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Published: August 10th 2012
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Leaving King Fisher Camp we travelled through Bowthorn Station towards Hell's Gates Roadhouse, so named because in the old days services and police patrols went no further than here and once South or East of Hell's Gates you were on your own! Today it's just a lonely roadhouse with an airstrip over the road and fuel that cost $2 per litre. We needed their toilet so bought some obligatory fuel!
The roads are dusty, rocky and corrugated and this day we did close on 370km of them, it's taxing on the driver and the vehicles and the dust finds it's way into every nook and cranny regardless of how hard you have worked to seal and protect it. The dust, probably more than any other single thing, is getting us down, every thing you touch in or out of the car or trailer gets you dirty and, as when we are bush camping water is at a premium, you can't always wash down, so it gets on your clothes and it's virtually impossible to get off. All our clothes a tinged with red and Jen complains, with due cause, of it under her fingernails and ingrained in her
hands. So we clean it off at every stop as best we can and deal with it; we made the mistake of bringing white pillowcases, they're not white anymore lol.
Leaving Hell's Gates we headed toward Borroloola but were intending to find a nice quiet bush camp by one of the many creeks or rivers you have to cross, unfortunately none of them were suitable. There has been much burning off in the area with little spot fires all over the place, we assume it is intentional, as a result thousands of acres are blackened along the roadside and beyond, our best guess is that it helps bring the green grass back which is better feed for the numerous cattle that inhabit this region.
On one of the river crossings there was an indigenous stockman trying to get his car started, we offered to help, what a sight the vehicle was. It was an old Fairlane, I think, and had no windscreen or rear screen and not a panel on it undamaged, the battery had had it and it was overheating as well but he was traveling home after spending the day at the
Borroloola Show; sorry we missed it!!! A local passed by soon after we had stopped and took over, so we headed on up the road, the stockman started his car and got going too, no RTA inspections in the Territory it seems! We stopped at the NT border for the obligatory photo at the well graffitied sign before pushing on. Eventually we made Borroloola and as I said because we couldn't find a suitable bush camp we went to the caravan park in town and rued that fact that we paid so much and still only got luke warm showers!
It had been a big day, so we shouted ourselves takeaway, it was after all a public holiday and show day, the least we could do! Up early the next morning, we chatted with some of the grey nomads about the way we were going and possible camp spots. Town River got good wraps so we thought we would see if we could make that, though that would be another significant days travel along those wretched corrugated roads! Along the road, as usual, are many creek crossings, they require you to slow right down, they are usually
not much more than a big puddle maybe a car length across and not very deep, but the constant slowing down, for them and to miss the numerous bull dust holes in the roads, drops your average speed on the trip significantly.
We stopped at the Southern Lost City, a remarkable rock formation, for lunch and decided to waste some time and get some needed exercise by walking the 2.5km loop track through these incredible formations, it was beautiful and a welcome break from the car. It is so named because in some respects the formations resemble decaying buildings or ruins, it would have been incredible at dawn or dusk as the colours of the rocks at those times would have been simply amazing. There is another similar formation, bigger and more spectacular but quite a detour, called the Western Lost City but we did not have time to go there. As it was it was getting close to our 3pm into camp schedule that we like to keep, it was unlikely we were going to make Town River so decided to check out the camp at Butterfly Springs, supposedly the only waterhole in these parts where
you could swim? The camp site was dirty and dusty and a fire had been through there reasonably recently, so it wasn't the best camp site and the pit toilets were simply disgusting, but the water hole was nice and refreshing and you could get wet and cool and free of dust for a while so that was a bonus!
Another early morning in order to pack up and get on the road, Town River was only 75 k's up the road but we hoped that arriving early would assist us in finding a nice spot as people moved out. We had heard that there are two places at Town River, the choice spots right on the river bank, usually occupied by Grey Nomads and their caravans and the spots further up away from the river. We arrived in good time about 10:30am and scoped out the place, sure enough the river bank sites were choice but it was chocker block full of vans, however I decided to go for a walk along and see what was happening, down near the boat ramp were some young blokes who seemed to be packing up, they were but would
be an hour or so, but the place on the river they had been occupying was plum. The deal was done, it was going to be ours next, we pulled up, cracked out the generator and the coffee machine and had a coffee while they finished packing up and we watched over our site to protect it from the marauding grey nomads who pulled in every so often.
As you can see by the photo this is a brilliant spot where we will stay for a few days, put the boat in, fish and relax and hopefully get the kids to do some school? Only 120km till we hit the black top for the ride into Katherine and away from the dust for a while, bring it on!
Steve, Jen, Zan and Will.
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