Sunday Roast

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DAY 226


I woke up early and dived out of bed and put the kettle on, it was Sunday and we were going to have an easy day today, great! We don’t get many easy days, you lot just think we are on a years holiday, messing about having a whale of a time. Yes, we are having a whale of a time, but unlike our comfortable life in England, our life here at the moment is constantly about planning, i.e. where we are going to get fuel, provisions, a bed for the night, the blog, feeding ourselves, washing clothes, tidy the truck etc. plus putting up and taking down the Wendy House. There is so much more to it than meets the eye, we never appreciated how involved it was going to be, we too thought it was just a simple case of dragging a suitcase around and visiting wonderful places, it has been an awakening.

We are camping at Mardugal Camp ground in Kakadu National Park and it is excellent, we have a great place to pitch and we can have a camp fire, a camp fire really does make you feel like you are camping, the smell of smoke on your clothes and the grubby black marks on your clothes where you have been messing around stoking the fire.

We are camping again with the Truman’s (The Travelin Trueys) and Jodie’s Mum and Dad, David and Dot, whom we have nick named the “Gallivanting Gary’s” as their surname is Gary. David and Dot live in Almurta, Victoria, they are a retired couple but David still contracts himself out doing some Agricultural work and as for Dot, she enjoys herself and plays a lot of golf
Unfortunatley Dot caught shingles just before the comencment of their trip and was in quite a bit of discomfort, like a trooper though she sat and didn't make a fuss.

We all sat around this morning, just enjoying the sunshine, actually I should say the shade the sunshine is hot, having breakfast and drinking tea, while the Trumans made a pancake breakfast, Caroline fried some eggs to go with the pancakes, we ate a hearty TruMuffin breakfast. Well because I was busy talking to Stuart I ended up leaving half of mine and when I returned I realised that Caroline has swiped a pancake off my plate.

Stuart and Yvonne were packing up this morning, they are heading off towards Katherine, and they very kindly let us have their wood that they had collected for their fire, Stuart has a chain saw and cut loads of logs up last night for his fire (that we borrowed to make our damper) and he has not used. This is great as it means we can do a roast dinner in the camp oven this evening on the open fire.

Stuart has been exceptionally helpful with some of his camp oven tips, so we look forward to putting those into practice when we manage to get some additional implements from the camping supplies shop in Darwin. Stuart and I also discuss the benefits of putting a stocking over the air filter to stop too much dust clogging it up.

We talked, updated the blog, read for a while and then lunchtime soon crept upon us. Just after lunch Caroline went for a shower, the afternoon is a good time for a shower, the water will have heated throughout the morning and as there is a large group of American girls camping nearby, when they return from their day out there will be one made rush for the showers and of course the hot water, we wonder how long it will last once they get back.

We went to the Aboriginal Cultural centre this afternoon and had a good look around; there is a sign on the door saying that we are unable to take photographs inside the cultural centre, we have to respect that so sadly there are no photos for the blog today from our visit here. Aboriginal culture states that a deceased persons name and in many cases their photos are unable to be shown or mentioned for a year or more after they have died, this is reflected in the cultural centre on some exhibits where a sticker has been placed over the top of someone’s name or picture, we have of course seen this in other parts of Australia, particularly at Karijini National Park.

We have only really seen Aboriginals in towns, loitering around or sitting under the shade, never seeming to do anything. It was nice to see how true aborigines live in their own communities all though it has been said that there is no true full blood aborigine alive in Australia. It has also been said that none of them actually live in the full traditional aboriginal way, i.e. they drive, they eat the food that we do, wear the clothes that we do etc.

A video display told us how they would find food, or animals to cook and eat, and their whole day seemed to be taken up just looking for food, I smiled to myself when they said that a basket a women was weaving took 50 hours to make, as time must be non existent really, as they don’t have to work as we do, they don’t have mortgages and financial responsibilities that we burden our selves with. It must be bliss to be able to spend that time just making a basket

We have a look around the gift shop, pictures of the local area and wildlife are in abundance amongst the authentic hand painted aboriginal artefacts.

While we head back to camp, the Trumans nipped off to the lodge for a sneaky swim in the swimming pool, it does not say that it is residents only and it is listed as one of the only areas in Kakadu that is safe to swim, we get back in time to start think about our evening meal, fortunately we don’t have to go and trap it then kill it, we just have to go in and get it out of the fridge and light the camp fire.

While the Trumans are having a swim, we sit with David and Dot for a good natter and of course David has a bottle of Brandy that needs drinking so he pours a brandy and dry for Caroline to enjoy in the late afternoon heat. I think she said that it went down well.

On the Trumans return we get down to the business of sorting dinner, we have a piece of Lamb and the Trumans have a piece of beef, so the game plan is to combine our resources, get the fire going and cook our dinner in the camp oven. The lamb and the beef sit side by side nicely.

The fire is going well, but as the grates provided are quite high from the flame it allows you to put a lot of wood under the grate, so we dig a fairly shallow hole and when the fire has burnt down and left us with some hot embers we shovel them out and lay them in the hole that we have dug, we then sit the camp oven nicely on to the coals to cook our diner, the vegetables had been previously prepared of onion, carrot, sweet potato, potatoes, chillies and garlic.

Once I had carefully prepared the chillies, I went and rubbed my eye, how stupid am I? The hot chillies burnt my eye, I screwed my eye up to protect it but it was burning like I don’t know what, Dot suggested neutralising the effect with milk, as I lay back in one of our camp chairs, Ken poured milk in to my eye which fortunately did the trick and settled the burning effect down.

Soon dinner was ready, so we took the camp oven off the coals and got the meat out to be carved, I made the gravy with the juices and soon everything was laid out on the table for everyone to dig in, it was just like a Sunday Roast at home all laid out on the table the smell was gorgeous.

The food was delicious, everything was cooked to perfection, the camp oven was set aside whilst everyone was having dinner, then everyone seemed to be talking about the gravey, Ken said that we should get a white slice and wipe the bread around the camp oven

The mosquito’s and moths are out in full force tonight, attracted by the light the months won’t leave you alone, and the mozzies are only interested in biting you, this itself is annoying but you also have to content with the biting ants and everything else that bites, fortunately there are no crocodiles in the camp ground.

Kahlia sneakily comes out of the van with a buttered slice and pours some of the gravey that is left on to the bread, David get a couple of slices of plain and gives one to me, David makes a Gravy sandwich, and I just clean my plate, then gets gets his tropgy of the camp oven to “mop out”

The finalact of the evening was to toast Marsh Mallows on the fire, we sharpened so long sticks to make it easy, Kahlia was happy as we had got Pascall 4 flavour Marsh Mallows and not the cheaphome brand one's like the time before.

We all have a brilliant evening, and sit around laughing and chatting for what is left of the evening, then its off to bed to close another exciting day.

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Photos

Seasonal Chart
An Aboriginal Seasonal Chart

David & Dot
Jodies Mum and Dad