Day 46 – Free camping with Cas

Cass here – and wow, it sure is great to be somewhere warm for a change.  The past few days have been shorts and t-shirt weather and it is truly amazing to think that just days ago, I was wearing a scarf, gloves and warm jacket in some of the coldest Gippsland weather that we have experienced.  Right now, I am wearing a hat and sunnies, and sporting a new tan already. J

 However, the warmth of family definitely competes with any rise in temperature.  It is lovely to be back with the folks, swapping stories, laughing at our inside jokes and frequently sharing knowing glances about some of the more interesting travel folk.  Camping is definitely something one has to relax into, and when I say relax, I mean really chill. It does seem that the parentals have developed some new habits, which really have to be seen to be appreciated. They start and finish sentences for each other, hand each other things without being asked, laugh at jokes that are really not very funny at all and even seem to sink into their camp chairs at the same time, crossing their legs in synchrony!   I think they are happy to have me here – after six weeks of their own company, a new face around the van is obviously a bit of a novelty.  I have noticed that long service leave with its accompanying extra time, causes the participants to become very concerned about the smallest of things.  I woke up to two beaming faces when I exited my tent this morning (I think that meals and the presence of a new face are events to be savoured).  Tea and porridge were awaiting me and I settled in to watch the parentals in full ‘camp routine’ mode.  There was a lengthy discussion about the events of the night – the snorers, noisy neighbours, nosy neighbours, how each of us slept or didn’t sleep and a lengthy discussion about the plans for the day.  (As I said, details seem to occupy a lot of air time!)

Pack up was a smoothly run operation with everyone attending to their own jobs – Mum obsessively sweeping out the van and compulsively tidying everything in sight, Dad rushing around the outside, packing up chairs, tables, mats and gas bottles – all in all a smooth quick operation.

I am happy to report that in general they seem to be getting along very well and that despite the rowing debacle in the Katherine Gorge yesterday, their relationship is back on track and singing!  Bring on the next 900 kilometres to Karumba!

Kim back in the driver’s seat – well we don’t have much to report today, mainly because we drove for 900 kms – it is a record and the kilometre slave driver (Rich) kept us on the road from 7 am to 5 pm today!  (Mataranka to a free camp on the Queensland border en route to Mt Isa – nothing in between to really stop for). Sadly we have the same distance tomorrow (through Mt Isa and then due north to Karumba on the bottom of the gulf of Carpentaria) – so tonight is Cassie’s first go at a ‘free camp’ and already she has commented on the feeling of isolation.  Rich hasn’t helped by making comments about dingos.

 As we are a bit lacking in news, I will instead dot point some of the more interesting things we have seen of late:

 ·         Northern Territory road rules are interesting – to start with the speed restriction is 130!

o   Today we saw a bikie gang on the road, with one of the bikes towing another one with a rope!

o   Northern Territorians, when overtaking have an interesting habit – because the roads are so straight and long, they tend to come up to you, pull out into the right hand lane and just sit there for a bit, sussing out whether it is safe to overtake – they can sit there for quite some time, just watching ahead to see what is coming over the next blind rise or out of the mirage, and finally they put metal-to-the-pedal and overtake – quite disconcerting when it happens the first time!

·         At the last camp site, (which was one of our favourites so far ... thanks Fingers for the ‘heads up’ on the Territory Manor) there was a ‘cane toad collection point’.  The idea was to get a plastic bag and gloves from the office, and then head out around the grounds and collect as many cane toads of possible, putting them in the bag and then depositing them into the big bin that is the collection point.  The night’s loot is then collected by the park owner who freezes them to death in a freezer (how Australian – but then again Rich stomped on one and found out why freezing is less messy!) and then uses them for fertilizer!  I kid you not – this is really the modus operandi – the caravan park owner is obviously a bit of a fanatic about cane toads and said that last year his park guests had collected 4 000 toads and this year they were already ahead of that number.  (For the overseas readers, cane toads were introduced from Brazil to control a beetle in the sugar fields, but have then absolutely taken over the Northern Territory and Queensland and decimated the native populations of lizards, snakes, small rodents etc.)  Gloves are used as the cane toads are poisonous with two poison pouches on the top of each shoulder – this is how they kill so many animals, because not only do they deprive the native frogs, snakes and lizards of food, but they kill anything that tries to eat them – such as snakes, crocodiles and birds.

·         Also at the last camp site, the camp manager has a large aerated pond where he keeps a few rather large barramundi (best sporting fish in Aus and cousin to the Nile Perch – apparently only one body scale is different). At set times each day all the campers come and watch him hand feed these fish, at which time he also catches one by thrusting his hand into its mouth (with glove on) and picks up this10 kg meter long fish for us to all photograph. Nothing much surprises us in the Northern Territory anymore.

·         The joys of long service leave – we spent ten kilometres today debating whether it is correct to say a ‘mouse’ plague or a ‘mice’ plague. (I am sure Denise Whittaker can help out?!)

·         We ran out of fuel today (it was calculated to within a kilometre as we did have some spare – just the kilometre was on the wrong side of the calculation) but running out of fuel is not very good for a diesel vehicle and we had a few heart stopping moments until the Kia got her mojo back (we had to crank the motor a fair bit longer than one would like to pump the fuel through before it would start, then the injector pump had air bubbles in and had to self bleed while running a bit rough – ordinarily you don’t think too much about this, but suddenly the reality of being 200km from any form of house, phone, reception, let alone a mechanic, can be a little sobering) – the reason we ran out of the juice is because the last Road House charged $1.95 per litre of diesel (the Warragul price for diesel is $1.35!)  This is the most expensive fuel we have come across – more expensive even than the Nullarbor Plain.

·         The Northern Territory is an interesting place and one is constantly surprised by what can be found in different kinds of places – today we stopped at a Road House and behind the barred and very unfriendly looking exterior, were two stunningly pretty blonde girls (one Irish and one Aussie) serving at what appeared to be a fast food counter.  So unexpected in the middle of nowhere, with no town, no other houses, no community etc.

·         We are parked tonight next to a couple who have been on the road for over four months and who travel with their Burmese cat!

·         The drive today was 450 km due south (with no bends in the road) then one bend which took us 450 kilometres due east.  We saw three hills and 4 roadhouses on the whole drive – this is a vast and open country.

·         We have a little spider in our van who has been named Fred and has been with us since Kununurra – we are having a crisis of conscience about taking him over the Queensland border tomorrow.

Well that is all the news for today – tomorrow we hope to make Karumba which is on the Gulf of Carpentaria – and we hope to be there for at least two days because it is another 500 km from there to Cairns on the north east Queensland coast.

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