Cape Crawford - 230kms from QLD Border

Happy Birthday Ronnie (Steve’s mum) as we weren’t able to get a hold of her from the phone box at Barkley Homestead as she wasn’t home – just for something different – and her mobile isn’t working – also just for something different. Anyway Happy 81st Birthday from all of us!

We all had a rough night last night. Went off to sleep eventually but we were all awoken in the middle of the night by Midget huffing and puffing. We eventually had to let her out for a drink and she relaxed after running around for a while looking out of sorts.

During the night the nice cooling desert breeze dropped and the huge swell of sticky tropical heat dropped in to say hi, and welcome to the build up! It was quite uncomfortable for the rest of the night. We ended up leaving the van door wide open to let the breeze that was out there in, and Midget was happy in the coolness of her bag in the breeze under the stars.

In the morning we awoke to clouds, thick and dank with humidity. Steve went for a walk to the toilets and noticed Midget had followed and slunk off to a huge bucket located at the rear of the kitchen. Inside were the contents of offal and offcuts of meat that were left over from within. Apparently she’d nicked off before we went to bed and stuffed a few kilo’s of the gear into her enormously swollen gut and was now panting in agony with her gluttony. But I’m sure she hasn’t learnt from the experience. She walked around and around and around desperate to have a big poo before we left for the mornings’ drive.

The girl at the desk said we should get going as it will be 40o by lunch time, and incredible humidity to boot! We were sweating drinking our morning coffee and decided to take heed.

We then took the most scenic part of this leg of the trip that John had mentioned to us to see. Entering the Barkly Tablelands on a rickety single lane sealed road that bounced and jolted us back and forth, but the scenery was quite incredible. John said these huge plains were naturally found this way. Treeless and full of Mitchell Grass. It was an interesting sight after the lovely treed plains of the day before. We’ve definitely left the more tropical landscape behind.

Arriving 371kms later at the Barkley Homestead fuel stop, we were still struck by the heat. We thought that by heading south, we might beat a couple of degrees off our daily target, but no. We were also struck with $2.249/L for diesel that we were hit with. But they had everyone by the short and curly’s who’d taken the direction we had taken, so they cashed in.

We also ran into a huge road train of two hall packs with drivers, that couldn’t even make the one lane Tablelands Highway that we’d just left, and had to take the Carpentaria Highway all the way to Daly Waters and then down to Tenant Creek then back towards Queensland. A huge 650km diversion as the roads aren’t able to take the wider wheels, in fact, we struggled to stay on it ourselves at time.

The change is scenery is quite noticeable travelling from Katherine to our current location just 230kms from the QLD border. Looking forward to getting back up into the tropics and up to Queenstown.