A Long-overdue Contribution

Well, it has been a fair while since I made a contribution to the family tales, so I have way too much to catch up on. I did write another story which I decided not to publish after sitting on it for a few weeks. It was a sad tale of sinking into a fairly serious depression in Alice Springs and I am keeping it for my records, but probably don’t need to share the gruesome details with the world.

A relatively short summary is that the 9 months of cold wet weather and various challenges that this has given us during our journey, plus 10 straight days of rain and wet culminating in freezing cold wet conditions in Alice Springs added to a couple of technical disasters (I put the starlink in the wrong place and it was run over, and one of the solar panels was badly damaged) had Sarah and I seriously discussing how we could bail out and give the trip away.

We had been talking half seriously about it for some months, but things were pretty dire. We had had enough. We had given ourselves a target for Darwin, since we had an appointment there with Mum who was coming in to see us and spend a week of holiday time with us there. We nearly didn’t make it, but after some long considerations we figured out how to drag ourselves reluctantly up the road – now basically not hopeful at all about ever having dry and warm times.

And thankfully the weather turned and we haven’t seen rain since we left Alice Springs. It has made a huge difference to the whole family, and we’ve had an excellent time since then, although it has taken me a long time to get back to writing about it.

As I write we are sitting just outside of Broome. Yesterday was my Birthday, and we had a great afternoon in town after a morning of chores (laundry is always with you). But that would be skipping ahead a long way.

On the way north from Alice Springs we stopped at Banka Banka Station for a night. Everyone camped there was heading north or south and only staying for a night, since it is roughly halfway between Alice and Katherine. It was a good dry and warm spot to stop, and we enjoyed a refreshing beer and a very hot Indian curry from the curry van plying his trade in the campground. It was too hot for Sarah (which has to be pretty hot, since she is no novice when it comes to spicy curry).

On from Banka Banka the next day to Katherine, where we stayed in a campground just to the south of town. They had lots of animals there and the kids went to multiple feedings while we were in the camp. We also went out to Litmiluk National Park a couple of times (the dog went into doggy daycare) to see Katherine Gorge and Edith Falls. Sarah has already reported on these, but I’ve added a couple of my photos here.

After Katherine we headed off to Darwin where we met up with Mum. She had a cabin in the Howard Springs Caravan Park where we were camped, and the kids very happily moved in with her for the week. We had a great time in Darwin, eating out and sightseeing and basically having a full-on holiday while Mum was there. Sarah had worked hard to get the time off, and then paid for it when the holiday was over, but overall I think the week off was worth the working pain. One of the joys of running your own small business.

I had been to Darwin previously, but in my late twenties and on a soccer playing trip (well the others in the team played soccer – I mostly stood around on the field sweating and nursing my ever-present hangover and moaning about the heat and humidity). As a consequence, I remembered very little of Darwin, although walking down the main party street shook loose a few cobwebs, and I had a pretty clear memory of entering a bar called Shenanigans on at least one occasion ( I don’t remember ever leaving that bar).

There is plenty of life in Darwin and with Mum in town, Sarah and I were able to sneak off for a couple of much anticipated dates. The first was to an all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant on one of the many waterfront areas. It had been part of the plan for a few months and didn’t disappoint. We each had a baker’s dozen of fresh oysters and then plenty of prawns and other very tasty seafood. We finished the night sitting on the waterfront park and watching a fisherman wrestling with his fishing rod (and something big on the other end) for about half an hour before the fish got away. We were secretly wondering if we might see the dude get eaten by a croc while we watched, but thankfully there were no crocs looking for dinner there that night.

Another date was at an Asian restaurant (Chow!) at another part of town, where Sarah had the best Laksa she has ever had. A big call from someone who enjoys a laksa as often as possible. We also loved the night markets (more excellent food) and day markets (many, many people) and other interesting things to do and see in Darwin (most of which Sarah has previously documented).

While in Darwin we collected our replacement starlink system (starlink gave us the replacement for free), so that was a big relief that we were up and running with reliable internet again. We also had people trying to steal from us in the night, which made us pretty nervous for the next couple of nights (and surprisingly after that as well – every noise in the night had us waking up and investigating). I did  some minor work on waterproofing the tent which has suffered badly after 9 months of being constantly wet.

After a week of holiday in Darwin, we needed to ease back into the camping/working/schooling lifestyle, and we decide to go to Dundee Beach for what turned into four nights. This gave us a chance to go somewhere that there was not a lot to do, and we just camped and Sarah caught up on some work and I caught up on some study and some schooling for the kids. It was nice and quiet there and suited our needs very well.

From there we headed south to Litchfield National Park (Zebra Stone campground just outside the National Park boundary). Zebra Stone was a simple campground with heaps of room, som pretty basic facilities and a canteen with a basic fish and chip offering, which we happily coughed up for on our first night there.

Litchfield was a great place to visit. Unlike Kakadu, all of the gorges and swimming holes and places of interest were within a reasonable driving distance (Kakadu is huge, so getting around requires lots of time and petrol money). Due to the dog not being welcome within the National Park, Sarah and I took it in turns to take the kids into the park while the other undertook to mind the dog (and work/study etc). The gorges and swimming holes were spectacular, and the weather was perfect for lolling about in the swimming holes. I was able to put the thought of crocs out of my head for most of the time (despite that at one of the places we were swimming, a person had been attacked by a croc a couple of weeks earlier).

From Litchfield we headed off to Kununurra – but that can be my next story. As usual we had to take care of logistics between stops. The supermarket in Kununurra was going to be OK (Coles), we needed to take our own water, and we were heading into expensive fuel territory (more expensive) so filled up the jerry cans and tank as we passed through Katherine. Even with the Jerry cans, we only have a range of perhaps 700km with the full load, so we have to take the pain of the diesel prices wherever we go.

We also tried to pick up my replacement credit card at the post office, but despite that the mail was there for me to collect, the post office didn’t have staff for the mail area, so they couldn’t help me with it – “Come back tomorrow at 8am.”. I think they may have their priorities confused somewhat. We wasted about an hour and a half in Katherine waiting for the Post Office staff to get back from lunch, and then going back to find that the post office doesn’t actually do mail.

We generally don’t travel too far in one day (packing up and setting up in one day adds about 3 hours to the day of travel, so we limit ourselves to about 550km in a day) , so we overnighted in Timber Creek on the way to Kununurra – this is a small settlement basically surrounding a fuel station/pub/takeaway/caravan park and huge bat colony. It was a good stop, and close enough to Kununurra that we could arrive in the morning the next day, do some shopping and set up our camp in the early afternoon.