Heartbreak Hotel

DAY 265

It feels cool this morning, I can hear people already moving around outside, the light is not even breaking through, we are nice and cosy within the confines of our sleeping bags so getting up is not an option.

At about 7.30 the sun is barely shedding a warm glow, we decide to get up and get packed up. Andy is out and the kettle is on, I am tidying the bed up and emptying the contents of the tent ready for folding away. The only thing I leave in the tent is the toaster to get our breakfast ready.

Once we are breakfasted, we pack up, Molly wanders past to say goodbye, she leaves us with her details to contact her if we are happen to be passing her in Tasmania. One of the guys that controls the parking at the campsite appears, it is about 8.00 he says “where is everyone?” If you look around you the campsite that was so full last night is now less than half empty as one by one everyone resumes their life on the road.

We are soon packed up, we are soon washed and on the road ourselves by 9.00, but before we leave Daly Waters we look at the Oldest Hangar in the Northern Territory that is now derelict apart from some artefacts and the information boards depicting what the site was used for. Sad really when you look around, I won’t say it was a thriving community but this site served its historic purpose by being the base for Qantas for refuelling flights between Singapore and Sydney. Amy Johnson also landed here.

During the war years it became a bomber fighter base for American aeroplanes, after the war years they applied for a grant and as the Australian Government deemed it was such an important historical site they set aside some money to fund the project for tourism purposes and posterity.

Back out on the Stuart Highway, we stop as we have spotted some road kill with what looks to be a Wedge Tailed Eagle, trouble is this is a busy road, once the eagles have flown they just take a while to come back. I manage to photograph a Bird of Prey but it is not a Wedge Tailed Eagle, it could be a Little Eagle but I am not sure. Still I am sure I will get more Eagle opportunities, but then that’s what I said when we were on the Nullarbor and they did not present themselves after that.

A couple of kilometres on we find the turning for the Carpentaria Highway right next to the BP station, we will top up the diesel tanks here as we are heading to a fairly remote location, it will be a while before we hit bitumen once we are past Boroloola, so to keep the tanks topped up is the best idea. The Diesel here is $1.59 per litre, so from here on in for a while the diesel will be expensive again, but we have to bear the cost in order to achieve what we want.

I make a driver reviver coffee for Andy and pay for one for myself, it is only instant coffee, but hey its coffee.

Well, we are on the Carpentaria Highway; it feels like we left Katherine days ago, but it was only yesterday morning, it is the weirdest feeling today I feel caught in that time vacuum, I have no idea what day it is this morning. Really we only left Darwin just under a week ago, yet it seems so long.

Andy drives while I type yesterdays blog up, the road is narrow and only wide enough for one vehicle which means if a road train comes we give way into the kitty litter, on both sides there is a calverts, the bitumen road is higher we think maybe for flood water.

There is a fair amount of traffic, but mainly caravans though we really only see about 10 cars all morning. We see a couple of cyclists heading towards Daly Waters, it never ceases to amaze me how many kilometres these cyclists have to cover on their road trips.

Just before arriving at Cape Crawford and the Heartbreak Hotel we see some Wedge Tailed Eagles circling, there is a dead Kangaroo which has an Eagle sat on top of it, but again the Eagle takes flight as soon as it sees us. I need an Eagle which has had its fill and is too sluggish to move quickly from the road kill.

After a 277 kilometre journey we arrive at Cape Crawford at around 1.00 this afternoon. We decide to pull in here for the rest of the day, it is the Heartbreak Hotel, named as such by the locals as there was so much heartache for the owner when it was being built, the owner incidentally did not want to call it that but the popularity for the name in the region grew, and as everyone knew it by the name Heartbreak Hotel, it stuck.

There is not a huge amount here, a roadhouse, fuel, Caravan Park, a helicopter for rides over “The Lost City”, and a swimming pool. The pool looks as if it needs a good clean so I don’t think a swim will be on the cards. Cape Crawford can be described as being in the middle of nowhere fairly desolated on route to Borroloola we are about 350 kilometres to the Queensland border via the Savannah Way.

I check us in for the night, another nice early stop for us, we drive round and find a nice spot for the night, before we can pitch someone comes over to talk to us, we have a chat, but time is ticking and we need lunch, we can only have lunch once we have pitched up for the night.

After a light lunch we spend some time sitting and reading, we decide to wander around to the roadhouse to talk to the people there about road conditions on the Savannah Way, he tells us that they are ok, just take your time and drive to the condition of the road, there are no river crossings as they are all bone dry.

We have an ice lolly and watch the helicopter go up to take some more tourists over the Lost City. We sit and chat to a couple of people outside the roadhouse, but we also top up the tank with diesel, it is a hefty $2.55 per litre, we justify it to ourselves as it is remote here and again wise just to keep the tank topped up.

The rest of the afternoon we spend beetling around camp, charging batteries etc. We have to throw away the water in the Esky, it seems that we have picked up some contaminated water from somewhere, we think it might be Katherine, it tasted fine but there are some curious looking things floating around in it, it could be mosquito larvae but as we have running water here, we throw away the contaminated stuff, clean the Esky and top it up with fresh water.

We also pop back down the road a little to see that road kill, there was an Eagle circling, we drove up and sure enough it was sat there on top of the kill, he waited long enough for me to get a picture, however we could not get close enough for a decent picture.

Back at camp, we cook up some dinner, there is no internet here so we sit and do some trip planning, looking at mileage and the time it will take to get to Burketown on the Savannah Way as opposed to taking the bitumen down to Barkley Homestead and around to Mount Isa to head North again.

We want to head into Lawn Hill National Park, which is supposed to be absolutely beautiful, but we need to be sure which is the best way in and make sure that we can top up on supplies before we head in if necessary.

Peter, who we spoke to earlier stopped by, he said he had been chatting to someone in the showers about the Savannah Way, they apparently told him it took them 8 hours from Burketown. I wonder about this information as Burketown is actually 500 kilometres from us and with the exception of 110 kilometres of bitumen the road is a dirt track, which would mean that they would have to have done approximately 85kph all the way.

We play cards before bedtime, it gets a little bit chilly, so I put a long sleeve top on. The first round of cards Andy manages to swipe 70 points from me so I am left on 30, I soon fight back but the pressure remains while I am on 2 points and Andy is on 6. The cards are dealt, the hand is not good, but the run of cards is in my favour and I soon manage to wipe Andy’s 6 points out declaring me as the winner.

It would be quiet here, but for the generator noise continually in the background, but you soon get used to it, you have no choice out here, that is the only way to get electricity.

Snug as bugs in rugs, we are soon asleep succumbing to nature’s anaesthetic.

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