28TH JUNE 2013 - TOP END NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA

28TH JUNE 2013 – TOP END NORTHERN TERRITORY, AUSTRALIA

With Katherine behind us we spend a hot & noisy night at King River, the noise due to all the road trains journeying through during the night. Some of them obviously think it is a great joke to toot long & loud in the middle of the night as they pass. The Stuart Highway goes from Darwin to Adelaide so is an extremely busy highway for road trains & nomads. So a bit bleary eyed we set off at 8am, – we are almost robotic when packing up each morning after doing it for several months. Temperature is 20deg, & our intention is to have a stopover at Bitter Springs for a nice hot dip in their gorgeous crystal clear waters.

Third time at Bitter Springs

 

 

Bitter Springs

   This is another revisit but this time we take our snorkels & follow the spring downstream a little way – although no fish or anything alive that we can see, it is non the less a little green wonderland of mosses etc & being still quite early there are very few others sharing the pleasure. Would have liked to linger longer (sounds like pidgin english), but time to hit the road & get to our next stopover by 2pm in case it is busy, & it does prove to be the case. We manage to get an OK site without a problem & have time to relax, Stu manages to print off some ‘For Sale’ signs for the van – it is surprising how quickly people notice them but alas, no bites yet. Speaking of bites, there are so many varieties of ants here, tiny ones, huge ones & in between, green ones, orange, black, brown etc. Some bite if one is not careful, most just a nuisance though they haven’t come into the van much & usually only tiny ones. Stu is still struggling with his bites from Darwin though I think he has a few fresh ones as well.

Next little town we pass through is Elliot, another small place mostly aboriginal, with historic statues of an old pioneer family in their nice park. It seems to have improved since our last visit. We have to refuel again – ($1.90) as we are turning onto the Barkley Highway towards QLD & there are few fuel stops to come for some time. Unfortunately from that point we head directly into the wind & you can almost watch the needle on the fuel gauge going down! The traffic is mostly going the opposite direction towards Darwin & is like a constant stream of nomadic white ants. So begins the peak season plus school holidays – so glad we won’t be caught up in that!. For us it is seems like the slowest, most boring drive we have done being such a slow crawl & the landscape is totally flat & lifeless - far worse than the Nularbor. After another fuel stop & then finally our next overnighter at which we had the choice of sitting in the sun with little flies to annoy us, or in the very blustery wind which they didn’t like – neither did I! Retreated into the van. The carpark nowhere near full & the wind rocked us to sleep – not quite like a lullaby. Another nice sunrise but the temperature down to 13 –brrr. So it’s another day, & probably another 400 kms on this boring, boring highway.

Boring Barkley Highway

  No towns, one roadhouse to pass. We are definitely ‘bucking the trend’ now & we can just hear the nomads going north to Darwin saying ‘silly people, they are going the wrong way’. We would happily have stayed longer in Darwin in the warmth but we need to allow time to sell the van & car before returning home, so the obvious place to do so is from my son’s place back in Sunshine Coast.  Not much warmth there either  at present & still some rain. 

Hurrah, along the way we see some flowering gums covered in buds, ready to bloom in their colours of red, yellow or white. Back in WA a lot of the wildflowers will be preparing to burst forth sometime this month through to September. Also sight several eagles cleaning up the roadside carnage. Would have been great photos. We are so, so glad to reach our destination today at Camooweel Billabong.

Brolgas at Billabong

Our guide at Drovers Camp

 We had a night or two here 2 years ago & loved it. It is a huge area & could easily take a couple of hundred vans, but it is not nearly so nice this time with a lot less water & of course the dratted wind. And certainly nowhere near as busy as then either, we could have taken our pick of sites. Although there are less birds in number I still managed to sight or photograph brolgas, cormarants, pelicans, egrets, ducks, all of whom I felt quite sorry for, huddled together in the windy conditions. As we decided to stay two nights & hope the wind eased by then, we spent a pleasurable & interesting morning at the local ‘Drovers’ Museum’. We woke to a temperature of 9deg so it was good to have something to do, myself wrapped up like it was Siberia. It was sunny enough but the wind just cut through like a knife. Anyway we spent 3 hours of listening & looking, learning a great deal about the old droving days. They also had an art gallery there with some very talented artists’ work to peruse, mostly to do with the drovers lives & times. And incredibly it was all free manned by volunteers. We did think about doing a couple of days work for them in return for free parking but the wind has put us off doing so.