Scorched Earth !

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DAY 246


Another start to the day, the sun gradually invites itself into our campsite heating the day up rather rapidly.

We are enjoying having toast for breakfast every morning while we have the opportunity, of course washed down with the obligatory cup of tea, or two.

Andy wants to do a little bit more cleaning on the truck, that is take off the spare wheel and the bracket (the piece that attaches it to the rear door) in order to clean properly in behind it. Since we bought the truck in Nambour those 8 months ago, we have done our best to keep it clean, but the dust gets everywhere and sometimes it needs a little bit more than just a wash.

Andy of course is quite fastidious in these matters, if I washed the truck, then it would not be done the right way so I just leave him to get on with it. If we look after it then it will pay dividends when it comes to sell it, should we decide to sell at the end of our 12 months.

We go to the car wash in Palmerston, Andy has in the back the bowl, a sponge and the car shampoo. I put $2.00 in the slot and give the car a rinse off with the high-pressure jet. Andy follows me around with the sponge, well soaped up, he is getting into every nook and cranny he can find with the sponge.

Another $2.00 in the slot and I rinse off, well Andy does as he finished soaping up. I stand to one side and let him carry on, lets face it me and a high pressure hose can only lead to disaster anyway and I had already used it once and soaked myself in the process.

Next we drove to the vacuum cleaner and the inside was thoroughly vacuumed, even the rear seats were folded right up to get underneath.

Before long the Patrol was gleaming and looking like showroom condition, well almost anyway, but near as can be.

We decided to go for a spin, to see a little more of this area, and decided to take a drive up to Gunn Point, so we drive back through Howard Springs and a few kilometres later we find the bitumen runs out and yes, you guessed it, we are back on a dirt track and coming towards us is a 4 trailer road train with a huge cloud of dust following in its wake!

I tell Andy that we should forget it today, but we go for it anyway, the road train passes and in seconds there is a film of dust all over our clean Patrol. Oh well, so we carry on toward Gunn Point.

We see a sign to say that there is a grader on the road, great the road maybe in fairly good condition. We actually see two graders at work, the road is not to bad to begin with but much further in it does deteriorate to some rough corrugations, obviously the graders have not reached this point yet.

We see plenty of burnt out trees on the sides of the road, they are still smoking so the fire here must have been recent. We stopped to have a look, you can still feel the heat emanating from the ground,its so sad to see huge area's of forest incinerated.

This road turns out to be quite busy; we see a sign for a missing Black Kelpy called Scarlet. We see a lot of missing dog notices around the Darwin area; we can only speculate what may happen to them once they have gone missing. This place is huge, there is vast areas of uninhabited land that contain all sorts of dangers, not to mention how long would it take for a dog to dehydrate in these conditions? We both find it sad and could only hope that some of these dogs actually get found or at least find their way home.

The dirt track soon runs out and we find a beach, there are a couple of campers above the sand line, but there is very little shelter here, it is hot. The tide is way out in the distance and indeed a very barren landscape is in front of us.

Andy commented that he couldn’t believe we drove for so far with such a small prize at the end. I agree it was disappointing, but sometimes you just don’t know unless you take the chance. It could easily have been one of the best places that we travelled to, alas but No!

We hit the track back, investigating one or two nooks and crannies on the way back, we slow up as we see the graders in the distance and as we slow a red kangaroo bounds across the road in front of us, in fact he bounds very quickly almost as if it knows he has to make it across in front of us. The kangaroo keeps its head and body low with short but quick leaps across, it is soon on the other side and through the fence onto the private land that runs down the side of this track.

That was a close call, it was lucky we slowed up for the grader.

Soon we are back on the bitumen, we knew there was a road train ahead of us as we saw the huge plume of dust in the distance, we caught up with it and at a suitably safe moment Andy pulled out to overtake it, the road train was a big one, it had four trailers.

We decide to go back to the car wash to rinse off the newly acquired dust, as Andy wanted to finish cleaning it properly to put the bracket and the spare wheel back on. I have to say we were absolutely covered in dust.

Back at camp we relaxed for the rest of the afternoon, we were going to the cinema tonight, but decided to go tomorrow night instead, Andy mentioned something about a game of cards, we have our competitive heads on again so tonight we have dinner and then into battle.

The mozzies are rife again tonight, we have both been bitten, when it gets cooler they tend to disappear, but by then you are sprayed up with bushman and I usually put long sleeves on which helps.

Andy talks to a couple of people on Skype, so in the meantime I shuffle the cards well and then deal ready for the big game.

We both start with our score of 100 however in the first 8 hands the cards are not with me and I lose each and every one of them, I tell Andy it is going to be a long night as each hand I am usually only left with one card “the Ace” so only knock 1 point off my score of 100. At last on the ninth hand I win a game, then Andy says its bedtime (it was as it was 10.00), but I said “we cannot stop now I have just won a game!” Andy agreed so we played another couple of hands, I then won two more.

But seriously it was bedtime, the possums were getting restless and were fighting in the trees, the temperature had cooled and bed was sounding cosy.

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Photos

Destroyer of Forests
It probably burn't and no one new, this vast area of wood land

Still Smoldering
The forest floor was just ash

Re Growth
This area will regrow when the rains come

Everything scorched
It seems so sad that everything is so Scorched

Hot Termite Mound
The Termite mound was still hot and it was hot under foot

Fire Road
This Fire Break Road was the only break between two huge vast plains of land

Gunn Point
It was a gorgeous beach, on a gorgeous day but the drive was punishing