Karumba - Alice Springs

We have travelled over 1500kms since my last post, hit a roo, seen some amazing country, had plenty of fights and arguments, done lots of free camping and have finally, truly hit the Outback! The red dust coating everything proves it! We have arrived in Alice Springs and even the boys who usually say "But I had a shower yesterday" headed straight for the showers as soon as we had set up. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so let me take you back to Karumba...

The kite above our campsite

Poor Ella hit the wall the morning we left Karumba. I found her crying in the caravan, clutching the tissue box (the one with kittens on it - great marketing strategy Kleenex!) and wailing "I really miss Bonnie. She's just the right shape for my arms. Will we be near our house soon?" Bad news on that front, but she slowly cheered up with the prospect of adding to the road kill tally over the next leg of the journey!

Krys the Savannah King, shot in July 1957 near Normanton.

We hit the road and saw lots more brolgas and another enormous Wedge tailed Eagle on our way back to Normanton. We had spotted the replica of the largest crocodile ever "captured" (read "shot") there on our way in and were keen to check it out. Krys the Savannah King, let me tell you, is of PREHISTORIC proportions!!! It is apparently authenticated by the Guiness Book of Records and not surprisingly, is the largest saltwater croc ever recorded at 8.63m. Krystina Pawlowski shot this monster in the Norman River, just out of Normanton. Thank goodness this was not the croc cruising by while Lachie was fishing!

We know where the missing backpackers are now!

We headed south on the Matilda Highway and enjoyed the scenery, but not the fighting and arguing in the back of the Blunderbuss. You would think that with 5 seats we could separate the kids enough, but no. Some days no combination of two children works. Marcus and Lachlan even managed to fight with an aisle and a spare seat between them! There were termite mounds covering huge areas and we decided that they looked like tombstones, which nearly had to be used for the fighting children.

Burke & Wills Roadhouse was the next stop where we bought some expensive petrol and Jackson was excited to break his "wheels" record with an 82 wheeler measuring 51.8 metres. I was glad to meet this road train in the carpark, and not on the road! They are quite scary approaching at speed and not giving an inch - the number of dead stock on the roadside testimony to their speed and inertia!

We kept on driving, and the kids kept on fighting, and eventually we got to Cloncurry, where we camped at Wal's campspot for the night. Fortunately Glenda and Ron rolled in next to us, and they must have been missing their grandchildren as they got out a remote controlled car which kept the kids amused until dark. Glenda was in a wheelchair and their caravan was specially modified. She showed us around and I got a serious case of fridge envy. Our fridge is the size of a beer carton and I am really struggling on the catering front. Hers was big enough to live in!

Marcus distinguished himself by nibbling his bread into a pair of glasses at dinner. Jackson thought a monocle was the better bet!

After a noisy night, with road trains on one side and trains on the other, we were almost keen to hit the road again. We had seen a huge mob of cattle just outside town so we drove out to the saleyard, but they didn't have a yarding so we continued on to the cemetery. We have all enjoyed Ella's Audrey of the Outback stories recently and we wanted to see the graves of the cameleers (similar to Mr Akbar in the stories). There were only 2 headstones left in the Afghan section, but they did face Mecca! Amazingly, just out of town we saw 4 wild camels! Our wild animal tally is looking pretty darn healthy.

Burke and Wills camp at the Corella River on 22nd Jan, 1861

We missed the memorial marking the Burke and Wills Expedition's last camp spot near the gulf (due to 66kms of rough, rutted roads!) so we took the opportunity to stop and pay our respects to the explorers at their camp on the Corella River. Driving through this country gives you renewed respect for their exploits, although they didn't have 4 kids with them!!

The main ward in the Underground
Hospital.

We saw another 5 camels in the spectacular ranges before coming into Mt Isa. No doubts about the main industry here - the entire skyline is dominated by the huge smelter stacks of the mines. Lunch was a picnic outside the information centre, where Marcus made a new friend. The Underground Hospital captured our interest, so we decided not to tour the pretend mine but find that instead. After the Japanese bombings of Darwin, Broome and Mareeba in WW2, the hospital board thought that Mt Isa would be another logical target. They asked the miners to help tunnel into the hills behind the hospital to make an emergency ward in case the town was bombed. The miners all worked volunteer shifts (after their real shifts - they must have been hard men!) for 15 weeks to excavate the Underground Hospital. All the supports were made from local gidyea (a really hard, heavy wood) and the furniture was made from gelignite boxes and packing cases.

Gelignite boxes used as shelving!

Fortunately it never had to be used and it gradually fell into disrepair. A committee to preserve the historical site was formed in 1999 and with the assistance of the National Trust it was excavated and repaired to allow visitors. We all found it fascinating and were really glad we had visited.

Next we found the Mt. Isa School of the Air but it was closed, so we took the opportunity to stock up on groceries and find a camp not far out of town. For once, it was off the road a bit so we thought it wouldn't be too noisy. The boys went off to collect firewood and we built a campfire to roast some potatoes. Ella discovered a "camel poo" in the grass and spent the rest of the evening worrying about a camel bumping into the caravan in the dark! Our next-door neighbour Keith came over for a chat. He was travelling back the way we came, so we were able to fill him in on the good camp spots. He entertained us with stories and anecdotes for ages. Jackson was very amused with his description of his vehicle when a policewoman asked if he had a 4WD: "No, I have a 2WD. But it's a very clever 2-wheel drive. It won't go where it can't go." He brought us over half a pumpkin to the kids' horror, but most of them agreed it was delicious roasted in the coals! We played music by the fire under the stars until we were all exhausted. I then spent the night reassuring Ella that the movements of the caravan were not caused by camels until I was even more exhausted!

There were only 4 children at the Mt Isa School of the Air!

We were up early next morning as huge, rattling trucks drove down our supposedly quiet road from dawn. We easily made it on time for the School of the Air tour! Both Dave and I agreed it would have been a great place to work - sitting in a "classroom" talking to the class (maximum of 10 children) on the telephone, with mute button at the ready, for 3 half hour periods! The rest of the teachers' time is spent preparing lessons and marking. Where do we apply?

We've made it out of Queensland!

Wanting to make it into the Northern Territory, we headed West towards Camooweal. We stopped for one of our many pit stops by a WW2 historical site, which turned out to be an interesting piece of bitumen road. Until WW2, there was just a track between Mt Isa and Camooweal. During the War, up to 1000 Allied vehicles were passing through a day, which made the construction of a sealed road imperative. Although it was completed quickly, the road was made so well it was still in use until 1996. We also noticed Yelvertoft Station as we drove along, which was featured in the School of the Air promo video. The 4 children who are enrolled with the school live on the cattle station which runs 45 000 head on 2.5 million acres! We got to Camooweal where we filled up with petrol and also filled all the water tanks while we had afternoon tea. We crossed the border into the Northern Territory amidst much excitement so we took a photo to celebrate.

Almost immediately the scenery changed to a vast expanse of flat, grassy plain stretching as far as the eye could see. Spotted another Wedgetailed Eagle on some road kill at the side of the road. He was not in a hurry to move - I guess you can afford that lazy arrogance when you are at the top of the foodchain! Kept driving West, and the SH 400km signs were mystifying for a while, as we couldn't work out what town we were heading for. We finally worked out that the markers were informing us how far it was to the Stuart Highway juncture, which would take us to a town ... eventually!

We stopped at Avon Downs, which was a camp site opposite a Police Station in the middle of the plains. Ella and Marcus were so bored on the drive that they swapped outfits and emerged from the Blunderbuss dressed as each other! We were really pleased the Police were just across the road, as just on dark two guys set up in the next site and proceeded to laugh in a disconcertingly evil manner. They looked like extras from O Brother Where Art Thou? and they continued to laugh. Obviously they were enjoying life, but we started to worry about them and I got Lachie to put the axe away! Dave considered getting the banjo out to make them feel at home, but we thought we'd never get rid of them if he did. They didn't stop laughing until they fell asleep and started laughing again at dawn, but left shortly after that. Whew!

After watching a beautiful sunrise over the plains, we packed up and got moving to try to get a good distance in. We drove for 200kms to Barkly Homestead, where we refuelled. The speed limit in NT is 130 but the roads are quite good and very straight. We were trundling along nicely when I hit a roo. It was a large roo, already dead on the road, but I didn't see it until too late and there was no-where to go as the only other traffic of the morning was approaching from the other direction. I lined up the roo between the wheels, slowed down as much as possible in the short time I had, closed my eyes (I probably shouldn't admit that!) and hoped for the best. A terrible crunching noise announced the demise of the water tank under the caravan, but we were all OK. The boys retrieved the water tank and Dave spent an uncomfortable ten minutes under the van wiring up the support struts so we could continue on. We then used the remnants of the water in the holed tank to wash the contents of the roo's guts off the caravan. It was a subdued drive to the Three-Ways Roadhouse for lunch, after which we turned South. Just along the Stuart Highway I saw a dead horse on the roadside. Thank goodness I didn't hit that! Thank goodness Ella didn't see it!

The smoke from the fire made the
sunset spectacular.

We drove through Tennant Creek and Lachie spotted smoke on the horizon. We drove on, assuming it was a controlled burn-off. We were in the middle of the fire when we realised that it wasn't controlled in any manner and that it was a bushfire! Thankfully it had already burnt both sides of the road, so we made it through. We pulled over into the Devil's Marbles campground for a much needed gin and tonic! The kids raced off to explore the rocks, which were spectacular and covered a far greater area than I had realised. We took heaps of photos and climbed all over the rocks until dark.

Lachlan spotted a dingo a few metres away while we were having dinner, so Ella quickly retired to the caravan. Marcus didn't help matters by telling her that dingoes could smell little girls and would chew through anything to get them! (Actually, the dingoes would have smelled all of us, as we were on our 4th night free camping without showers!) There were warning signs about the dingoes, suggesting that you didn't leave small items like hats, shoes or jumpsuits about at night, so we packed everything away carefully before heading to bed. Ella woke terrified in the middle of the night and the kids all saw the dingoes outside the caravan, so I spent the rest of the night reassuring them all that a dingo could not gnaw its way into a caravan. Dave was sleeping in the Blunderbuss, and said that the dingoes did not move even when he shone the torch on them! Jackson reckons they smelt the dead roo plastered all over the bottom of the caravan!

Early morning light on the rocks

We were up early to climb the rocks for the sunrise, which was well worth it, and we took another zillion photos. This is a fantastic place, despite the dingoes, and we all agreed to stop here on our way back. Another day of driving beckoned us, so we packed up. Lachie gashed his knee climbing before breakfast, but made us all laugh as he announced "I know what UHT milk stands for. Utterly Horrible Tasting!" and we also solved the mystery of the gas fridge problems. I turn it on, check it is running before bed and it is always off in the morning. It turns out that Mr. Security, in his pre-bed routine, has been turning off all the gas bottles! So we may not have a water tank, but at least the fridge does work on gas! After surviving another uncontrolled burn, morning tea was at Barrow Creek, where we explored the Telegraph Station which was built in 1872. Ella was munching on an apple, which loosened her tooth. We found her distraught in the car. "I don't want this tooth to come out. I've had it there for a really long time!" She didn't appreciate the discussion about the Telegraph Station having been there for a really long time, so we cut our losses, put her in the furthest seat from the front and carried on.

Ella outside the Blacksmith's Shed

Reaching Alice Springs and showers became our number one priority as the day wore on, so we drove and drove and finally made it to Alice. We booked into the last site at the first van park we found, set up and hit the showers! Two huge loads of washing finished the day, and we are all looking forward to getting to bed!

Stay tuned ...