things like the jack didn’t go high enough to lift the wheel clear of the road. Luckily we’d anticipated this scenario and were carrying some blocks of wood to put under the jack in soft areas, and to raise the jack. We worked great as a team and had the spare wheel on and back on the road in under an hour, driving more diligently for fear of getting another puncture.
Not much further along the road we thought we saw another Explorer approaching us, so we flashed our lights, slowed down and both stopped in the middle of the road for a chat with Michaela, #93 TV, from Victoria.
After dozens of kilometres more of road surface that deteriorated the further we drove, we finally arrived at the sealed road, 10 km from Kings Canyon, where we checked into the campground for the night, hoping also to get the puncture repaired, however their tyre changing machine was broken.
We got setup for the night before having well-deserved hot showers. When I was walking over to the shower block I was surprised to see dingoes wandering around the campground freely, and sidling up to some campers in a tent looking for food.
The resort offered a free sunset experience so we wandered up to the sunset bar, lined up a couple of drinks, sat at the front tables and waited for the sun to set, lighting up Kings Canyon. The experience was ok, but not spectacular, and we decided that it was mostly a money-making exercise after paying $48 for 4 glasses of wine.
After a quick trip to the main bar to stock up on wine supplies, which were limited to one bottle per person, we headed back to Mata for dinner and to finish off another day of adventures.
Day 14 - Kings Canyon - Kings Creek Station NT 13 June, 2023
We woke to another cool morning this morning, 6 degrees. We toughed it out and didn't turn on the diesel heater, choosing the more environmentally-friendly option of rugging up in warm clothes.
Our only mission for the day was to do the Kings Canyon rim walk, which was 6 km long and involved a steep climb at the start of the walk, and to find a place to stay for the night.
There's probably a limited number of superlatives one should use to describe a particular experience but Kings Canyon would probably be an exception to this rule. And unfortunately mobile phone camera photos don't do it justice either.
We set out from our campsite, drove the short distance to the canyon carpark, got suited up and set out on the 3-4 hour walk.
The initial part of the walk was straight up a mountain goat track for over 100 metres, that required quite a few rest breaks.
Once up the top the going was much easier but, being on rocky ground, still required watching every footstep for fear of twisting an ankle or falling down a steep slope.
The geology constantly changed throughout the walk, from sheer cliffs to round mounds of rock to areas where you could see evidence of shallow lakes that existed millions of years ago.
At one point when we were having a rest we looked up to the escarpment high above us and saw a group of kangaroos looking down on us, but that was the only wildlife we saw apart from a few birds. This may have been a symptom of the large numbers of people around, which spoiled the experience for us a little.
A little under half way we detoured off for 300 metres to the Garden of Eden, a beautiful spot at the bottom of sheer cliffs that would have a waterfall during times of rain, and still had a large pool of water at the base. We stopped there for a while enjoying the beauty and peace, and had a bite to eat to sustain us for the next section of the walk. The additional steps we had to climb to get to and from the Garden of Eden were well worth the effort involved.
Carrying on the rim walk we came to the halfway, 3 km, mark and we wondered if we would have enough energy to complete the next 3 km, even though it would be mostly downhill.
Further along we managed to find a quiet spot with no other people around to have some lunch and a rest.
With our couple of side trips we'd done on the walk, 6 km turned into 7 km of hard slog, but finally after 3.5 hours we made it back to the carpark safely - well almost. Walking to Mata I stupidly turned around to look at how high we'd climbed, then when turning back around fell into a pile rocks that had been artfully placed in the carpark. Apart from a couple of minor abrasions on my elbow and hand, a bruised shin and a bruised ego (there were lots of people loitering around - how embarrassment!) I was ok, amazed that we'd just completed a difficult 7 km walk over rough terrain without incident, then fell over in the carpark!
That was the only touristing planned for the day and all that was left to do was drive about 30 km to Kings Creek Station for a one-night stay.
At Kings Creek we checked in, checked out their food options for a possible dinner later in the day, and got setup for the night.
While we initially appeared to have internet, that soon faded and we were left to our analogue devices for the third day in a row.
Around 5:00 P.M. we walked up to the cafe/restaurant and each ordered the burger that Kings Creek is well known for, the camel burger. We opted for the smaller Dromedary burger, rather than the larger Bactrian burger, with a side of fries and some wine to wash it down. Unfortunately the burgers were completely forgettable, lacking any measure of distinctive taste, but thankfully the wine helped with that.
On a whim, while waiting for the burgers to come, we decided to do the station buggy tour the next morning at 9:00 A.M. so I booked that at reception before going back to Mata and fading very quickly after a big day.
Day 15 - Kings Creek Station - Alice Springs NT 14 June, 2023
After another cold night we had to turn the diesel heater on again for 30 minutes before we could face getting out of bed.
With the morning routine out of the way and packing up done we parked up near reception and waited for the buggy tour to begin, which it did promptly at the appointed time. We were pleased to find that we were the only ones on the tour, so the safety briefing, including being issued helmets, didn't take very long and our leader Haley took off in front of us for us to follow at a safe distance.
We weren't really sure what to expect of the nearly two hour tour, and by the end we realised it was more about the driving than anything else.
The dirt/gravel/rocky tracks we drove on were extremely rough, but that didn't stop Haley driving at a pace that we found difficult to match, with me driving initially. It was the complete opposite of the way in which we would drive Mata in similar circumstances.
However, the buggies were very tough and withstood everything we threw at it.
We had some stops over the 2 hour tour, the first at the site of the original homestead that was built in 1981, another stop at a dam to learn more about the station, and the last stop to have a morning tea of damper, lamingtons and tea, and to enjoy the view back towards the camp area.
All we had to do for the rest of the day was drive 400 km to Alice Springs, where we planned to stay for two nights to get the puncture repaired, stock up supplies and to do a few jobs that we'd been putting off.
After dropping off the flat tyre for repair we drove to the Wintersun Caravan Park, checked in and chilled for the rest of the day wallowing in the depths of the abundant interwebs.
Day 16 - Alice Springs NT 15 June, 2023
It was another diesel heater morning this morning, with the temperature not quite as cold as the forecast 1 degree, but still way cold at 5 degrees when we got up.
We weren't in any particular hurry with the day set aside completely for chores and no touristing adventures.
Because we had to pick up our spare wheel from the tyre place we had to pack up inside before heading into town, with our first stop being to put the repaired tyre back on the vehicle and the spare back where it came from.
With that done it was into Woolies for a big shop, as we were going to be heading into uncharted territory in the next few days. When we went to pop into the BWS next door to Woolies after doing the shopping we were surprised to find it closed, and with opening hours every day of the week of 3:00 P.M. Turns out that all bottle shops are the same in Alice Springs, as we found out on the way back to camp when we tried another one.
We also popped into Target to replace some of our aging towels, then had our last stop at the servo to fill up with diesel, 110 litres @ $2.04 per litre - ouch!
Back at the campground we did a couple of loads of washing, did a few more chores, had lunch and then chilled for a while, until it was time to wander down to the bottle-o, 400 metres along the road.
With everything ticked off the list it was shower time, then chill time for the rest of the day.
Day 17 - Alice Springs - Barrow Creek Hotel NT 16 June, 2023
It was a shocking 3 degrees this morning so we stayed in bed while the diesel heater did its work to warm up our little space.
We had a nice easy day planned, with only a 300 km drive to Barrow Creek, with not too much to see on the way.
After completing the morning routine, filling up with fresh water and visiting the dump point we said goodbye to Alice Springs and pointed Mata north to hopefully warmer climes.
About 130 km along the Stuart Highway we pulled into the Ryan Well Historic Reserve for morning tea and to take a look at the well that Ned Ryan built at this location, along with many others in other areas, in the late 1880s.
The well was impressively built and was fully mechanised with a system of pulleys to make bringing up the water an easy task.
Back out on the Stuart Highway we continued north for a few kilometres to the Aileron Roadhouse to take a photo of the Anmatjere Man statue, that stands 12 metres tall, and 17 metres in total including his spear.
Our next stop was at the small town of Ti Tree, where we parked up in a servo car park and had lunch.
The last part of the drive was as boring as the rest of it had been, with long, straight, flat stretches of road that went on forever, and there wasn't any wildlife apart from a handful of cows and a few birds.
We arrived at the Barrow Creek Roadhouse about 1:30 P.M., went into the pub to check in for the night then got setup.
With that done we took a short walk past the roadhouse to the old Barrow Creek Telegraph Station, which was established in 1880, and had a look in and around the buildings.
Thirsty after that big walk we popped into the pub for a beer and to check out the wildly eclectic collection of "stuff" all around the walls, which was part mementos left by previous travellers, and part museum-like displays of the history of Barrow Creek and everything in between you could possibly think of.
That was pretty much it for the day, apart from 'borrowing' some firewood from the pub's supply to have a fire later in the day, and washing the incessant red dust off ourselves in the showers.
It was maybe a bit early for a fire, but I’d been deprived for days, so I lit the match around 4:30 P.M. on what turned out to be a great fire. We sat outside enjoying the fire, eating dinner and taking in the beautiful sunset and star show in a reasonably light pollution-free sky.
Day 18 - Barrow Creek Hotel - Renner Springs NT 17 June, 2023
We weren’t in any hurry this morning as we only had a 270 km drive to Tenant Creek lined up for the day.
It wasn’t as cold as it had been the previous few mornings, but we still found it cold enough to light up the diesel heater for half an hour.
We had a laugh as we pulled back out onto the Stuart Highway, as it was exactly 9:00 A.M., a pure coincidence – honest!
Although the speed limit was still 130 km/h, we pottered along under 90 km/h, and arrived at our first destination, Devils Marbles, around 10:30 A.M.
The marbles are an amazing geological phenomenon, created not by some cataclysmic event, but by erosion, in a process that started around 1700 million years ago. We did two of the shorter loop walks around the marbles, marvelling at some massive stones that were sliced clean in half, like a piece of fruit perfectly cut in half with a sharp knife.
The second walk we did took us up on top of some of the stones to a lookout of the whole area. While we were able to take photos back towards the main area where the carpark is, there were signs indicating areas where photography wasn’t allowed because of the spiritual significance to the local Aboriginal people.
The drive into Tenant Creek wasn’t any more interesting than the previous couple of day’s drives. The roads were mostly straight, flat, without animal life bar a few birds and a couple of cows, with any chance of good views obstructed by the roadside flora.
We got into Tenant Creek around lunchtime, filled up with diesel @ $1.88 per litre, which was way cheaper than we’d seen it for days, had lunch at a café, went up to the unremarkable lookout, visited the dump point, then decided that we didn’t really like the town, and that we would carry on to Renner Springs, another 160 km north.
More of the same driving ensued for that part of the drive, with us bemoaning the dearth of wildlife, and the fact that the most wildlife we’d seen for days was four dead camels on the side of the road south of Alice Springs.
At the Renner Springs Roadhouse we checked in for an unpowered site for one night and made camp.
That was hard work so we went up to the bar and whet our whistle with a beer before returning to our campsite for the night, forced once again to make do with more basic activities because of the lack of internet.
We were sitting outside enjoying the warm evening, having a drink and watching a pair of Whistling Kites on the windmill across from us when we heard someone saying hello. When we looked in that direction we saw another Explorer and its owner coming to talk to us. Turns out it was John Phillips #429TPX, who was also heading north, but who was travelling as much off-road as possible. We had a good chat and a couple of drinks before we both decided it was dinner time and the end of another great day of Exploring.
Day 19 - Renner Springs - Dunmarra Wayside Inn NT 18 June, 2023
After a stunning sunset the night before, we were also treated to an amazing sunrise on waking this morning.
We had another easy day planned today, with only 195 km to drive to Dunmarra, and took our time with the morning routine, but we still managed to be on the road by 8:30 A.M.
There were a few points of interest along the way, that we didn't think were particularly interesting, so we skipped most of them and stopped only at Newcastle Waters where there was the remnants of an old township.
Jones Store was built in the early 1930s, primarily servicing the many drovers that passed through the town. The store had plenty of information boards and some rustic displays to give us and idea of what it may have been like back in the day.
A little way along the road there was the skeleton of the old pub, which also had plenty of information displayed, mostly about the lives of the drovers who lived in or passed through the town. There was also the shell of a general store that didn't contain any information or displays.
Back near the entrance to the station house, we stopped to look at the Drovers Memorial Park and read some more history of the area, before we parked up beside the actual Newcastle Waters for morning tea.
Another 100 km or so along the road we pulled into the Dunmarra Roadside Inn to check in for a night on an unpowered site, for the reasonable cost of $19. It was close to lunchtime by then so we each got a chunky steak pie, and some vanilla slice that we'd heard the inn was well known for.
After mistakenly parking up on a powered site we had to move to an unpowered site and got setup for the night.
One reason we chose Dunmarra for a night's stay was that it had internet, so we could catch up with our socials and blog etc., which we did for a while during the afternoon until it was time for showers and a drink at the bar.
Day 20 - Dunmarra Wayside Inn - Katherine NT 19 June, 2023
For our next adventures we were heading to Katherine Gorge, about 30 km outside Katherine, which was about a 300 km drive north from Dunmarra.
We left the camp before 9:00 A.M., and had a few potential touristy stops along the way to Katherine.
All along this stretch of the Stuart Highway, it was all about John McDouall Stuart, telegraph stations and the WW11 effort to move forces personnel from points further south to Darwin to fight off those pesky Japanese who were threatening to invade.
We’d already seen telegraph stations both in QLD and NT, most recently at Barrow Creek, so didn’t feel the need to visit any more for now. We’d also pretty much learnt as much as we could about Stuart from travelling a fair part of the highway, so that really just left the W11 stuff to look at if we wanted to.
The first few WW11 memorials we passed along the way were either uninspiring or in disrepair and, because we’d seen a lot of WW11 history over a decade of our travels, we decided we didn’t really need to see any more.
All that left after those decisions was to detour off the highway for a few kilometres to Daly Waters, an historic town with strong links to the WW11 effort.
The town is quite small, very quirky, and crawling with tourists, which led us to only stop briefly to take some photos before getting the hell out of Dodge.
We’d read about a tearoom a little further along the road at Larrimah that did Devonshire tea and scones, and thought that sounded like a good place to have morning tea. The closer we got the more we were salivating at the thought of our morning tea. Imagine our disappointment when we found it closed, forcing us to park up on the side of the road and have cheese and crackers for morning tea.
Another 160 km along the highway we came to Katherine, where we stopped to visit the visitor information centre, have lunch, and stock up on food, drink and diesel supplies before we headed out of town to Katherine Gorge.
We’d booked an unpowered site for two nights over the phone in Katherine, but we still had to check in to the gorge reception first, before finding a shady site and setting up.
The campground had a swimming pool, and the temperature was 32 degrees, so we took the opportunity to cool off before a hot shower. That plan didn’t work because the pool water temperature was about 7-8 degrees cooler that we consider the minimum for entering a body of water.
After showers we took to our usual socials and blogging, only to find the 3G internet entirely inadequate for our data-heavy needs, which meant a reduction in expectations as to how we were going to entertain ourselves for the rest of the day.
We did sit outside for the rest of the day/night enjoying the warm temperatures and pleasant setting.
Day 21 - Nitmiluk (Katherine) Gorge NT 20 June, 2023
Today was about discovering Nitmiluk (Katherine) Gorge.
We were woken long before daybreak by the cacophony caused by thousands of bats that live in the trees surrounding the campsite. As soon as there was a hint of light in the sky, the bats stopped screeching, and were replaced by the sounds of the myriad birdlife.
We had a two-hour, two-gorge (there are 13 in total) boat tour booked for 11:00 A.M., so to fill in the time until then we set out on the 900-metre gorge lookout walk.
Going to the starting point of the lookout walk we had to run the gauntlet of thousands of roosting bats in the trees lining the path, holding our noses because of the overpowering stench of guano.
While not particularly long, the lookout walk was pretty much straight up, although on well-constructed and maintained paths, mostly consisting of rock and concrete, with some steeper sections accessed by steel stairs.
While taxing our fitness limits, the effort was rewarded with great views of the gorge and surrounding areas.
Back down at ground level we stopped in at the visitor centre café for a coffee and sticky bun, before wandering around the interpretative display that provided information on the local Jawoyn people, and also had a quick look through the gift shop.
After walking back to the boat tour area, we relaxed under trees and waited half an hour for the tour to start.
The boat tour was reasonably full, including a group of Victorian high school girls, but we had a row of three seats to ourselves for the first part of the cruise.
Our indigenous guide James was a local to the area, in his ninth year of being a guide, and very knowledgeable about the area, the geology of the gorges and especially about the local Jawoyn people, the custodians of the land for 60,000 years (give or take a few decades when European people thought they owned the land!).
The first part of the cruise took us to the first gorge (funnily enough), past spectacular sheer rocks and through sometimes shallow water, as it was the time of year when the river is at its lowest.
We had our eyes peeled for freshwater crocodiles that inhabit the gorge, but didn’t see any for the whole tour.
We eventually came to the end of the first gorge that required exiting the boat we were on, and walking about 400 metres to the next boat at the start of the second gorge. At the start of the short walk over rocky ground there was some rock art about 5 metres above the ground that we stopped to take photos of, and an information board explaining what we were looking at.
On the second boat we continued our journey through the second gorge, which was even more spectacular than the first. Tour guide James pointed interesting aspects of the geology and related stories of how important the area is to the Jawoyn people.
We eventually came to the point where the boat couldn’t continue any more, at the end of the second gorge because the river was blocked by large rocks, so we turned around and motored back to the start of the second gorge where we did musical boats again.
The last part of the cruise was mainly about sitting back and enjoying the gorge, and hoping to see some crocodiles.
We arrived back at the boat dock around 1:00 P.M., walked back to Mata, had lunch and settled in for an afternoon of relaxation, making what we could of the on again, off again internet.
Day 22 - Nitmiluk (Katherine) Gorge - Kakadu Lodge Caravan Park NT 21 June, 2023
We had another boat tour booked for today, the Yellow Waters Billabong Tour in the Kakadu National Park, at 1:15 P.M., which was about 280 km away, so around a 3-hour drive with no stops.
Conscious of the timeframe we were up early, filled up with fresh water and on the road by 8:00 A.M., stopping only briefly at the dump point in Katherine before continuing on to the now closed Mary River Roadhouse for a morning tea stop in the car park.
The rest of the drive to Yellow Waters was easy on good roads, and we arrived in plenty of time to have lunch before lining up for a short bus ride from the Cooinda Lodge to the billabong.
When we first got on the boat we were the only ones on it, and we crossed fingers nobody else would board, but then a group of AAT Kings tourists rocked up and filled up the boat to about 75% capacity, which gave us some room to move around.
We had been bemoaning the fact over the previous few days that we had seen very little wildlife while travelling mostly up the Stuart Highway. Well, this tour certainly made up for that with a wide variety of wildlife including large varieties of birds, crocodiles, fish and even water buffalo.
The cruise only covered about 1 kilometre, but we saw an amazing number of birds including a Jabiru (now called Black-Necked Stork), Egrets, Whistling Ducks that don't like water, Whistling Kites, an Azure Kingfisher, Plovers, Nankeen Night Herons, Comb-Crested Jacanas and many more. There were thousands upon thousands of birds, which was great to see and, as our guide pointed out, all the birds were native.
The billabong was also home to an abundant array of fish species to support to the crocodiles and birds.
We saw birds and crocodiles catching fish, but the fish weren't making it easy for them as a number of times we saw fish jumping up out of the water to avoid becoming afternoon tea.
Beautiful water lilies covered the edges of the billabong, providing a splash of colour amongst the darker colours of the water and wetlands.
The cruise continued along the billabong until the water level became too shallow for the boat to navigate, and we turned around and cruised slowly back to the starting point.
Leaving Cooinda, we drove towards Jabiru where we intended to stay for the night, but first stopped at the visitor information centre for information on local activities.
At the Aurora Kakadu Lodge & Caravan Park outside Jabiru, we checked in for an unpowered site for one night, found a semi-shady, grassy spot and got set up.
First thing we checked was that there was internet, and there was for a change! Good, fast internet too, which allowed us to catch up with outstanding interweb things for the rest of the day.
The temperature remained over 30 degrees until late afternoon, so we enjoyed sitting outside until mozzies drove us inside at dusk.
We decided later in the day to spend another night in this campground so we could do some local tourist activities and catch up on some cleaning and other bits and pieces.
Day 23 - Kakadu Lodge Caravan Park 22 June, 2023
We were up reasonably early again today and drove out of camp before 8:30 A.M., headed for the Aboriginal rock art site at Ubirr, about 40 km away.
The rock art site involved a 1.5 km walk ending at a lookout that involved a climb up a rock escarpment, so we wanted to do that before it got too hot.
For the past few days, everywhere we drove, controlled burning was being undertaken, mostly on roadsides. Driving to
Ubirr we were concerned that we wouldn't be able to see much at the lookout because smoke from the controlled burning hung in the air like thick fog, and there was no wind to disperse it.
Turns out that was the least of our worries this day. About halfway to Ubirr a vehicle travelling in the opposite direction flicked up a stone, on a well-sealed road, that chipped our windscreen on the left-hand side, halfway up the windscreen. The chip quickly turned into a crack that moved with alarming speed across towards the centre of the windscreen. About a third of the way across the crack seemed to slow down, so we carried on carefully to Ubirr, realising there was nothing we could do about it anyway.
At Ubirr we were disappointed to see another AAT Kings tour bus in the carpark, and even more disappointed part-way around the walk when we encountered a large school group of noisy children who were largely ignoring the teachers shouting at them.
We navigated around all the other tourists as much as possible to try and make the most of the rock art.
The walk was reasonably easy, mostly over well-formed rock paths, which passed very close to the very impressive rock art, depicting people, animals, weapons, tools and landscapes.
Many of the rock art paintings were extremely clear, despite possibly being up to 5,000 years old.
After climbing to the topmost point of the walk we were afforded expansive views of floodplains and surrounding rocky escarpments.
We drove back to Jabiru at a slow pace, hoping the windscreen wouldn't collapse, and stopped in a the Puma servo to ask at the workshop if they could replace the windscreen. Unfortunately they couldn't do late-model windscreens because they contain a camera unit that requires calibration after replacement, but the man I spoke to gave me the number of a windscreen repairer in Darwin.
I called Windscreens Territory, explained the situation, and booked in for a replacement the next day, which unfortunately would require a 260 km drive, ideally getting there by 10:00 A.M. No pressure!
We did some grocery shopping, visited a cultural centre that had lots of great indigenous art for sale, and checked out the Jabiru water silo art before going back to camp.
We spent some time on the phone organising insurance for the windscreen replacement, did some cleaning, had lunch, and attempted to have a swim in the camp pool, but it was way too cold for our liking, before setting in to relax for the afternoon.
I also super-glued the windscreen crack to hopefully prevent it from expanding any more on the drive to Darwin.
The camp has a happy hour every day, so we wandered up to the bar later in the afternoon for a drink, and to have dinner in their restaurant to finish off a stressful day.
Day 24 - Kakadu Lodge Caravan Park - Darwin 23 June, 2023
We didn't sleep particularly well knowing we had to be up early and on the road by 7:00 A.M., to get to Darwin for the windscreen replacement by 10:00 A.M.
We achieved that initial goal, leaving camp just on 7:00 A.M. and started driving a little more discretely than normal to avoid the possibility of upsetting the windscreen crack.
The crack appeared to have stabilised so we ramped up the speed to the speed limit for the rest of the journey, arriving at the windscreen repairer without incident by 9:45 A.M.
The repairer expected the replacement would take up to four hours, so we grabbed a taxi to the Darwin Military Museum to kill some time, and because it was on on our list of things we wanted to do while visiting Darwin.
The entrance cost of $20 per person, with a $5 discount for me because I'm an old fart, was very reasonable we thought, as the museum was very modern and comprehensive, including an inside display with a movie of the bombing of Darwin, and also a very large outdoor display area.
We started inside reading the information and watching shorter videos of the stuff that interested us, primarily about the Japanese bombing of Darwin, the first round of which occurred in February 1942.
We watched the excellent video of the bombings that included a lot of before and after photos of the time, and the voiceover of experiences of people who lived through the bombings, then continued our tour of the inside section, before moving to the outdoor displays.
There was a lot of information to take in, which we did over a period of a couple of hours, before we began to feel overwhelmed and thought we should move on to something else.
As it was around lunchtime we'd decided to go the NT art gallery to have lunch and do a tour of the gallery. However, as we were leaving the museum I noticed that I had a voicemail message, which was the windscreen place saying the job was all done, so we called another cab and went back there to pick up Mata.
With the paperwork out of the way we drove into the waterfront area and had lunch at a lagoon-side restaurant, then drove to the information centre to see if we could find some things to do over the next three day that we would be staying in the Darwin area.
Next up we drove to the Museum and Art Gallery of the NT and spent some time wandering around the thousands of interesting exhibits, which focused more on natural history than art, although they did have a paid exhibit showcasing 100 years of the Archibald Art Prize, which we didn't think we could do justice to that late in the day.
Last up for the day we drove out of town to the Knuckey Lagoon RV Park, where we checked in for three nights, found a semi-shady site, got set up and chilled for the rest of the day, enjoying the myriad interwebs and TV reception.
We stayed outside as long as possible because the temperature was still over 30 degrees at dusk, but went inside to eat dinner without bugs to annoy us.
Day 25 - Darwin 24 June, 2023
While driving around Darwin the previous day we saw signs saying that there were going to be CBD road closures today, for some unknown event, so we decided to have a down day
to relax and catch up with our washing that was getting out of hand.
Later in the day we had a chat and thought that if we weren’t going to do anything else in Darwin, that we might as well move on the next day, instead of wasting another day at Knuckey Lagoon.
Day 26 - Darwin - Litchfield Safari Camp 25 June, 2023
We only had a very short drive today, to the Litchfield Safari Camp in the Litchfield NP, so we had a leisurely start to the day.
We filled up with fresh water and visited the camp dump point before leaving the Knuckey Lagoon camp, then headed for a shopping centre to stock up on dry and wet comestibles, stopping on the way to fill up with diesel.
After doing the Woolies shop we were horrified to find the BWS bottle shop next door was closed on Sundays, so we assumed that all bottle-o’s would probably be closed. The novinaphobia started to kick in as we drove around looking for an open bottle shop, and thankfully found one not too far away.
Fully stocked up, we carried on the drive on back roads into Litchfield NP, stopping near the entrance to the park to read the information board, before carrying on a little way to the Bamboo Creek Tin Mine site where we parked up and had lunch before walking the short distance to the old mine site, scouting for firewood along the way. It was very hot by that time, about 32 degrees with no breeze, so we elected not to do the loop walk around the mine site, and instead checked out the old buildings in the main area of the site.
With our wood bags sufficiently loaded, we carried on the drive towards our camp, stopping in at the Cascades carpark with the intention of doing a walk, and maybe having a swim along the way, but the car park was chokkas with people everywhere, which turned us off a bit and we carried on past our campground to the Wangi Falls, where I was determined to have a swim.
Once again, the carpark was full with cars, RVs and buses (to be fair it was a Sunday and the start of the school holidays), but we gritted our teeth, got our swimmers on and walked to the falls swimming area, after a quick walk to the fall’s lookout.
The falls were certainly impressive, despite the fact that it was the middle of the dry season, and pool beneath the falls was full of people.
The water was initially quite cold and I was hesitant to get fully in, but once in it was beautiful. At its deepest, the pool is 14 metres deep, but near the edges we could just stand up on tippy toes.
Once we’d lowered our body temperatures, we walked back to carpark via the café for a cooling ice cream.
It was a short 4 km drive back to the Litchfield Safari Camp, where we checked in for two nights, found a nice shady site and got set up.
I was pleased that the campsite had fire pits, although we couldn’t find a nice site close to any, so I setup our own firepit, ready for a fire later in the day.
The campsite was one of the better ones we’d stayed in, with plenty of grassy, shady sites, and even free washing machines, at a reasonable (for the area) $40 per night. However, the one thing the camp didn’t offer was any mobile coverage, so we would be out of contact with the rest of the world for at least the next two days.
After chilling for the rest of the afternoon and having showers, we lit up the fire, cooked dinner outside and stayed outside as long as possible to catch any breath of breeze.
Day 27 - Litchfield Safari Camp 26 June, 2023
Today was about exploring this area of Litchfield NP, before we moved further east in the coming days.
With all the boring highway and major road driving we’d been doing recently, we wanted to mix it up a bit of adventure by driving the Reynolds River Track, which involved five river crossings and which would take us to the Blyth Homestead, large termite mounds, magnetic termite mounds, and more waterfalls.
Leaving before 9:00 A.M. we drove back past Wangi Falls, where we’d had a swim the day before, to the start of the Reynolds River Track, and were disappointed to find that the road was closed completely.
With that little avenue of pleasure cut off, we continued on a short distance to Tolmer Falls, where we walked to a viewing platform to get some snaps of the falls, then did a 1.5 km walk over mostly rocky ground, and through sparsely populated bush, back to the carpark.
Next up was a drive into the “Lost City” rock formations, on an unsealed road, for 11 km. The first 5-6 km were over a badly corrugated surface that saw us reduced to driving at or below 20 km/h.
At the end of that section of road we came to a T-intersection where we turned onto the Lost City road, which was mostly dirt and sand in very poor condition, with many sections washed out to the point where Meg had to get out and guide me through the worst sections. In some of these sections we were able to straddle what seemed like ravines, and in others we had to carefully negotiate around them, always with the fear that if a wheel slipped into one of these it would almost certainly mean rolling the vehicle.
I didn’t note the time driving into the Lost City, but on the way out it took 50 minutes to drive the 11 km.
Eventually arriving at our destination, we did the easy 20-minute walk around the rock formations, which were as impressive as the reviews we’d read suggested, and certainly evoked images of a lost city in the style of Angkor Wat.
We had lunch in Mata, then did the reverse drive back out to Litchfield Road, thankful to be back on bitumen once again.
After a quick visit to Tabletop Swamp (where I thought I lost my prized fly-swatting switch), we drove back to Wangi Falls for another swim, and another ice cream, before going back to camp to relax sans interwebs for the rest of the day.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t even console myself with another raging fire because, after a great fire the night before, we read a sign in the amenities block that said we were only allowed fires in the camp’s firepits.
Once again, we stayed outside as long as we could to avoid the oven-like heat in Mata, with the temperature still around 32 degrees in the late afternoon.
Day 28 - Litchfield Safari Camp - Zebra Stone Camp 27 June, 2023
Our main activity for today was to visit Florence Falls, maybe have a swim there, and do one of the walks around the falls.
Another hot day was expected, so we wanted to do the walk as early in the day as possible, and it was also the earlier the better as far as other tourists went too.
We left the camp by 8:30 A.M., driving directly to Florence Falls. We already had our swimmers on and backpack ready, so we set straight out to the falls plunge pool for an early morning swim, which was only a short walk from the carpark.
There were already about 20 other people there, even though it was barely 9:00 A.M., so we were pleased we'd made the effort to get there early.
We stripped off down to swimmers and jumped straight into the pool, which felt about the same temperature as Wangi Falls. There were loads of black fish swimming around us in the pool that were about 15-20 cm long. Once out and semi-dried we carried on to do the Sandy Creek Walk, an easy walk of about 1.5 km, initially following a creek through fairly dense bush, before eventually turning into more open savannah near the carpark.
Driving back out towards Litchfield Road we stopped in at Buley Rockhole, another popular swimming spot where the water cascaded down a number of rock levels into rock holes, that were all full of people.
Our last stop for the day, before our campsite for the night, was at the Termite Mounds on Litchfield Road, where there were Cathedral Termite and Magnetic Termite mounds.
This is a huge area with hundreds of termite mounds, the biggest of which was a Cathedral Termite mound, standing over 4 metres tall and estimated to be more than 50 years old. Some mounds go on to be over 8 metres tall.
The design of the Magnetic Termite mounds is very smart - they are built north-south to regulate the temperature inside the mound so that there is always a side that is not facing the sun.
That was all the adventures we had lined up for the day so we drove out of the Litchfield NP for the last time to the Zebra Stone campground., where we checked in for the night and booked in for the fish and chip dinner at 6:00 P.M.
Turns out this place was very interesting.
As well as providing a campground, the proprietors run a business that specialises in mining, polishing, designing and selling zebra stone, an extremely unique stone that doesn't occur anywhere else in the world.
The lady who checked us in gave us a quick rundown about zebra stone, but not the location where it is found in its raw form, and invited us into the shop/display area to look at all the amazing examples of the stone.
Once setup we had lunch, then wallowed in the abundant interwebs for the afternoon, interspersed with showers and aperitifs, while waiting for dinner time.
At the appointed time we went up to the reception area for our dinner of Dew Fish, tempura vegetables and chips.
Even though we only had one serve of fish, and shared a serve each of chips and vegetables, the meal was way too large for us for one sitting, and the flies really liked the idea of fish and chips too, so we took it back to Mata to eat. Even with our valiant effort we could only manage about half of the meal, and the rest went into the fridge for later consumption.
Day 29 - Zebra Stone Camp - Mataranka Homestead 28 June, 2023
Our day started in a civilised fashion today. After our usual wakeup tea and coffee, we packed up, filled up with fresh water, and went to the reception/café area for freshly-baked scones straight out of the oven, accompanied with jam and cream.
The scones were wonderful, but because they were so fresh, they didn’t hold together very well and we got covered in sticky jam and cream while eating them. YUM!
The rest of the day was mostly retracing our steps back to Katherine to stock up on supplies and diesel, before driving to Bitter Springs near Mataranka.
Our only stop before Katherine was to visit the dump point in Batchelor, a small town that Meg remembered visiting on her Outback Spirit bus tour over ten years before.
In Katherine we bought our supplies at Woolies, filled up with diesel and had lunch, before continuing the drive to Mataranka, where we hoped to stock up on our ‘wet’ supplies before going to our campground for the night.
Because of the alcohol restrictions in place in much of the NT, we arrived in Mataranka 15 minutes before the takeaway alcohol sale time of 2:00 P.M., so thought we should see if we could get into the Bitter Springs campground first, which was only about 5 km out of town.
As soon as we pulled up at Bitter Springs a man came out to say that they didn’t have any free sites for the night, so it was back into Mataranka for the wet supplies, which proved more difficult than one would imagine. At the local supermarket there was a small, well-stocked bottle shop but a sign on the door said it was closed until the 1st of July. The only other option in town was the Mataranka Hotel, but on approaching the hotel a man said that the hotel was closed because of a break-in! The next nearest option was the Mataranka Homestead campground, where we were headed anyway because all of the other campgrounds were full.
We arrived at the Mataranka Homestead campground around 2:30 P.M., got checked into an unpowered site for two nights, got setup, then went for a soak in the Mataranka Thermal Pool, which was only a two-minute walk from our campsite.
As with everywhere else we’d been recently, the pool was crowded with other campers, and also with day-trippers, as the pool was actually in the Elsey NP.
The rest of the afternoon we battled with the on again, off again internet while attempting to catch up with our social bits and pieces.
After dinner we went up to the bar area to watch the excellent Nathan "Whippy" Griggs whip cracking show, which was free. The show is one of those that needs to be seen to be appreciated, one that photos and text can't really do justice. Everybody present had a great time, with a lot of laughs and audience participation, especially from the many children watching the show.
Day 30 - Mataranka Homestead 29 June, 2023
Today was all about relaxing and making the most of the thermal pool before we started heading back towards the QLD border in the next few days.
After the morning routine we walked up past the reception/bar area to look at a replica building of the original Elsey homestead, that was used in the movie "We of the Never Never". There was a lot of interesting information dotted around the walls, mainly focusing on the life of Jeannie Gunn, the author of the autobiographical novel "We of the Never Never".
With nothing else to do for the rest of the day we went for a soak in the thermal pool, initially finding a spot that wasn't too crowded, but that didn't last too long.
While relaxing later in the morning I heard a "hello" from outside the door and was surprised to find fellow explorer owners Lesley Bailey, Pauline Davies and Paul & Marg Acton, who had come for a dip in the thermal pool. They were all travelling together with Stuart & Debbie Bayford, and were heading north to East Arnhem Land. We had a good chat before they went to their campground at Bitter Springs.
After lunch we felt like another swim in the thermal pool, but decided to the 3km return "Stevie's Hole" walk first. While it was nice to get some exercise, it turns out we could've saved ourselves the effort as it wasn't very impressive.
The remainder of the afternoon and evening were spent relaxing.
Day 31 - Mataranka Homestead - Bullwaddy Rest Area 30 June, 2023
We were woken early this morning by noisy neighbouring campers talking loudly next to our site, after having to do a clean up of the wet floor at 5:00 A.M., when a toilet stop revealed that the fridge had been leaking during the night due to ice build up on the back wall of the fridge.
Once we were done with the morning routine, and had a visit to the dump point and filled up with fresh water, we left camp and drove to a fishing spot on the nearby Roper River, so I could wet a line and try to catch us some lunch (to satisfy Meg’s Catholic upbringing seeing it was Friday!).
The place on the river we went to was a beautiful little spot, with easy access to the river without getting too close to the water and getting eaten by the crocodiles that were present in the river.
We didn’t see any evidence of crocodiles, or fish for that matter, so we only stayed about 30 minutes, then drove back into Mataranka to buy some bread, and to replace a hose fitting that we’d left at Zebra Stone some days previously.
On the road again we headed back onto the Stuart Highway and retraced our steps from some time ago, to Daly Waters, where we turned off onto National Route 1, towards Borroloola, stopping only briefly at Larrimah for morning tea.
Turning off at Daly Waters to stay on National Highway 1 was a godsend! For past 2-3 weeks, everywhere we went there had been hordes and people, and every road we drove on contained hundreds of RVs and only the occasional truck or car.
At the start of this road it was mostly newly-sealed road, with quite a lot of road works still happening that meant we had to detour onto an unsealed road a couple of times, but the side road was in really good condition. The two-lane blacktop eventually turned into a single lane sealed road, that was also in good condition, which meant we could easily maintain our potter-speed of around 85 km/h. The single lane section didn’t last too long and changed back to a two-lane road for the rest of the day’s journey.
But the best part was – there were almost no cars, trucks or people for dozens of kilometres! Finally, we were in the sorts of places we prefer to be, away from other people.
We were aiming for a rest area to have lunch in not far along NR1 from the turnoff, but it seemed to have disappeared with all the road works, so we just pulled off onto the wide verge of the road for a lunch break.
The total drive distance to Borroloola from Mataranka was 550 km and, because we didn’t want to drive that distance in one day, we picked out a good-sounding rest area free camp to stay in for the night, that was about at the halfway point.
When we pulled into the rest area there was only one other vehicle and caravan parked up, so we hoped that it would stay like that for the rest of the day and night. We found a campsite well off the road, and hopefully well away from any other campers coming in later in the day, and got setup for the night.
Being about 80 km away from the nearest semi-civilisation, we obviously had no internet to entertain us, but we did have a large area beside our site where we could have a fire later on. Well, that was me amused anyway!
The temperature had dropped quite significantly since we left Mataranka, so we got the fire going early to keep warm and to use up some of our large reserves of firewood.
We stayed outside until dinner time, when the cooler temperatures forced us inside for the night.
Day 32 - Bullwaddy Rest Area - Ryans Bend Free Camp 01 July, 2023
We woke to a (comparatively less than we’d been used to) cold morning this morning of less than 15 degrees, which had us dragging out our cold weather clothes. A cold strong wind had been howling all night as well, which made the morning quite unpleasant.
Although we are girls when it comes to the colder weather, the temperatures had dropped by about 10 degrees overnight, and about 15 degrees during the day over a period of only a couple of days.
Despite not being in any sort of hurry today, anticipating only a short drive of less than 150 km, we were on the road towards Borroloola by 8:30 P.M., pottering along at less than 80 km/h.
A little way out along the drive we stopped at a likely looking pile of wood on the side of the road to replenish our firewood supplies.
After stopping briefly at the Tanumbirini Station to take a photo of their impressive entrance, we carried on to what we thought would be a good stop for the night, the Goanna Creek Rest Area, even though it was still early in the day. The rest area had a great view of the surrounding countryside, and had dozens of birds coming in to get a drink from a 2-litre milk container that someone had cut a side out of and filled with water, as well as there being nobody else there. Sounded perfect, but there was still that howling gale that was quite cool, and being in such an exposed position, we decided to carry on driving after having morning tea there.
Because there wasn’t much else to see on the way, unless you count the large McArthur River lead and zinc mine, we thought we might as well carry on to the Caranbirini Lost City, a few kilometres short of Borroloola.
After having lunch we set out to do the short Caranbirini waterhole walk, which was only 100 metres, and then do the longer 2 km Barrawulla Walk around the lost city rock formations.
There was a bird hide at the waterhole that allowed us to watch several varieties of water birds on the water, swimming among hundreds of beautiful flowering water lillies that almost completely covered the water.
The Barrawulla Walk was mostly over rocky paths that required attention to be paid to each footstep, but as an easy-moderate walk with only a gentle climb to the highest point, we found it quite easy.
The rock formations were as impressive as the lost city we’d visited in the Litchfield NP a few days earlier, and very similar in appearance.
All that remained to do for the day was to find a place to camp for the night, and our favoured option was to free camp as we hadn’t been able to do that much in the previous few weeks.
There was a camping area that sounded promising on Batten Creek, at Ryans Bend, so we drove the 14 kms or so on a gravel road to take a look. It was a small site and there was nobody else there, and that was all we needed to know to stop and park up for the night.
The flies were a bit rabid so we didn’t bother setting up outside, seeing it was only for one night.
Although we were only about 40 km out of Borroloola there wasn’t a hint of internet, so we had an another night amusing ourselves without interwebs.
To counter this situation I got the fishing rod out and had a crack at catching dinner - just as well we had a backup dinner plan!
While I was doing that Meg got a great fire going and we sat outside for the rest of the night enjoying the warm evening and the ambience of the fire.
Day 33 - Ryans Bend Free Camp - Robinson River Free Camp 02 July, 2023
The temperature dropped significantly again overnight, and the strong wind and occasional rain woke us a few times during the night.
We rugged up in warm clothes and were on the road to Borroloola by 8:30 A.M., where we intended to stay the night in the campground.
It was a very short drive to Borroloola so we were there before most people in town had even woken up on this Sunday morning. Turning off the National Highway towards Borroloola we were treated to the sight of dozens of Red-Tailed Black Cockatoos flying in and out of the trees on the roadside, and flying down to the recently-burnt field below to feed with loads of other birds.
The BP servo was the first stop for the day to fill up with diesel, because it was hundreds of kilometres to the next fuel outlet once we left Borroloola.
After visiting the town dump point we went to the old Borroloola police station, where the town museum was now situated. The police station was established in 1885 and is the oldest police station in the NT.
The museum wasn’t big, but contained a lot of information on the entire history of Borroloola, with a particular focus on the police station itself.
Moving on we drove the short distance to the shop located in the indigenous community on the outskirts of town to stock up on a few supplies.
The one thing we really needed to stock up on, however, was booze. At the shop we asked the lady where we could buy some locally, and were disappointed to be told that there are no alcohol sales on Sundays, and even when there is alcohol for sale, it was restricted to medium-strength beer. The closest place it would be possible to buy alcohol was over 100 km back along the highway at the Heartbreak Hotel roadhouse and campground.
In the direction we were travelling, towards the NT/QLD border, the nearest place likely to have alcohol was the Hells Gate Roadhouse, which was 315 km away, over mostly unsealed and badly corrugated roads.
With these considerations in mind, we decided to skip staying in Borroloola for the night, and start making some impression on the bad roads ahead of us.
The one thing that Borroloola did have though was good mobile coverage, so we parked up in the main street, caught up with our socials, blogging, Duolingo etc., had lunch, then started towards the border.
Right on the outskirts of town the sealed road ended and turned into a badly corrugated dirt surface, so we pulled over and reduced our tyre pressures to cope with the dodgy road.
After about 3.5 hours we decided to call it a day, having travelled just over 100 kms, so only averaging around 30 km/h. The drive was mostly boring, requiring complete concentration on the road surface, while keeping an eye out for other vehicles, but it did have two river crossings that were fun and broke the boredom somewhat. The second river crossing was one of the more interesting we’ve done so we thought we had better engage low-range 4WD for it.
We only stopped a couple of times for short breaks to collect some more firewood, take photos of wildflowers, and to have a comfort stop at a pretty lagoon that was covered with water lilies.
We parked in a free camp beside the Robinsons River, where it was quite cold and windy and forced us to stay inside for the remainder of the day. The free camp also came with crocodile warnings, so that was another incentive to stay inside!
Day 34 - Robinson River - Hell's Gate Roadhouse - 03 July, 2023
Quite heavy rain woke us up several times during the night, which meant another restless sleep contemplating what effect that would have on the several river and creek crossings that were in front of us today.
With the thought of around 200 km of poor roads to cover for the day, we were up early and left camp at 7:45 A.M., in an attempt to make it all the way to Hell's Gate, where hopefully they sold booze!
Only just out on the highway we came to our first river crossing of the day, the Robinson River. Although there were a few hundred millimetres of water crossing the road it was no match for Mata’s talents.
The road was still in very poor condition at that point, with badly corrugated stretches for many kilometres, reducing our speeds to an average of about 30 km/h, and sometimes as slow as walking speed on the really bad stretches.
There were occasional stretches where we could drive at up to 60 km/h, but these were few and far between.
After a couple of hours of hard slog dodging corrugations we stopped on the side of the road for a morning tea break, having covered around 60 kms by that point.
At one point in our drive we came across a young man, maybe in his twenties, who was walking in the opposite direction to us. We stopped to make sure he was alright, which he was, and he told us that he was walking from Sydney to Darwin to raise money for the Fred Hollows Foundation. We wished him well and carried on, bolstered by the thought that there are people who sacrifice so much to help others.
The next part of the drive was no better either and continued to be very slow going, dodging large piles of cow poo and cows, as well as corrugations, and taking it very carefully over the river and creek crossings.
When we were about 20 kms from the border we stopped for a welcome lunch break. Shortly after pulling off the road two vehicles went past travelling in the same direction as us, the only other vehicles that we saw for the entire 200 km, 7+ hour drive going towards QLD. Several other vehicles did pass us travelling in the opposite direction, but we were surprised by the general lack of traffic.
During the drive we saw flocks of bright green Budgies, Wedge-Tailed Eagles, Red-Tailed Black Cockatoos, many smaller Kites and Kestrels, a Dingo, wild Donkeys and hundreds of other kinds of birds, as well as hundreds of cows.
.We finally made it to the QLD border, where we had read that the road surface was much better than the NT side. While that was true for a very short section directly after the border, it was generally worse if anything for most of the 50 or so kms to Hell's Gate.
The road was just as badly corrugated as before the border, and the sections that were not corrugated were covered in wet, slippery mud that required slow, careful driving.
It was nearly 3:00 P.M. when we finally arrived at the Hell's Gate Roadhouse, checked in for the night and bought some welcome beer and wine from the bar.
As we pulled up to our campsite I said to Meg is that two Explorers over by the roadhouse shop. Sure enough, as we were setting up Campbell Docherty (#386TPX NFA) and Kevin Silk (#TPX383 Buderim) came over to say hello. They, with their wives Viv and Denise, had been camped at the roadhouse for 3 nights and were staying for one more night.
Once we got organised we went over to have a drink and chat with them for an hour or so, before returning to our campsite for the night, and getting a blazing fire going to keep warm from the cool wind that was blowing around us.
After dinner we stayed outside for as long as we could until the cold drove us inside for the rest of the night.
During the evening we decided to have a down day the following day and stay in Hell's Gate for another night
Day 35 - Hell's Gate Roadhouse 04 July, 2023
Having decided to stay another night at Hell's Gate, we had a very leisurely start to the day.
When it was getting around to mid-morning, we thought we should do something for the day, tossing up between walking to the Hell's Gate rock formation, or to the Dill Doll Rock formations, where there was also some Aboriginal rock art.
We opted for the longer 5 km return walk to the Dill Doll rock formation, which was back along the road towards the NT border.
Walking on the side of the road made the walk easy, and only one vehicle passed us before we got to Dill Doll. Just as we approached the road in to the rocks, a large flock of bright green Budgies took off from the ground in front of us.
It was an easy climb up to the lower rocks where we eventually found the small cave with the Aboriginal rock art.
After poking around a bit more we wandered back along the road to the roadhouse, where we read the information signs outside the shop, and booked in for the sunset tour of the Dill Doll rock formations and also ordered our evening meals, so that they'd be ready when we returned from the sunset tour.
The remainder of the day was a mixture of relaxing, eating and doing the occasional necessary chore like reinflating the tyres back to their normal pressures.
Later in the afternoon we went up to the shop to wait for the tour to start. After waiting for a while Donzy, the lady who was running the roadhouse and who ran the sunset tours, said to us that she had to cancel the sunset tour due to staff shortages, because was stuck in the kitchen cooking the evening meals. We arranged with her to have our meals at 6:00 P.M. and thought we might as well have a drink at the bar while waiting.
Unfortunately Donzy was the only person on duty and nobody was tending the bar. I told Donzy that I was a barman from way back and offered to help with the bar. She quickly showed me how to operate the computer and payments, and off I went, transported back more than 40 years to when I worked in pubs in England in the early eighties.
I managed ok serving a couple of customers before help arrived, and we got our drinks and sat outside watching the sunset while waiting for our meals.
After dinner we went back to our site and enjoyed a great fire before retiring for the night.
Day 36 - Hell's Gate Roadhouse - Gregory 05 July, 2023
We didn't have a firm plan for the day, other than driving to Doomadgee to do some shopping, then onto Burketown to stock up on 'wet' supplies.
We pulled back out onto National Highway 1 around 8:30 A.M. and drove the 80 or so kilometres to Doomadgee, where we drove around the small town in circles for a while before we eventually found the supermarket and stocked up on comestibles.
We also needed to fill our prescriptions for the drugs we take regularly, so went to the hospital where we'd read there was a pharmacy. That wasn't a goer because we would have had to see a doctor before they could dispense any medications, even though we already had our prescriptions with us. They directed us to the nearby health clinic.
At the health clinic the story was the same, and they directed us to the hospital we had just come from! Upon asking the nearest place we would find a pharmacy, we were told Mt Isa, so we gave up on that project and went to the local bakery instead for some morning tea sticky buns.
Back on the road we continued on towards Burketown. On that part of the drive we saw flocks of Budgies, Brumbies, Wedge-Tailed Eagles, Brolgas and many other species of birds we couldn't identify.
We had an interesting river crossing before Burketown that we weren't expecting. It was a long crossing that went around a corner, blocking our view of any oncoming traffic, and there was a lot of water over the road. I engaged 4WD and had just started into the water when a road train driver coming in the opposite direction let us know he was approaching the crossing on the UHF radio. We quickly backed up to let him through then carried on with our crossing.
In Burketown we filled with fresh water on the outskirts of town, where a group of 3 brolgas were feeding, then filled up with diesel before going to the Morning Glory cafe for lunch.
All that was left to do was to pop across the road to the Burketown Hotel to stock up on our other wet supplies, before heading back on National Highway 1 to Gregory, which we though would be a good stopping place for the night.
The rest of the 100 km+ drive to Gregory was uneventful, however I was amazed that we had driven 300 km for the day, and the only vehicle we encountered travelling in the same direction as us was a grader towing a 4WD, between Burketown and Gregory.
At the Gregory Hotel we checked in for one night, found a site with a firepit and got setup.
Thankfully we had internet, so that kept us busy for the rest of the day until it was time to get the fire going.
Day 37 - Gregory - Mary Kathleen 06 July, 2023
We didn’t have a clear plan for the day of how far we would drive, but with little or no touristy things to do, we decided to just drive and see where we ended up.
We took our time with the morning routine and started heading in the general direction of Quamby, which was about 300 km away towards Mt Isa.
The scenery was constantly changing, sometimes dense bush and for a lot of the way wide-open savannah where you could see for dozens of kilometres in every direction.
The selection of wildlife was the same as the previous few days and we were pleased to see some more Brolgas near many of the bodies of water we passed.
We eventually came to an intersection where we turned off the Savannah Way onto the Matilda Way towards Cloncurry.
We aimed initially for Quamby, where we stopped for lunch. The Quamby Pub was restored to reflect its historical past and the current owners had done a great job of making the pub feel like it used to be in the days past. The pub also had a campground and swimming pool, and a lot of quirky sculptures around the pub and outside areas.
After lunch we carried on to Cloncurry, where we stopped to visit the pharmacy to fill our prescriptions, and to pick up a couple of things from the shop.
With the shopping done, we drove up to the Cloncurry lookout to check out the views, information boards and water tank art, before carrying on out to Chinaman's Dam, mostly to see the large bronze eagle sculpture that had recently been completed.
It was now time to decide where we were going to stop for the night, and Mary Kathleen got the vote, about 60 km out of Cloncurry, on the road to Mt Isa.
The town of Mary Kathleen is an interesting story and an interesting free camp. The town was constructed by Rio Tinto in the 1950s when uranium was discovered nearby, but is now a large grassy, treed area that is a huge free camp.
We were surprised by the number of campers already there when we arrived, maybe approaching the hundreds, but because it was such a large area, everybody had plenty of space around them. Something else unusual was that there were heaps of concrete slabs dotted around the old town, that were the foundations of the houses that had been removed many years earlier, and which made great campsites to setup chairs and table on.
Once setup we made use of the plentiful interwebs until it was time to crank up a fire and cook dinner.
We stayed outside for a while after dinner until we were forced inside by the rapidly dropping temperature.
Day 38 - Mary Kathleen - McKinlay 07 July, 2023
It was cold enough this morning, 12 degrees but it felt much colder, to warrant turning on the diesel heater for half an hour before we were brave enough to leap out of bed.
The only solid plan we had for the day was to drive about 10 km to the old Mary Kathleen uranium mine, which was apparently a challenging 4WD-only road in bad condition.
The reports on the road were well founded. As soon as we hit the mine road we had a taste of what was to come. There was still a lot of bitumen on the road, but it was all broken up and badly potholed for most of the drive.
Where there was no bitumen left the road turned to dirt/mud with large washouts and areas filled with water that we mostly navigated around.
After about half an hour of picking our way over, through and around obstacles, we arrived at the mine site.
While on an environmental level what we saw was quite disgusting, a disused mine with no attempts at rehabilitation, it was oddly picturesque with the open-cut mine wall providing a back drop to the bright green coloured water in the pit of the mine.
There was quite a nasty breeze blowing so we didn't hang around too long, and drove back past the camp and out onto the Matilda Way again, back to Cloncurry to do some chores.
In Cloncurry we visited the dump point, filled up with diesel, bought a few groceries, grabbed pies from the bakery and sat in a park to eat them.
During the morning we'd decided to carry on to McKinlay (Walkabout Creek) of Crocodile Dundee fame and stay there for a night while we figured out where we would go next.
The drive to McKinlay was uneventful, with the landscape changing from densely populated bush around Cloncurry, to wide-open savannah by the time we got to McKinlay. There was a very strong wind blowing in McKinlay, which we put down to the savannah terrain and lack of trees or hills anywhere around.
We booked in for one night on an unpowered site, for a reasonable $22, and got setup.
Internet coverage was great, so that was the first order of business, followed by a welcome shower, and more relaxing for the rest of the afternoon.
We weren't allowed to have a fire, and planned to have dinner at the pub, so we had a nice easy afternoon.
When we went up to the bar around 5:30 P.M. to have a drink and get dinner, we discovered that meal orders weren't taken until 6:30 P.M. Well, what to do? Yes, you guessed it, we sat in the bar drinking until we could order food, then had more drinks while waiting for the food to arrive, then had some more to wash down the dinner!
After staggering home we hunkered down for the night because the temperature was dropping rapidly.
Day 39 - McKinlay - Winton 08 July, 2023
It was another sprint from bed this morning to turn on the diesel heater because the temperature dropped to 7 degrees overnight, and a leisurely start to the day while we waited for the temperature to reach something approaching normality.
I think for the first time ever during our travels in Mata, we didn't actually have a destination in mind for the day. After some discussion we decided to go to Winton and do some of the dinosaur experiences and then, because it had been so cold, we thought we'd make a run for the coast around Townsville, or further north even if we felt like driving that far.
Winton was only 240 km away, so we drove in potter mode, under 75 km/h, for the first part of the journey, until we came to the turnoff to the Combo Conservation Area, where we stopped to do the 2 km walk to the Combo Waterhole.
There were plenty of information boards along the walk, many of them providing information on the 'overshots' we were walking across. The overshots were built by early settlers to trap river water during the drier months, for the drovers and cattle passing by on the nearby stock droving routes.
We hoped to see a lot of birdlife around the waterhole, and we did see a lot of kites/kestrels on the walk, but 300 metres short of the waterhole our way was blocked by the river which, while not very deep, was flowing over slippery, loose rocks. We decided at that point to turn around and head back to the carpark.
After morning tea we drove back out to the highway, headed for Winton.
We stopped about 60 km short of Winton for lunch, then carried on into Winton where our first stop was the information centre to book a couple of dinosaur tours for the next few days.
We were planning to have a down day the next day to catch up on some chores, like our large pile of dirty washing, but that wasn't to be. Our first pick campground was full, as were most of the other camping options, and we were reduced to camping in the Winton Showgrounds overflow camping area, with literally hundreds of other campers who had nowhere else to go. It was only $20 per night though, and did have toilets and hot showers.
Talking to a neighbouring camper I found out that there was an opal show on for the weekend, and it was the last couple of days of the school holidays, which would have contributed to the large number of campers around Winton.
Once we got setup for the night we discovered we were on a powered site, so had to move to another area.
The wind was blowing a gale outside, the ground was a mixture of dust and mud, and it was only about 20 degrees, so we didn't bother setting up outside.
The one saving grace was that we had good internet coverage to catch up with socials/blogs etc., and it was even good enough for me to watch the Warriors flog the Eels later in the afternoon.
Day 40 - Winton 09 July, 2023
It was another 7 degree morning this morning, so another slow start to the day.
We didn't have much to do for the day anyway, as Winton didn't have too much to offer apart from the dinosaur attractions, which we were going to be doing in the next two days.
Our plan for doing our laundry was scarpered because of all the campgrounds being full, and the showgrounds overflow campground didn't offer laundry facilities.
After a very lazy morning we set out to see a couple of local attractions, and first drove the short distance to the Musical Fence Park, which was located close to the original Qantas landing site.
The musical fence was a bit of fun, and I especially liked the cobbled-together drum kit, although I felt really unco being unable to keep up a beat on the bass drum while also using both hands to hit the other drums.
The only other point of interest that took our fancy was the Heritage Truck and Machinery Museum, that was only a a few hundred metres from the musical fence.
While not on the scale of the Invercargill Transport Museum, this museum was fairly comprehensive in providing a snapshot of trucking in the area, with examples of trucks from the early 1920s to the present time.
Apart from the physical truck and machinery displays, there was a lot of information to take in in the office area, with stories and photos about local trucking characters, mostly focused on the history of road trains around the Winton area.
With the touristing done for the day we went back to the showgrounds and got setup for another night.
After lunch and showers we enjoyed the afternoon relaxing without any pressure to do anything or be anywhere for the rest of the day.
Day 41 - Winton 10 July, 2023
Although it was a little warmer this morning, we still turned on the diesel heater to take the edge off the coldness.
When we first arrived in Winton we booked two dinosaur-themed tours, the Dinosaur Stampede, and the Age of Dinosaurs guided tour. Today's tour was the Dinosaur Stampede.
The stampede tour didn't start until 11:00 A.M., and we set off a bit early at 8:30 A.M. for the 110 km drive, but once we hit some badly corrugated road we were pleased of the early start.
The road started off really good, and was sealed for the first 40 km or so, before it turned into gravel, but in really good condition that allowed us to carry on at 75 km/h. The gravel sections were interspersed with sealed sections of about 10 km, which worked ok for a start.
Eventually we passed two graders and came to the gravel road that hadn't been graded for some time, forcing us to reduce our speed to less than 40 km/h. Our ETA was quickly blowing out, but we had started early enough that this wasn't an issue.
After an hour and three quarters, we arrived at the Lark Quarry Conservation Park with over half an hour to spare until the tour start time.
The tour started with our young guide telling us about the original finding of the dinosaur footprints, then running through the history of how it was determined it was a stampede and the people involved in that process, and also the history of the stampede centre from its first iteration, until the construction of the present facility.
Following that was some video and more information from our guide about what the area would have been like 95 million years ago, leading up to the stampede, and the likely scenario that led to it.
Next up was the exciting bit where we got to see the actual footprints, hundreds of them, mostly left by small chicken-sized dinosaurs, and the smaller number of footprints left by the larger dinosaur that was chasing the smaller ones.
The guide gave us lots more detailed information about how the stampede occurred and how the footprints were likely preserved while we were taking in the scene.
After the official tour we did the short 700 metre loop walk up to a lookout and around the mesa rock formation surrounding the centre.
It was lunchtime by then and we considered having lunch in the carpark, but our park wasn't very level, so we drove a short distance back along the road and parked on the side of the road to eat our lunch.
While the drive back to Winton was still bad in places, it was better because two graders had been working away while we were doing our touristing.
We stopped short of Winton, only a few kilometres out, at the Mistake Creek free camp for the night.
We were amazed again at how many people in RVs were staying in and around Winton. Every campground, free camp and illegal camping area was overflowing with travellers, and in some areas they were jammed unpleasantly close together.
Even though we were outside Winton we still had good internet that we made the most of for the rest of the day.
Later in the afternoon we got a fire going to keep us warm from the cooling temp's, had dinner and watched on amazed at the beautiful sunset.
Day 42 - Winton 11 July, 2023
Today we were doing the second part of our dinosaur discovery experience, a visit to the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History, which was about 25 km out of Winton.
We had booked in for the 1:00 P.M. tour, so there was no rush to get away from camp this morning.
To kill some time we had a few chores to do in Winton before lunch, which included a visit to a dump point, filling up with fresh water and buying some groceries. A couple of the basic necessities we wanted were eggs and mushrooms, and the first shop we went to didn't have either. At our second attempt we tried a fruit and veg shop but struck out again. It was third time lucky at getting some eggs at another mini mart, but still no fresh mushrooms. We had to lower our usually high fresh food standards and buy a can of mushrooms!
With all the chores done, it was still too early to leave for the Age of Dinosaurs, so we went to the bakery for a morning tea of a coffee and a snack. Just across the road was an opal shop that we visited next, getting a great rundown from the owner about the different types of opal found around the world, and what was special about the local Boulder Opal.
With nothing else to do in Winton we drove out to the Age of Dinosaurs centre and hung around until our first guided tour at 1:00 P.M., which was a tour of the Fossil Preparation Lab, where we had an introduction into how the fossilised dinosaur bones are found, removed from the original site, removed from surrounding rock and pieced together.
There we some impressive examples of bones that had been recovered in the past, particularly the larger sauropod bones from creatures that were up to 20 metres long, and stood 3-4 metres high at the hip.
The second part of this tour was taking a look at how the fossils are painstakingly recovered from their final resting place, along with some more impressive examples of recovered bones.
Our second tour was of the Collection Room, which housed a large collection of some of the best bones that had been recovered from around the Winton area. We also saw some videos of reconstructions of how the dinosaurs would have moved based on their bone structure.
Our third and final tour was the March of the Titanosaurs exhibition, which required a ten-minute ride on a shuttle to take us to a purpose-built facility that housed a relocated and reconstructed 'trackway' that contained the footprints/imprints of large and small dinosaurs, crocodiles, turtles, logs and even lungfish from over 95 million years ago.
Once that tour was over we had half an hour or so to walk along Dinosaur Canyon outside and learn more about the dinosaurs we'd seen the footprints and bones of, before the shuttle took us back to the reception area.
Back in Winton we filled up with diesel to beat the morning rush the next morning, then went back to the showgrounds and got setup for the night. It was nearing 5:00 P:M. by that time so we didn't bother setting up outside.
Day 43 - Winton - Porcupine Gorge12 July, 2023
Today was another day that we didn't have a clear plan for, or where we might end up at the end of the day, other than heading in the direction of the east coast towards warmer climes.
Before setting out for the day we decided to go to Porcupine Gorge NP for the day’s drive, where we had wanted to stay in the NP campground but there was no availability for the coming two weeks, and stay the night in a free camp not far from the campground.
The first part of the drive towards Hughenden took us over extremely boring savannah where you could see to the horizon in every direction, with no hills or any other features to break up the vastness, and barely any trees in sight either. We had intentions of scavenging firewood along the way, but that plan was scuttled by the lack of trees that were needed to produce some wood in the first place.
Apart from a brief morning tea stop, we carried on and arrived in Hughenden around lunchtime.
Our first stop was at a supermarket to get the supplies we were unable to obtain in Winton, followed by a ‘wet’ supplies stop, before we drove to a park for lunch.
Fully stocked up, and fed and watered, we carried on the drive to Porcupine Gorge, stopping briefly just outside Hughenden to buy a $10 bag of firewood for the night’s entertainment. The landscape slowly changed away from savannah to more bushy, hilly country, which was a pleasant change.
For the initial part of the drive we only saw domestic animals, cattle, sheep and goats, but we were also lucky enough to see a few emus on the latter part of the drive.
There a few points of interest leading into Porcupine Gorge, mostly small signs that we stopped to read to break up the journey. One such sign, that was located off the road next to a (mock I think) grave, was about an 1880s mailman who serviced the area, and who was fatally speared by the local Aborigines.
Another sign told the story of “Pinch Hill”, that was notoriously steep in the days of horses and carts and one of the coach drivers who loved to scare passengers by going as fast as possible on the hill.
The most interesting point of interest, though, was a whistling hole, which turned out to be a failed water bore hole, stopped at 500 feet with no sign of water, and which was capped off. Dependent upon atmospheric conditions the bore whistles, which it did for us, with the theory being that an underground cross shaft may cause the whistling.
Apart from those points of interest, we stopped at the Porcupine Gorge Lookout, which was only a short walk on a sealed path from the carpark. The 150-metre-deep gorge had been carved out of sandstone and basalt over millions of years, and was very impressive.
From there it was only a short drive to the gravel pit we chose for our overnight stay. When we arrived, there was only one other caravan parked there, and there was also the bonus of being able to have a fire using local stones to make a small firepit.
Because of its remote location, there was no internet at the gravel pit, so we had to amuse ourselves without our usual online vices.
Although there was a coolish breeze blowing, we setup outside, with the thought that the fire would keep us warm later in the afternoon.
We got the fire going early to get our new lot of wood burning well, before the sun went down, and sat outside long after dinner enjoying the fire and the spectacular views of the night sky.
Day 44 - Porcupine Gorge - Conjuboy - 13 July, 2023
After a leisurely start to the day, we drove a short distance back along the road we’d travelled on the day before, to the Porcupine Gorge NP turnoff, and then into the gorge carpark.
There was a very short walk we did to a lookout of the Pyramid rock formation, before we embarked on the 2.5 km walk of the gorge itself, the start of which was 1.1 km straight down to the floor of the gorge on a goat-like track that was stone, dirt and gravel, and which was very steep for the most part.
It probably took us the best part of 45 minutes to walk that first one kilometre to the floor of the gorge, all that time thinking about the return journey – there was only one way back out! The going was slow because it was one of those tracks where you have to watch every step for fear of slipping, falling or twisting an ankle on the uneven surface.
Right at the bottom we passed a couple who were beginning the climb back up, and during our time in the gorge we only saw a couple of other people, so we mostly had the whole place to ourselves, which was very refreshing after suffering the great unwashed around Winton for the last few days.
The effort to get down to the floor of the gorge was well worth it. It was a beautiful, spectacular, peaceful place. The stratified layers of the walls of the gorge told the story of its creation, and the truly impressive Pyramid rock formation at the end of the gorge was amazing. We walked first away from the Pyramid over moonscape-like rock that was sometimes plain grey, sometimes layers of ochre and yellow, sometimes purple or black, in many places contained perfectly-formed round holes of different depths that contained water, and deeper fissures of different shapes and sizes like crevices in a glacier.
The shallow water in the gorge was crystal clear, and was home to hundreds of tiny fish, some of which had tiger-like stripes.
We walked all the way to the Pyramid end of the gorge past many more rock pools and variations in rock surface and colour, before sitting down for a while to enjoy the serenity and beauty of the place.
As with all good things, this one had to come to an end and we had to face the kilometre climb back up to the carpark.
At the start of the path back up quite a few people were arriving, some with boisterous, noisy children in tow, so we were thankful we’d set out as early as we did, because the experience wouldn’t have been the same with all those people around.
The climb back up was much as we expected, tough going, but we took our time and stopped to rest often, so it probably took about an hour to get back up there.
That was all we had planned for the day, and didn’t actually have a destination in mind, but we started driving towards Conjuboy, which was about 200 km north -east of the gorge.
We stopped at Poison Creek free camp for lunch, then carried on towards Conjuboy. On that stretch of road we had to stop for a large 2-3 metre snake that was crossing the road, which we thought was more than likely an Olive Python. When it was across the centreline on the other side of the road, I stopped to get another photo of it and it took exception to that, rearing up in my direction! That was all the encouragement I needed to close my window and get the hell out of there.
A little further along the road we had to dodge another large snake on the road, this one a lighter colour and maybe not quite as big as the python.
We stopped a few kilometres out from Conjuboy at The Lynd Oasis Roadhouse free camp (actually a gravel pit across the road from the roadhouse) for the night and attempted to setup to avoid the strong wind and the sun setting to the west, but we didn’t really achieve either very well.
The internet coverage was dodgy and we couldn’t do much of our usual socials and blogging.
Day 45 - Conjuboy - Charters Towers - 14 July, 2023
Our free camp on the side of the road was ok, but the traffic noise woke us up early and we were on the road to Charters Towers by 8:00 A.M.
It was about 260 km to Charters Towers, and we had the whole day to do it, so we weren't in a hurry.
The only stop we had planned was at Fletcher Creek where there was a camping area that had a dump point.
The drive was unremarkable, and we were bemoaning the lack of wildlife, apart from domestic animals and birds, until we saw a bunch of camels hanging out with a herd of cattle!
The only other thing that broke up the journey was when a 4WD towing a boat flicked up a stone into our windscreen causing a reasonable size chip, which was bigger than the two we'd acquired a few days earlier on our almost new windscreen that was replaced in Darwin.
Arriving in Charters Towers we thought we had better get the chips checked out to see if they could be fixed, or the screen replaced again.
On our second attempt we found a windscreen repairer who fixed all the chips straight away for a reasonable cost of $85, and he said that one of the chips was developing into a crack, so we were pleased we got that done.
After a shopping trip to Woolies and visit to a bakery for a pie lunch we drove out to the Dalrymple Van Park and booked in for two nights, so we could catch up on our mountain of laundry and some other cleaning chores, not to mention making the most of the great internet.
Day 46 - Charters Towers - 15 July, 2023
Today went as planned, we achieved all we set out to do, and enjoyed a mostly relaxing day.
It was great to get a couple of loads of laundry done, do some cleaning inside and outside Mata and fill up our empty gas bottle, so we would be ready to hit the road again the next day.
During the afternoon I cobbled together a version of a Beef Bourguignon using whatever ingredients we had to hand, and let it cook slowly for about three hours on the outside BBQ.
It turned out to be quite good and we even had leftovers to freeze for another day.
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