Advertisement
The End
The Travelin Trueys Journey comes to an end.DAY 244
I am sleeping fairly well, but in fact a little too well, as I seem to sleep through and past 7.00, the morning seems a little chilly but it won’t take long to heat up once the sun is up and about.
We have breakfast, shower and a nice leisurely start to the day, which is now becoming a little bit normal. I sit and do the crossword in the Territory News, which is my challenge for the day then go on to check my emails. I seem to be getting huge amounts of spam at the moment, I have had 51 spam emails in the last few days, it is a little annoying to have to sit and spam them all before I get to my real emails. I seem to have inherited billions of pounds and dollars alone in the last 7 days from people and places that I have never even heard of, not to mention all the drugs that they are enticing me to buy online at great rates!
I think Andy feels a little left out he gets nowhere near as much spam as I do and has not inherited the
National Park
Beautiful area for a picnic billions that I have recently, still I am sure that I can spare him a penny or two!
Mirjam and Dave wander over, they have packed up their tent this morning, we are looking after their tent and a few bits and pieces for them while they fly over to Indonesia to see a friend for a couple of weeks. They will spend the day with Richard, helping him tidy up his campsite; Richard is also taking them to the wreckers to sort out the final sale of the crashed Landcruiser.
So once we have loaded the empty space in our trailer with Mirjam and Dave’s belongings, we get ready to go out. This morning we go to Berry Springs, a natural spring that is about 35Ks away from the camp site, it is a beautiful day and a lovely drive.
We arrive at around 10.30, and have got out bathers and towels in the truck ready. The truck is parked and we first walk down to the top pool, there are a couple of people in the pool sitting by the waterfall, if you look to the right then you can see a narrow stretch of
Berry Springs
The Top Springs, Caroline wants to know how cold water which you can swim up to the main pool, we walk up the path to the main pool. It’s quite large about as big roughly as a football field, the water is very clear and seems quite deep, it is a safe pool as there are no crocodiles in there (Hopefully). There are a few more people in this part, so we figured that if there was a croc in there then he may well have fed himself by now, so we should be safe.
Caroline has to do that girl thing, get undressed and dressed in to her Bikini, without taking off any clothes I just don’t know how they do it, its like peeling an orange in your pocket. But soon she is ready to take the plunge.
I dive straight in and splash a bloke and his wife, I apologise and he says “No worries mate, but I won’t give you many marks for your entry in to the water.” Still I’m in aren’t I not looking in like you are, wondering how cold it is.
Caroline took the easy way in she climbed down the steps, commenting how much easier it is
to get into this pool remembering Fern Pool in Karijini was quite cold and not quite such clear water so you could not see the bottom either. This pool is quite warm, actually, we both swim around for a while the strange thing is, thoughts enter your head about being attacked by a crocodile and how it would all be over in the blink of an eye, you keep looking in to the water to see if you can see one, but we are assured there are none here, (how do they know this?)
We swim up to one end then up to the other, we see a couple of young lads have got out up the bank the other side and scaled up a huge tree to jump in even though there are signs up asking not to climb onto the bank or the trees, these kids literally throw them selves out of the tree and in to the water, actually the first one did not even throw himself out, he sort of stumbled and lost his balance so he made a very awkward entry into the water, the other kid just jumped. I heard one of them
complaining of a sore foot afterwards.
By now it is about lunch time so we decide to get out, all wrinkled and prune like a bit like Elizabeth Taylor really.
Once back at the truck we head back, on the way down we went past a world war II airfield and decided to pull in and have a look, its called the Strauss Airfield, (28 Mile development), it is one of a few along this stretch of highway. The Strauss Airfield had P40 Kitty hawks and Spitfires based here to help protect Darwin from the Japanese.
We were astonished, we park the truck in a car park bay and the grass verge is smouldering, only little flames were present but it was on fire all the same, there is always smoke somewhere on the Darwin skyline in one direction or another. We wandered around the site but there was not much to see apart from the old landing strip itself and the information board. It was hot standing there; we both talk about how harsh the conditions must have been for the men sitting and waiting in these conditions for the call to take to the air.
The Middle Pool
It was lovely and warm We finally got back to base, we didn’t go to the swimming pool as we had already swum so we sat and read our books, had some lunch and Caroline tackled the cross word.
At some point in the afternoon our mobile phone beeped notifying us that we had a message, the Truman’s had sent us a picture message, but we had to log onto Vodafone to pick it up, we both laughed when we saw that there was a picture of the rear end of their caravan with a card board sign, and in pen it read “THE END.”
So today heralds the end of the Truman’s adventure, they are now back at home, we ponder when we met Ken for the first time at Ceduna when their journey was really just at the beginning. It is amazing to think that our paths crossed so many times on the journey from the Nullarbor and all the way through WA into the Northern Territory where we met up with them for the final time on this trip at Kakadu. Each time we said goodbye it was easy as we knew we would probably bump into them again,
except we knew at Kakadu that the next time we see them we may be in Victoria and we don’t know when.
It must feel weird to be at home, how lovely it must be though; they have a proper bed with proper sheets to look forward to tonight. We think that they may be so used to the caravan that they could all be sat in the same room together, well or just glad of the luxury of having some space so they could all be sitting in separate rooms.
We sent them a message back saying, “it’s not the end, just the beginning of the next adventure.” Their 14-week trip was over, and it is back to reality, back to their lovely home safe and sound in Inverlock, Victoria, back to work and back to school on Monday.
Mirjam and Dave dropped by with Richard, they had forgot some very important documents for the Landcruiser, such as proof of ownership, as the wreckers needed the documents and wouldn’t hand over the dosh until they had got them, we were due to take Mirjam and Dave to the airport, but as Richard was going to have
Caroline
is smiling as it is warm to got back to the wreckers he said he would take them on to the airport as well to save us a journey.
The afternoon soon disappears I was fiddling around with the truck as usual, just doing bits and pieces and we need to get sorted for dinner as we are having Chow Mein tonight, we had got all the ingredients I just had to prepare the vegetables and then whack it all together in the camp oven. Caroline thinks it is amazing that I am actually eating cabbage, which is one of the main ingredients, I hate cabbage normally!
Our dinner is finished the chores are done, the blog has been posted so that is out of our hair for today, Caroline gets the cards out, she is just still relishing the night she whooped me, as detailed in Blog day 241 05/07/2009, Read em and Weep, she gets the cards out shuffle the deck and we get down to some serious hustling, we play down from 100 each.
I loose the first game, by 75 this leave me with a score of 25 so I turn the heat up on her, she then looses,
1,2,4,1,4,6,2 then 78. For my final hand I was on a score of 19 and Caroline was on 2 she finally fell to her last defeat of 55 crashing out in style. It was great we both played very well, so competitively I could have raced her to the toilet.
We hoped you all enjoyed today, and will bid you good night and god bless.
KJ
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.024s; cc: 8; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0583s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Helen Sheridan
non-member comment
Wally
Hi, An update on Wally. He has ruptured the ligaments and chipped bone on the main joint in his back leg. He has an operation at the university on Monday to put him back together. They will either rejoin the ligaments or if they cant do that they will put in nylon ones. Wally, the bionic dog. He should be back to work in about 3 months we hope. Meanwhile Robert has a big dog in with Kimba and he is very keen but she just snarls at him and backs into one of the kennels. I think the big dog will have to go home in disgrace. He has the biggest, lowest, loudest bark you have ever heard. I got up and yelled at him last night and he just barked back. So it looks like no puppies this time and we were hoping for some as we have quite a few people wanting them. Perhaps I should have brought Wally home for the week but I was afraid he would try jumping in and out of the yard and doing more damage. Oh, well, maybe next time. Sound lovely and warm up there. Freezing and cold down here with big frosts. Warmed up a bit now and rain expected this weekend and early next week. You wouldn't recognise the place. I will endeavour to send some photos. I have been back at work a couple of days a week for the last three weeks. Boy is that tiring, don't know how I did it before. Love, Helen