It's 32 degrees, it's dusty and no, it's not Bathurst Races!

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Day 116 - Mt Isa to Barkly Homestead

We woke up pretty early this morning, the dawn chorus strikes again! It was so loud it was like they were congregated on our rooftop alone and if you ask Darryl about the amount of bird poop up there he would tell you they probably were!

There’s a city lookout and as we’d not managed to see any of the sites around Mt Isa we thought it only fair to make the effort and drive up there this morning as the sun was coming up. It was lovely and it’s a very impressive view of the mine which does literally take up most of the town.

We’re moving again today and we’ve got a fair distance to travel so we’re on the road by 9am which is a bit later than we would have liked but hey ho. We’re booked into the campsite at Alice Springs for Saturday, we’re booked into the resort at Ayers Rock and we’ve sent an email to the resort at Kings Canyon so one way or another we should have a camp pitch for the next week or so!

This is the section of our adventure when the journeys are long but the end result of us edging our way towards the red desert of Australia will make it worth while. Tom Tom is no help to us today, it knows where Mt Isa is but our destination of Barkly Homestead, not a clue!

We stop en route at Camooweal to eat our lunch, the border crossing is not far from here so it’s all very exciting! There will be trombones and a band playing surely?! Apparently not! There is a sign though which we manage to snap as we fly past!

The scenery is ever changing but you get the distinct impression you are miles from anything remotely civilised, the cost of the fuel tells you that too. We see loads of road trains today, all with three trailers but they’re still not enough to rock us about!

At some point along the highway we hear the sirens of a fire engine behind us, he’s in a hurry and overtakes us and the Winnebago in front of us. It doesn’t look quite like a normal fire engine though and the driver of the Winnebago is obviously curious too for over the UHF we hear “Fire engine, this is the Winnebago, my wife would very much like to know where you are going!” The driver of the fire engine duly responds with “Well, we’re on the Variety Club Bash and we’ve been broken down in Adels Grove so we’re a day behind everyone else so I’m making the most of this 130kmp speed limit” More like pushing it to the limit but no worries at all, at least we know! Their conversation continues with the Winnebago driver wishing them a safe journey and not to get kidnapped by aliens at Wycliffe Well! We’ll explain more about that place in tomorrow’s blog!

We find various ways of keeping ourselves occupied on the long journey, games of “I spy” are generally short lived though as it gets a bit obvious after the 7th bout of “I spy with my little eye something beginning with BLR.” Bloody Long Road!!

We stop at one of the free camp spots along the route, Wonarah Bore. It’s got a Camps 5 editor recommendation and we don’t understand why. It’s got no toilets, it’s totally in the open and there’s nothing to attract us to stay there other than it’s free. Dar empties one of the jerry cans into the tank as we’ve done 492kms since we last fuelled up and we’ve had the air con on full today because of the heat. I get out of the car to stretch my legs and take a couple of photos. I chat briefly to a couple travelling in a large coach pulling a trailer. They’ve come past the Barkly Homestead where we’re heading and said that it didn’t look very inviting so they came here instead. Blimey, it flashes through my head that the homestead must be really rough in that case. I tell Dar what they’ve said but with no toilets here it’s pointless us setting up camp as we’ve no facilities, so we travel on.

43 kms later we’re at a loss to understand what was uninviting, except the cost, of the Barkly Homestead. It’s $24 per night for 2 people, it has a large restaurant, a shop, a fuel station, the camp sites are shady and all drive through, the amenities are clean, there’s a laundry AND there’s a swimming pool! Thank goodness we came here!! We gladly pay our $24 for the night and having filled the fuel tank up (the diesel was $1.71 which was a bit of a blow but there you are) we drive round the back to the caravan park.

We look carefully at the available spots and drive through one to then turn around a bit further along and go back to it but the other way so the caravan is in the shade. We stop the car and joyfully get out to hear a guy with a caravan across from us shouting something at us. Neither of us heard him the first time so Darryl asked him again what he’d said but still couldn’t quite make it out but it was something about Bathurst. Our first reaction to each other was that we hadn’t been to Bathurst so he must be getting us confused with somebody else. Anyway, I started to wander across and noticed that he appeared to be trying to re-attach the door of his caravan, it looked like it had fallen off. “Looks like you’re having a bit of trouble there” I said in a friendly, opening conversation sort of way trying to figure out if we knew this guy. He retorted “I’m trying to keep the dust out, that’s what I meant when I said it’s not bloody Bathurst”. Ok, so that’s a bit clearer then, not being Ozzies we hadn't spotted the connection immediately but Bathurst is a racecourse over here. It's obvious he's not having a good day, it looks as if he’s hit the caravan and bust the door clean off, it’s hot and we’ve parked up opposite him and caused a bit of dust. “Sorry about that” I said politely, turned and walked back to the caravan feeling bad for the guy that he's having a bad day but happy in the knowledge that we hadn't been driving fast at all and that it was more likely him just needing to spew at somebody, it just happened to be us. We toyed with the idea of offering to help him but we just got the impression that he was not in the mood to accept assistance, even his wife was sitting and just watching him, so instead we set the van up and jumped in the pool.

We were almost immediately joined by Ray and Pauline who had also come from Mt Isa’s Big 4 site so we were all delighted to find that the temperature in this pool was ever so slightly warmer!

We’re in a different time zone now as we’ve moved across to the Northern Territory so we’ve changed all our clocks and we now have an extra 30 minutes to spend within today!

The only change in the routine tonight was an additional swim in the pool! We ate dinner outside, updated the blogs and then hit the pool but this time by lantern light! It was pretty cold so we didn’t last long but it was a great way to end the day and a good way to keep out of the flies, they’re a pain in the rear!

Tomorrow we’re heading to Wycliffe Well which is one stop away from Alice Springs. Blimey, we’ve come a long way already! The time we’ve spent in Queensland has been fantastic but we’re raring to go in the Northern Territory and we’re so excited to think that on Monday we could very well be climbing that rock! Here’s hoping!

See you soon

Dar and Sar

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Photos

To be clear, Men use the Blokes, Ladies use the Sheilas and the Camels go straight through to the bar
Barkly Homestead