We woke up feeling bleary eyed and quite pissed off at our neighbours, even more annoying as they packed up and left before 7am!! Do they not suffer hangovers -swines!
We sauntered down to the hot springs for a very pleasant dip in the 34 ° water, Claire even managed to do an impression of titanic underwater!!
We had a lazy day in the area as we decided to camp at the Elsey National Park close by on the Tuesday evening. We stopped off at the Territory Manor Motel at 11am to watch the free Barramundi feeding show, it was quite amazing, this fella had trained the fish to eat out of his hand and they also allowed him to pick them out of the water! Most amusing though was watching a woman drop her camcorder into the water...then proclaim it will be ok, she'd done it before!!!!
Later, we enjoyed a short walk along the river, but only Claire braved it into the water as the possibility of crocs was still present in my mind (despite the rangers telling us it was perfectly safe to swim) and I ain't taking that risk. She did only dunk herself between some rocks though....
We then collected firewood and treated ourselves to a very scrumptious roast dinner of chicken this time. We managed to find the smallest chicken in the world, but it still touched all the sides of our petite camp oven. We cooked it perfectly though and it was another roaring success.
Wednesday we set off east along the Roper Highway towards Roper Bar, most of which was on red dirt. Roper Bar seemingly only exists for fishing. You are very close to the Gulf of Carpenteria here and the majority of people in the campsite were there for that one reason only. The campsite was ok and the best thing was talking to a funny German guy who had just been up Cape York in his Suzuki Jimny (a very small 4wd!), he was really kind and gave us all the diesel prices along the highway so we could judge how much to fill up at certain stations! He also gave us advice on the river crossings we were going to do in the next few days.
Thursday we set off south east along the old Savannah Highway through the (proposed) Limmen National Park with it's multiple river crossings and empty roads. It was a wonderful drive through some very pretty landscapes.
We cracked on and got to Butterfly Gorge for a swim, quite nice but sadly the mozzies were out and we decided we couldn't hack it so we carried on to the Lost City National Park campsite for the night. As this is still only a proposed National Park it was free! And we had nice new toilets all to ourselves as no-one else camped here the night. We got up Friday and did the small walk around the lost cities (there are loads of these around) we found them to be very lovely!!
We hit the red dirt again and had a very picturesque drive all the way into Borroloola, some 238km's. We wouldn't normally have stopped at Borroloola, but we had met this bloke in a pub (heard this before perchance?) in Alice Springs who gave us a number of a friend of his (Glen) who teaches the young Aboriginal kids to play football (English Football that is, none of this squashed ball rubbish). So we called Glen a few days before we got into the town to see if he would mind us watching a game, he was the most friendly and welcoming guy! He was delighted that we wanted to watch the kids play so we arranged to go watch on Saturday morning at the local cricket ground.
We set up camp at the caravan site and chilled for the afternoon. Next morning we were a little late for kick off, but when we arrived he had 2 games going! We were thoroughly impressed by the skill and commitment showed by the kids, it was great to watch and you could tell they loved playing it! Even the girls played with the lads and no prisoners were taken, it was like watching Leeds of the 70's! Most of the kids preferred to play barefoot, but this caused a few grazed toes! Glen later told us that the kids take part in competitions and he has to get them to play in boots and shin pads, but cannot give them out until the day or they go missing! Also, they take some time to get used to playing in boots, starting off kicking the ground too much!
After the fun of some English football we got on the road at about midday, drove all day and only just got to Hell's Gate roadhouse by dusk. Passing through some very pretty rivers on the way, most of the river crossings were easy, all but one of them actually. We were warned about the Calvert River all the way back at Lake Argyle by a lady with a brand new Travelander (automatic rooftop tent-come-trailer tent with all mod-cons, our dream set-up...!) She said people were wrecking their cars at that crossing on big boulders that you cannot see. This obviously worried us and we asked everyone we met how this particular river was. Most responses were baffled and said it was bumpy but fine and this is how we found it too (I think they must have been new to 4wding! And didn't want to damage their new purchase!) Hell's Gate was not as bad as it might sound, they had an ok shower and decent enough toilets for $20 a night, they also had some cute frogs near the leaky taps!
Sunday we had another off road trek ahead, east along the Savannah Way then we go south in towards Lawn Hill National Park, stopping off at Kingfisher Camp for a nosey first (it would have been a lovely place to stay, but we got there too early in the day!) The track in was very sandy in places, we almost got bogged, but Priscilla tackled it with ease! We got to Lawn Hill at about lunchtime and set up camp. It was a nice campsite right next to the gorge. Sadly we had a very windy night (not me this time) and the tent managed to get a small rip in the corner!! Time for Claire's handy work....
That's all for now folks,
Jen, of Jen and Claire Fame
xx
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