Mataranka - Nitmiluk National Park (Katherine Gorge)

More Hippos in the Water Hole

We were tempted to extend our stay at Mataranka, but we packed up, parked the van and caravan and spent the next hour in the pools as the next best option. There weren't very many people there, so to the kid's delight they were able to jump in off the edge and make hippo noises to their heart's content. The pools were fed by Rainbow Springs which bubbled up out of the ground at an astonishing rate - 30.5 million litres per day. The water then flowed down into the Roper River which was a curious green colour. Any crocs lurking in there would have been hard to spot. We managed to get the kids out of the pools for the hot drive through sparse woodland and termite mounds to Katherine.

More keen on the washing up than any of the kids!

Nitmiluk National Park was our next destination, and was not too far, so we arrived in good time. Fortunately the park was not full and we got set up and booked a canoeing trip for the Katherine Gorge. The park was bone dry and mostly dust, but the pool was fantastic so we quickly headed over for an afternoon of swimming. The pool was surrounded by lush, green grass. The kids took off their shoes and enjoyed the feeling of grass underfoot for the first time in at least a month! (OK, Dave and I did too!) The other highlight of the day was the wildlife - we had wallabies hopping around our camp and the kids hand fed them carrot pieces. They were entranced when one female had a tiny joey which got out of her pouch to hop around. The female was enjoying some free time when the male came over and decided to try to mate. She was not keen and tried to hop away. He grabbed her tail and spent the next 20 minutes hanging on to her tail in a vain attempt to stop her. She was grunting at him as she hopped away (it sounded like "bugger off") and we all thought it was pretty funny! Dave and I were not so entranced when a big male came back into camp during the night and knocked everything over. He was about 10 cms from my head (I was in the tent) and spent about 20 minutes carefully lifting our foam mats to eat anything that had fallen through!

We had just got to sleep when one set of neighbours arrived back and proceeded to open and slam closed their vehicle doors. More than us must have been awoken, as a laconic voice drifted through the camp:

"Jesus, mate, how many bloody doors have you got?"

Our next day at Nitmiluk was spent cleaning, repairing and washing. The pool looked awfully good by the time we took our picnic lunch over! The kids were in the water for so long they all had sore eyes and needed eye drops to be able to blink again! The wallabies entertained us around camp again at dusk, although the male must have got the message as he didn't show up.

We decided to take a trip into Katherine for some essentials on Sunday morning. We left a bit later than anticipated, so it was a horrible surprise when a wallaby walloped into the side of the van. It was being chased by a dog and obviously didn't see us at all. Poor thing died on impact and we now have more to tell the insurance company when the phone has reception!

Edith Falls

We enjoyed the air-conditioning in Katherine so much we nearly didn't continue on to Edith Falls (on the northern edge of Nitmiluk National Park) but boy were we glad we did! The falls emptied into a vast pool which was absolutely magic for swimming. It was 150m across to the falls and we all swam across to check it out. The boys found a 2m rock platform to jump into the water from which kept everyone occupied for hours. Ella graduated from a rock at the water's edge to the high rock during the afternoon. I tried many times, but chickened out at the vital moment, to my disgust. Ella tried to console me. "It's OK Mummy. You still did really well for a mummy."

Dave had a pink floatie to help him!

It was a terribly hot 60kms back to the caravan so we had another swim in the pool. Deciding we needed to carb load for the canoeing the next day, we had dinner at the Bistro. The $15 all you can eat plates were as big as the Northern Territory and even Jackson could not completely empty his. He made several valiant attempts, swimming lengths and playing tag in between!

We finally left the water and went back to try to get some sleep for our big day. Others close by were intent on having a big night and may as well have been in our tent with us for all the protection it afforded from the noise. So it was difficult to get out of bed when the alarm rang the next morning to get organised for the canoeing.

First paddling since NZ

Three double canoes were quickly filled with food, water and us and we left the banks of the Katherine River to paddle upstream through the gorges. Dave paddled with Ella, Lachlan and I were in together and Jackson and Marcus made up the last boat. We had so many waterfights that it is a wonder there are any photos at all, but after a near miss we devised the call "Camera Out" which let us take some photos! We had the most wonderful day paddling up the first three gorges, exploring the rock faces and caves, climbing up into rocks sculpted by the water and swimming. Freshwater crocodiles live in the river but we didn't see any at all, although there are many sandy areas where you can't beach the canoe as they are breeding areas. The rangers trap the salties before declaring the park open for swimming. I'm not sure how they know they have got them all, but it was so hot we enjoyed the swimming anyway. All of us agreed that it was the best day we have had so far.

Jackson and Marcus

Towering cliffs in Gorge 2

Jackson Hole

Sunscreening again!

Camera Out!

                          

Amazing scenery

 

Stay tuned ...

What croc?



Alice - Mataranka

We were going to ceremonially divest
ourselves of our jumpers for the photo
 - but it was way too cold!

Leaving Alice, it seemed that half the state was on fire, and the other half had just been burnt. The drive out of Alice showed us how close the bushfire came to town last time we were here. We travelled back over familiar territory and crossed the Tropic of Capricorn for the third time. It was our first chance to take a photo! There were two huge wedgies on roadkill at the side of the road. They couldn't care less about cars, but kept a wary eye on me as I tried to get closer for a photo. Another moment when a really good zoom lens would have been handy!

Ella said "Two Eagles having a date at a cafe"

Mark Egan's Anmatjere Man Statue

Aileron is home of the huge warrior statue. The spear tip is 17m high!  He has a companion statue and she is quite anatomically correct, as we discovered as we walked closer! We met the sculptor Mark Egan (Ted's son) and bought a piece of Aboriginal art before travelling on.

We had lunch near Central Mount Stuart, which Stuart calculated (very nearly correctly) to be the centre of Australia. At this point we were over 1000 kms from the sea in any direction.

Master Shi-fu beats travel boredom!
Gum has 101 uses.

After kilometres of bushfires, we stopped for the night at Karlu Karlu (Devil's Marbles). The dingoes were still there, although Ella was much braver this time! We were stoked to see a rock wallaby silhouetted on the rocks at sunset.

We spent a very pleasant evening with our neighbours in the next site, Di and Mike, swapping “Best Of” travel tales, as they were heading south and had many great recommendations for our journey north. Just as we were all heading to bed, I noticed a fiery orange glow in the sky, far too close for comfort. And so it was another night of little sleep worrying about fires and wind direction – but knowing this time that there was no-one fighting it. Jackson was worried too, as every hour or so he’d ask “What’s the fire status Mum?”. Fortunately the wind did not change and we did not have to put my emergency plans into action – roll the caravan a couple of metres forward into the gravel, get rid of the gas bottles, wet all the beachtowels and put out the fire at the edge of the campsite! (Someone told us the next day that the whole place was burnt out by lunchtime, so we were very lucky!)

Took these photos of the fire as we left the next morning – it was less than a kilometre away by the time we drove off. We stopped at Tennant Creek to refuel and went up to Battery Hill for morning tea. We decided to book into the caravan park there to go to “Jimmy Hooker’s Bush Tucker Show”. The Battery Hill Gold Mine Tour also looked too good to miss. It was. Ray, our guide, took us into the mine at 3 p.m. and proceeded to yell at us (he had a bad case of industrial deafness) for the next three hours.

Drilling with the Panther Drill

We were the only ones there, so he really went to town, telling us so many colourful stories. He arrived here in the 1970s, passing through (as most people are) and got talked into a job earning “more than the doctors in Adelaide”. He turned up for his first day at work, having no idea what he was going to do. He was more than a little surprised to find that he was going down to the bottom of a mine to fix equipment! He demonstrated all the mining equipment for us – it was 1930s vintage – and let the kids climb aboard for photos. In the “crib” room, there was a large lunch table, which we thought must have been convivial. Ray soon set us straight: “The tables are big enough to take an injured miner while you do first aid. Two miners fit when it gets busy”

A card game in the crib room

You do what on this table?

Ray casts an expert eye over the noodling

At the end of the tour, he took us out to the noodling area and showed us how to find gold in the magnatite rocks. It was abundant, so in no time flat the kids had all filled their jars and we prised them away to get back in time for the Bush Tucker show.

Jimmy and bush coconuts

Jimmy Hooker was another great character. He told us his life story around the campfire, performed some bush poetry that he’d composed, and then showed us a range of bush tucker. We tasted some new things and Lachie was very adventurous, eating a "water caterpillar" from a bush coconut. We all really enjoyed the evening and learnt a lot.

The night took a turn for the worse when an Aboriginal guy started beating up his girlfriend a couple of metres away from our caravan. There was a high  barbed wire fence around the van park, so Dave raced over and shone a torch on them. The guy ran away and the girl then talked us out of calling the police, saying she'd give the boyfriend a second chance. We thought he'd probably had more than two chances already.

We headed out of Tennant Creek the next morning, feeling that we had met two of the town's great characters and two of the town's less fortunate. We stopped at the Tennant Creek Overland Telegraph Station, and found 3 native plants that Jimmy had shown us. Marcus collected some native lemon grass to make us tea. We had a stooge around the station and the graveyard, then headed north. It was already getting hot, and we remembered the 3 year old's comment from the social history museum in Tennant Creek. He had been sent outside for being naughty, but knocked on the door 3 minutes later. "It's too bloody hot out here Mum" he said!

Our travel went well, as Ella was having a great time playing with a tiny tea set that I bought that morning as part of her birthday present. Marcus kindly offered to play "Teapots" with her which brought hoots of laughter from the other two. Ella was disgusted with them. "Well, none of you other buggers will play with me."
("Teapots" turned out to be "Teapots and Evil Guys", but they were both happy!)

We heard on the news that the Fire Alert from Katherine to Darwin has been revised from Catastrophic to Extreme, but is likely to go back up to Catastrophic tomorrow. There will be no more camp fires for a long time, I suspect.

We found more of "Jimmy's" native plants near the John Flynn Memorial. Marcus added the wattle seeds to his collection. They are great as soap and also stop insect bites from itching. It may come in useful as we head into mossie territory again.

Collecting wattle seed pods. The closest Marcus has
come to soap for a month!

We did a free camp at a layby and Jackson was absolutely thrilled to be invited in to a renovated school bus. He has been designing a touring bus for the last couple of weeks and Ian and Alana kindly let us all troop through their home. (Mum -Ian has recently retired from Principal of The Channon school, and Alana worked in the office at Blakebrook School.) Back to the caravan, where Jackson spent an hour and a half tightening all the loose screws and we tried to wedge the fridge back into the kitchen unit. While in the Northern Territory, the fridge has decided to go walkabout.

Met a drover - he was a big fella.

We watched our last big plains sunrise for a while. The vegetation changed dramatically just outside the tiny town of Newcastle Waters, where the drovers used to meet to take stock through notoriously dangerous routes. The introduction of road trains has stopped the droving - the last big drove went through in 1988 as part of the Bicentennial celebrations. We spent the morning absorbing the history of the place and visiting The Junction pub relic and the old store.

A friendly bar-tender in The Junction
Hotel ... but you could still see the bullet holes!

Newcastle Waters was aptly named - water everywhere and we saw lots of water birds, including some brolgas and egrets. We were also very excited to see grass for the first time in a month!

The birds were magnificent

The famous Daly Waters Pub was our  next stop. It was built in the 1930s and is a truly unique place. The whole pub is covered in collections ... tshirts, caps, bras, identity cards, licence plates ... and it is a visual symphony.

We reached Mataranka mid-afternoon and set up quickly so we could swim in the hot pools. We practically ran down the path through the palms and forest - except Ella, who was dawdling along. I asked her what she was doing. "I'm going slowly through the forest to enjoy it - we haven't seen one for a very long time" she said!

Enjoying the cool forest

Hippos in the watering hole

The kids all blew up their swim shirts and made noises like hippos, so the Mataranka Thermal Pools sounded like an African watering hole! After a long swim we visited the replica Elsey Homestead, which was the setting of We of the Never Never, filmed in the 80s. We sat for a while on the homestead verandah, watching the wildlife water at the bore. The rest of the evening was spent feeding the peacocks and wallabies around camp.

Stay tuned ...

Battling Bureaucracy in Alice

The kids were disappointed that we missed the Regatta by a couple of hours, but cheered up enormously when they realised that the campground did a free pancake breakfast on Sunday morning. We duly attended this morning, where we met up with Ukulele Laurie, from Kings Canyon. We invited him to come busking with us, but he was off to Hermansburg. After a good scoff of pancakes, we got organised to go busking.

Despite the fact that we had booked in with the Market Organiser, and had made four phone calls to the Alice Springs Council to confirm permission, the Ranger had not been notified and he would not let us busk. The Markets were pretty busy too as it was a big weekend in The Alice, so it was a real shame.

However, we did learn a few things while getting into our 1930s costumes. Marcus forgot his boots. Ella has almost grown out of her new dress made so lovingly by Gran. I forgot my 1930s hat. I also forgot to organise footwear for myself. So we have a few things to do before our next attempt.

We trundled back to camp and spent the rest of the day here. The kids had a swim and tried to trick me into getting in, telling me that it was the warmest pool they had been in yet. I cottoned on to the fact that none of them were actually in the water when they told me that, so I didn't fall for it! Lachie and Ella had a great time on the jumping pillow, Marcus took the harmonica into the van to learn a break, Jackson, Dave and I started learning a couple of new songs and the day disappeared.

Tomorrow we head north on our way to Darwin. We are looking forward to the hot springs along the way after all our icy pool experiences lately. We are also looking forward to the temperatures warming again, as it is freezing sleeping in the tent since the cold change came through!

Stay tuned ...

Opal fever in Coober Pedy

After arriving at the van park in Coober Pedy, the wind had intensified and seemed likely to blow our tent away and into Lake Eyre! We were all employed holding down tent corners, guy ropes and poles as Dave battled the wind and the incredibly rocky ground banging in every tent peg we could find with the axe. Not long after that we discovered the hammer, which we thought the kids had lost coconutting at Mission Beach! This caravan is like the Tardis at times, and a shoe box at others!

The Opal Beetle!

The kids didn’t mind being in a giant sandblaster and ran off to play on the playground, while Dave and I sat huddled between the caravan and the tent wondering if we had made a terrible mistake in booking in for three nights! Thinking it better to get out of the wind, we drove into town to have a look around. The Underground Serbian Church was our first stop and it was so peaceful down below ground we couldn’t even hear the howling gale. Tempting as it was to convert and stay, we decided that we were too unOrthodox, so we found the Opal Beetle. The lady  there told us that high winds were common in October, but unusual for now, so we made a mental note never to return in October. She chatted to us about opal as she dusted all the red dust off her shelves and we learnt the difference between opal and potch.

We wandered into another opal shop, and spent the next hour and a half being thoroughly entertained by Nathan Aretos, a Greek second generation  opal miner. He was opal mining more than he was attending school at the age of 13, found a huge amount of opal in his father’s mine by 15 and his family was swindled by his father’s business partner, who ran off with the profits. He was sorting through opal as he told us his life story. His misfortunes began when he set his house alight as a child, then as a young teen he fell 87 feet down a mine shaft. He survived that somehow, and also a burst appendix (no small deal in Coober Pedy hundreds of kilometres from anywhere). He then had a life-threatening infection and is now battling bone cancer. He was such a character – the kids thought he was hilarious describing his 2 brothers: “One is a druggie and an idiot, and the other one is just an idiot”! He told us where to go to “noodle” for opal (and where not to so we didn’t fall down the many open mine shafts) and recommended the restaurant next door for dinner. We hadn’t eaten out at all on the trip, and as the wind was still doing its best to polish the town with outback sand, we thought that a long meal would be a fine plan! The food was great (and even if it wasn’t, it seemed like it was after 2 months of caravan meals!), the servings were huge (Jackson had to go outside and walk up and down before he could finish his lasagne!) and the door was firmly closed against the wind! Miraculously, the wind had dropped a little by the time Ella was almost asleep, so we headed back to see if our tent was still there.

Some of the opal on display at Umoona

We awoke the next morning to a clear, calm morning so we cancelled our retreat plans and went to visit Umoona.

Umoona was a working mine until the Council decreed in the 70s that there would be no more mining in town. Our guide told us that lots of the old timers still think most of the opal is buried in town. As people enlarge their underground homes, it is common to find thousands of dollars worth of opal in the process! We watched the informative movie in an underground theatre, toured an underground home and spent ages in the underground museum. We thought we'd continue the underground theme, so visited the Boot Hill Cemetery, reasoning that a town like this would have an interesting graveyard. It did! The 40 nationalities who live here were well represented with unusual surnames and one story in particular caught our interest. Karl Bratz was dying of cancer when he decided that as everything he'd ever built was made of corrugated iron he wanted a corrugated iron coffin. His headstone is a keg!

Coober Pedy was named in the 1920s, from the Aboriginal words kupa piti meaning “white man’s burrow”. The Aboriginals were amazed at the crazy white men who were trying to live underground in a place so far from water. Water continues to be a huge challenge to the town, but things have progressed slightly since the 1920’s when each person had a 2 gallon ration for the week! Half the town’s inhabitants live underground, so there are not many houses, nor are there any trees or grass. It is a truly bizarre, incredibly interesting frontier town!

These photos are of the main part of town. Coober Pedy only got street names in the mid 80s, as everything referred to the hill it was dug into eg Postman's Hill.

Cheetah the cat lived at the office, so Ella went over to get a cat fix before we went out on the second morning. She said he had his own "spinny chair" in the office. The kids were really keen to try some noodling, so we went to the public area for a scratch around. The kids “pegged” their claims and started mining with a gleam in their eyes! They were not keen to leave, but we drove out of town to The Breakaways, part of the Stuart Range. The views over incredibly barren gibber plains (Moon Plain) were so other worldly that you could see why many movies have been filmed here. Mad Max and Priscilla Queen of the Desert are probably the best known. We also followed part of the longest fence in the world, The Dog Fence, which was built to keep the dingoes out of the southern sheep country. The fence was easily visible, as the tumbleweeds had built up on the southern side!

The two hills are dogs in Aboriginal legend, Moon Plain
in the background.

Many of you have been asking about the busking. The Haystack Mountain Hermits have been the Haystack Mountain Historians so far! However, we’ve bravely booked to busk in the Todd Mall Markets as we pass back through Alice on Sunday. Rehearsal time (other than in the Blunderbuss whilst driving along) is hard to come by, so we drove back to the noodling area to have a much needed practice and entertained the local dogs and birds, who all joined in! The kids were dying to noodle again, so we stayed there for a few hours while they searched. We were about to give up when Lachlan found a small chip, which encouraged another half an hour of frenzied digging! The sun went down and we were forced to give up, but we dropped by to show Nathan our finds. He said Lachie’s was able to be cut into a stone. The other chips were definitely opal but too small to be worth anything. He then gave us a couple of uncut chips so everyone had something to stop fights! We were genuinely sorry to say goodbye to him.

The Umoona Aboriginal Community has a bus, which they hail wherever and whenever they like. The Umoona Bus and the Blunderbuss are exactly the same. Everywhere we go in town we leave a trail of very annoyed locals, wondering why the bus didn’t stop for them.  Three very inebriated men tried to get into the bus as we were leaving Nathan’s shop and were not pleased when we kept driving! Much longer here and we’ll have a rock thrown through the window!

After another freezing night, we were up early ready for the 685km drive back to Alice. As I can’t play the double bass as we travel, I took the wheel for the first 260 kms to Marla, which meant we could run through our songs. We passed by our last free camp which we dubbed “Windy Camp” in the manner of the early explorers, and for once it had nothing to do with Marcus! At one stage, we had to stop on the highway for a herd of fat herefords to cross to better grass on the other side. They were in really good nick – we even saw some green grass in the outback! Dave drove on from Marla and I plugged the computer in to the inverter to catch up on the blog. Writing on the go is making it easier to keep up and I post when we get broadband reception – which hasn’t been often lately! So if I am getting too verbose, apologies – but gentlemen, we have the technology!

Crossing back into the Northern
Territory

We saw a dead dingo by the side of the road as we drove towards Erldunda, so now we can take you up on your excellent suggestion of “The Twelve Days of Road Kill” Virginia! It was our third visit to Erldunda, so the place seemed very familiar. Certainly the kids knew where the iceblocks were! Dave got into the back again to play guitar with the boys, Jackson came into the front and designed caravan improvements in his sketchbook, we saw 4 more wild camels and I drove on … and on … 

After driving 100kms through burnt out but still smoking bushfires, we arrived in Alice to find that the Henley on Todd Regatta was on this morning … which meant we drove what seemed like another 685kms looking for a van park spot! We got one in the fourth place we tried, got sorted and the kids bolted off to play on the jumping cushion until well after dark.

Stay tuned ...

a 1600km (return) detour to Coober Pedy

Leaving Watarrka National Park, we packed up and got onto the road fairly early as we were taking the world's longest detour of over 800kms south to Coober Pedy. Although it seems more sensible to visit Coober Pedy later in the trip as we swing around the bottom of the country, by then it will be summer and Coober Pedy reaches insane temperatures of 45 to over 50 degrees!! Not an option!

Ella was thrilled to see lots of horses as we drove down Luritja Road towards the Lasseter Highway again. They were enjoying a frolic in the cool morning air, and we avoided hitting any of them! We stopped for morning tea at the Lasseter Highway junction and were all excited to find a bottle of Gran's pickles to enliven our Saos and cheese! Thanks Gran! A ferocious cross wind sprang up as we travelled East, so strong that we were drifting around the road a bit, which was not fun. Especially as the road trains approached and passed!

We celebrated our first morning of no fights at all with Spinner iceblocks (which the kids had been coveting) at Erldunda, where we rejoined the Stuart Highway. The drive towards South Australia was through fairly unremarkable flat country.  Crossing into South Australia was the highlight of the day!

The skies darkened as we drove south and at 3:05 p.m. we used the windscreen wipers for the first time on this trip! They were turned off again at 3:07, as it was just a light sprinkle! The winds did not stop, and it was an uncomfortable drive passing lots of road trains until we decided we'd had enough, and stopped at a layby. We were about 200kms as the crow flies from Ground Zero of the 1950s British Atomic Tests at Maralinga. As we started to set up, a freight train passed and the kids were so excited that the driver waved and blared the horn at them! We cooked up a vegetable curry with all the vegetables we were not allowed to take any further into South Australia, and tried to play some music before dark. It was pretty miserable with the wind swirling around throwing red grit and dust into our faces, drinks and dinner. We had to retreat into the caravan on dark, where we spent an uncomfortable night, being buffeted repeatedly until we wondered if we would turn over. The mouse plague was evident outside - the wind didn't bother them at all as they spent the night chewing our floor mats.

We had no problems getting up early as we were all keen to get out of the wind and the red dust. The sunrise was one of the most beautiful we have seen, with vivid colours bleeding away into a pale, pearly, early morning light. Unfortunately the strong wind also followed us the last 200kms to Coober Pedy, although the landscape as we approached cheered us up. The opal mining slag heaps were everywhere - an amazing sight!

Stay tuned ...

Watarrka National Park

Spinifex pigeons

Our first morning at Watarrka National Park began fairly slowly, as we were all pretty tired after all the walking and driving of the past week or so. However, we were keen to experience the King's Canyon Rim Walk, so we packed our backpacks with lots of water, bandaids and lunch and drove out to King's Canyon (after filling up with petrol at $2.09 per litre, our most expensive fill yet). There were spinifex pigeons all over the place with bronze plumage and long topknots, which Ella thought very cute, and Lachie failed in his attempts to catch.

A pause climbing Heart Attack Hill

We set off up Heart Attack Hill - over 100m straight up a long rock staircase. Puffing and blowing, we stopped for a rest and a look at the surrounding vista. We met a very game couple there - he must have been 80 and his wife not much younger - also walking the Canyon Rim. We kept meeting them all day as they kept pace with us. The walk flattened out to follow the rim of the canyon, affording amazing views and an attack of vertigo for me! The track went far too close to the edge for my liking, and the kids went even closer to the edge, of course.

Surprising this photo turned out - I was shaking!

Weathered rocky cliffs

 

The Lost Race - "We're the Hukawi"

Along the way were the weathered, buttressed domes of the Lost City - looking for all the world like an abandoned city of a lost race.

The track led to the edge of the canyon, where nice, solid steps took us down into a small valley filled with pools of water, cycads and river red gums. We took advantage of the lovely, shady gorge to eat out lunch and have a rest before attempting the second rim walk. There was a large pool surrounded by the "Garden of Eden" but I couldn't put off the scary rim walk forever, so we climbed the steps up to the other side of the gorge. It wasn't as bad as the first side, thank goodness, and we wandered along enjoying the views and the information boards.

The whole place seems ancient, with weathered, loose rock chunks stacked on top of each other. It seems as though whole cliffs could come tumbling down at any time, but the most "recent" falls were in the 1930s. Some of the rocks were rippled, proving that shallow lakes or seas used to be here. It seemed incredible to think of water above the dry canyon.

Ancient ripples turned into rock

Water was all that was on our minds as we returned though, as we had run out. After rehydrating, the kids went straight to the pool. The water was absolutely freezing but the kids had a ball there while Dave and I walked up to book another night to give us a rest day. We were all knackered and didn't want to go anywhere at all the next day.

We took the opportunity to sleep in, lying in bed reading until hunger got the better of the boys and they hopped up to make pancakes. Laurie, our neighbour in the next site, had a new ukulele and came over to join us while we played some music. His family came over to listen and before long there was quite a crowd. Laurie really enjoyed himself. At one stage, he was copying Marcus and his strumming patterns so intently that when Marcus adjusted his hat, Laurie did the same!

We spent the rest of the day swimming and reading. I needed a book, so I bought The Dig Tree, about the Burke and Wills expedition and became engrossed in it for the rest of the day.

That night, the full moon rising over the George Gill Range was spectacular, but we were only just awake to see it!

Stay tuned ...