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Published: August 5th 2011
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It's nice to be back!
but it meant another clock change Tuesday 2nd – at 8.42 we were on our way out of the caravan park. We had considered staying another day but decided to go with some great memories. We had woken up to a peculiar, cloudy sky and a cooler temperature but the skies gradually cleared to become the blue we are used to. We made good time and arrived at Dunmarra Roadhouse at about 10.30am. Dunmarra has been an important stopping point for traffic ever since the early pioneers came to the area, as its midway between Katherine and Tennant Creek. It was an interesting place and full of character with murals and photos dotted around. Added to that, some of the large convoy of army vehicles we had seen travelling north were stopped there. Apparently all the equipment is headed for Afghanistan presumably with a regiment of soldiers – it’s rather sobering to think of all those young men going off to a war zone. We hope they stay safe. For once we actually ate in the roadhouse - Graham had a steak and onion pie and I had an egg and bacon roll and they were both very tasty.
We had identified several potential overnight stopping
places but as Graham was feeling fine and there wasn’t a lot by way of interesting countryside (its not often we say that) we kept going past Elliott and then on past Banka Banka. We finally came to a halt at ThreeWays Roadhouse, which as the name suggests is at the junction of the Stuart and Barkly Highways – south to Alice Springs, east to Mount Isa and north to Darwin. We had done about 570 kilometers – by far the longest journey we have done towing the caravan – and decided that ThreeWays would be an ideal overnight location.
We parked up next to a couple who were sat looking very relaxed as though they had been there all day. But in fact they’d had a hard drive coming the other way, from Mt Isa – slightly further than us! We were invited to join them but first Graham wanted to pop into Tennant Creek to fill up with diesel. He had checked the price at the roadhouse and it was a whopping $1:85 cents per litre. Even travelling the 24 kms each way into town, he hoped the fuel would be a lot cheaper and make it
The speed limit in the Northern Territory is 130 kph
(about 80 mph) but we think it's much too fast for these roads and there have been a few fatal accidents recently possibly caused by speed. worthwhile – and he was right! At $1:70 cents per litre we saved about $12 – and I was able to do a bit of supermarket shopping. Good decision Graham!
Back at the roadhouse I strolled off to take photos of four huge wagons carrying tanks that had appeared – apparently another three would be arriving eventually. Graham had already joined the gathering which now included another couple so I got my chair and sat down too. We spent a very pleasant hour or so chatting before we all went off to sort out dinner. Ours was very simple as we still had our sandwiches to eat!
Lately the nights have been cold so I got the quilt out again from its temporary storage place and we snuggled up nice and warm and had a really good night’s sleep.
By the time we got going on Wednesday morning all the trailers with tanks on had long gone and the front of the roadhouse was deserted. Graham drove round to the roadhouse to use their air line to check the pressure in the caravan tyres. A couple of people had commented that they looked a bit on the
soft side. They were low compared with the various recommendations that people had made so they both had a bit of a top-up. We left at about 8.20 heading east towards Mount Isa.
At 10.30 we stopped at Barkly Roadhouse – it’s another of these places with plenty of character and is a popular stopping place for the many people on the road like us. It’s at a convenient distance between bigger places and is also a popular overnight stopover – we stayed there ourselves last time. Our attention was drawn to a huge bull that was roaming around. It had obviously strayed from the nearby cattle station and, in the heat of the day, was taking advantage of a sprinkler that was watering the grass area at the front of the roadhouse. It looked quite menacing and could have done a lot of damage if it had wanted to. After leaving Barkly Roadhouse we had one more stop to have a bit of lunch and then soon after that we reached the Northern Territory/Queensland Border. There was no quarantine station here, just a large sign welcoming us to Queensland. We immediately lost half an hour off our day
but at least that means more useable daylight hours. Only 13kms over the border was the small town of Camooweal. There wasn’t much to it but, again, because of its convenient location, it boasted two sizeable caravan parks. We had heard that a rest area just outside the town by a billabong was a good place to stop. Alas, there are no toilets there so we decided to carry on into town and chose to stay at the Post Office Hotel Caravan Park. We booked onto a “drive-through” site so that we didn’t have to unhitch – that makes life much easier. It was a very roomy pitch and we were able to position the caravan so that the door and our outside sitting area were permanently in the shade. We had a short walk to take in the delights of Camooweal – it took about two minutes! I cooked an evening meal and although we could get a couple of channels on the TV, we had an early night.
The following day’s trek was reasonably short – just less than 200 kilometers. We were headed for Mount Isa where we thought we’d stay for two or three nights.
En route we stopped at a rest area which had a WWII memorial there and got chatting to another couple who were travelling in the opposite direction. They lived at Murgon near Kingaroy and were originally travelling as part of a group for about 12 weeks. But they had been held up for a week at Isa because their vehicle – a Toyota Landcruiser (possibly the elite of 4WDs) – had blown an engine!! It cost them $7000 for a re-conditioned engine plus some overnight costs not covered by RACQ. Despite this they were extremely chatty and good natured so our stop lasted quite a bit longer than usual.
During the last few days we had travelled through hundreds of kilometres of flat cattle country and sadly had come across at least ten dead cows on the road. As we neared Mount Isa the countryside was hillier and instead of dead cattle there were dead kangaroos - alas, roadkill is part and parcel of Aussie life. Mount Isa is dominated by a huge mine and it was that sight that greeted us as we drove into the city. We had been unsure which caravan park to stay on but
in the end opted for the Big 4 park which was a couple of kilometres on through Isa on the road towards Townsville.
The caravan park was able to accommodate us but as we drove in our good-humour took a knock as we saw how small each site was – caravans seemed to be squeezed in like sardines in a tin – just about enough room to open out the awning and still walk by!! We should have guessed as we were allocated site number 32 B! Probably, at one time, each site was twice the size but to cash in on the increasing number of travellers they’ve simply halved the size of many of them. It didn’t help that on either side of us were two of the largest caravans we’ve seen – we were dwarfed by comparison. We’d booked in for three nights so we would just have to put up with it! We set up and had our sandwiches and then drove into the city. There’s a huge boom in the mining industry - Australia has endless supplies of natural resources and every mining town seems to be blossoming. Despite being huge distances from anywhere else,
Isa is no exception as it boasts one of the biggest mining complexes in the world. Our first impression was how clean it appeared to be compared with our last visit when the air seemed to be full of dust. Isa is split into two distinct parts – Mine side and Town side – but the mine is so big it dominates the whole landscape. At the Visitor Centre we booked an “Outback at Isa” experience for tomorrow which will include going underground. For the rest of the day we just relaxed and spent the evening watching TWO episodes of Doc Martin.
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