On Wednesday we were up early to do a huge pack up. We had stuff everywhere as we had been racing around and spending very little time in camp. We got sorted by about 9 a.m. and left the caravan to drive in to the ABC studios to pick up the CD of our interview. A few replays later, we decided that it really had gone pretty well! We stopped to wash the red Kakadu dust off the van and then hitched up the caravan to depart Darwin. We have absolutely enjoyed our time here, but will certainly be glad to leave the bloody sandflies behind. All of us look like we have the chickenpox and we have been scratching like crazy. We also will not miss the RAAF base next door as the planes make the ground rumble upon takeoff!
It was a quiet drive to Adelaide River – everyone was exhausted. We refuelled (the car and its occupants) and visited the Adelaide River War Cemetery to pay our respects to the interred. It was a beautifully maintained spot and was deeply moving walking past all the graves of the young men killed on the same day in any one of the 62 Japanese air raids on Darwin. The kids were taken aback that there were so many "unknown sailor/airman" headstones.
Had a long, hot delay at roadworks on the Stuart Highway. Ella made us all laugh, asking “How come there are so many single cars with no caravan? What do they do?” She must think everyone is travelling around Australia. Sometimes, when we count the caravans, so do we! The kids were starting to unravel, and fearing spontaneous Haystack combustion we pulled in to Edith falls. Fortunately the camp ground was quite empty, so we parked in our site and made a beeline to the plunge pool at the falls. Aaaah! For an hour, our sandfly bites did not itch!
We missed Ella’s requested birthday dinner due to our late night in Kakadu so enjoyed a birthday celebration under the stars at Edith Falls instead. We were all asleep not long after.
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| Happy Birthday Ella |
The kids were keen on another swim the next morning, but we made tracks to Katherine to do a few jobs, including buying a Beesting Cake for Ella’s long-running birthday. We visited historic Spingvale Station for birthday cake cutting, where I could not find the candles, so we used our imaginations to create 8 lovely candles for Ella.
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| Springvale store and homestead |
Springvale Station, established in 1879, is one of the two oldest stations in the Northern Territory. We were completely astounded that the stock for the station, comprising 3 000 cattle and 12 000 sheep, were driven up fom Adelaide over 2 years! The mobs travelled about 8km each day. How is that for a road trip!
After leaving the station, we turned onto the Victoria Highway and were again in new territory, heading west. The Victoria River scenery was spectacular, with the cliffs very reminiscent of Katherine Gorge. Dave and I noted with dismay that the roadkill was becoming less wallabies and more large roos.
It was stinking hot and when we got fuel at Timber Creek the kids cooled down and chirped up in the sprinkler outside the servo.
There were huge boab trees just outside town, which excited the boys as Mike and Di showed us a carved boab nut back at Karlu Karlu. We stopped at the Victoria River Lookout to spot some crocs but didn’t see any. Travelling on, the Saddle Creek camp about 100kms from the West Australian border looked good, so we stopped there for the night. Ella and I made a huge vegetable curry (reminding us of SA) with all the veggies we couldn’t take into WA while the boys went on a mission to find boab seed pods. The boys’ pocket knives were itching for action! The sun was disappearing and they hadn’t returned, so Dave and Ella went on a search and rescue mission. They found them high up in a huge boab tree, with a cache of 10 huge seed pods.
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| An early morning fruit feast |
Unfortunately, as we packed up the next morning we realised that we probably couldn’t take them through the border checkpoint, so the boys had some target practice, reassured by the fact that there would be more boabs on the WA side. We reached the border at 9 o’clock and stopped just outside the checkpoint to eat as much fruit as we could! We had thought we would spend some time in the National Park before the border, but it was 4WD access only, so we had surplus fruit. Leaving our pile of fruit, honey and vegetables at the border, we wound our watches back an hour and a half and carried on into Western Australia.
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| YMCA? Was supposed to be WA! |
Stay tuned ...
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