Derby

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We arrived in Derby early Saturday morning and our first stop was the Visitors’ Centre. Judy had already been in touch with her step sister Lorrain and had an address. We discovered this was right across the road from the Visitors’ Centre. Lorrain was at work in her Toy Shop, aptly named Sparkies Toyshop (her and her husband also own an electrical business) when we dropped in to say hello. She gave us a key to the gate of the block where we were to park the caravan so we dropped off the caravan before checking out a local Saturday market. Here we found some lunch at a Chinese Stall.

The afternoon we spent at a local event, mud football on the marsh. This was great fun as we’d never seen anything like it before and really enjoyed trying to get a few action shots in between being sprayed with mud.

The local takeaway was our source for dinner- farm grown Barra and chips! Here we met and spoke to a few other tourists who had just finished driving along the Gibb River Road. They put the fear in us a bit with their talk of the number of vehicles that they had encountered who had destroyed tyres and shock absorbers.

The next day was the day we expected to meet Kerry and Steve so we explored the caravan park on our morning walk in case they had arrived the day before. Later in the day we checked at reception and found they had a booking so were definitely expected for that night. When we walked to the caravan park just after 4pm whose vehicle could we see in the line to checkin but Steve’s? We were even able to direct them to their booked site as we’d found it on an earlier walk.

We left them to finish setting up and expected them to join us for drinks and dinner as we’d both purchase a cooked chicken. We waited and waited and waited but no Kerry and Steve. Rags wondered what had become of them so went to check - they were about to go for a shower- so we decided to join Lorrain and Brett for a drink instead as we’d earlier been invited. Brett had been away on a fishing trip over the weekend and had only just returned. We had a few laughs over drinks as we began to get to know them before Kerry and Steve arrived.

Over dinner we made the decision to meet at 10am the next morning in time to leave for Windjana Gorge.

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