Our neighbours had their generator going all night (god knows why), shame really as I was looking forward to listening to the river trickle past our door. Anyway kids doing school again, Toby learning about Coral Reefs and Chloe writing shape poetry – ‘Wicked Chocolate’ her title (see below).
Lots of ‘Ultimate’ and Kimberley Campers past this morning - they really are the bees knees of the ‘off road’. We learn from someone crossing the river going south that a couple has flipped their car just up the bank. They are unhurt but the car is a bit banged up and they are being shepherded into Borroloola by 2 other cars and trailers, just goes to show how easily things can go wrong.
All along the roadside both yesterday and today we come across spot fires, the smoke lazily curling up through the gums. Unsure if they are deliberate or not we marvel at how well the tress survive while the undergrowth is cleared to a charred blackened moonscape under the canopy. They seem to just burn themselves out and then a few kms up the road we come across another one.
The ‘dips’ in the road come up out of the blue and are quite evil and we know if we hit any one of them at speed we are likely to snap the trailer clean off the back .
‘Borroloola’ on the banks of the McArthur River, a little bit of civilisation surrounded by a whole lot of wilderness. The local general store sells a smorgasbord of stuff from food, to clothing, toys, baby gear, electronics (the new Wii is in stock!), car parts and camping gear. The posters on the notice board proclaim that all children who attend school will be eligible to attend the school camp, the last line reads “no school, no camp”. Their propaganda doesn’t seem to be working as it is 1:30pm on a Wednesday and there are Aboriginal kids everywhere. 2 young looking girls ask our names and then I ask how old they are 9 & 8, they look more like 5/6! “School?” I ask, they shake their heads and continue eating their highly nutritious lunch ‘hot chips, tomato sauce and cans of coke’. Nearby a bunch of young mums are feeding their babies packets of Twisties, the toddlers running around with cans of lemonade, not a vegetable or fruit in sight. After finishing they all get up and leave a multitude of empty wrappers, chip packets and cans lying on the street – so much for community pride. We spent $75 today at this shop buying a refill for our 9kg gas bottle ($27), a dozen eggs ($5.00), 500g mince ($8.25), 12 Kraft Singles ($4.80), Pantene Conditioner ($15.90), Corn Kernals 310g ($1.94), Arnotts Sao’s ($3.95), 1Lt Long Life milk ($2.90) and a small bag of onions ($6.00) – how do these people afford to live? There were no green vegetables in sight, ‘black & gold’ brand labels the only choice, no bread (the truck was due that afternoon), and everything cost at least double or even triple the norm.
Filled up $2.10/L for diesel (Ouch), did a quick internet download (the 3G card worked until about 3km out of town only!) and continued northwards into the Limmen National Park and the worst dirt road we have been on so far! Corrugations, bulldust and dips deep enough to stop car and trailer dead in their tracks were the order of the afternoon. We were still going (5 ½ hours) when the sun was low on the horizon, casting huge shadows across the road, making the ‘dips’ so hard to see we were almost at a crawl. Butterfly Springs was a logical resting point being the only place for miles around where it is safe for swimming. We set up on the dusty dirt, beside a Ranger made fireplace, just opposite the composting toilet (no toilet paper mind you!) and quickly headed down the track to the water. A little disappointing the pool was only about 10M across, full of brown, waist deep, pretty cold water, with the waterfall reduced to a trickle. We didn’t care though (our last shower was back at Kingfisher), the lilllies were flowering and many fish could be seen throught the tinted waters so we had a good wash before the mosquitoes literally carried us away.
On arrival back to the trailer we realised just how much dust was inside when we opened a drawer to find the cutlery swimming in a good inch of bulldust, inspection of other drawers and cupboards revealed a similar situation – everything was coated or even covered in dust – yum!
A little mishap overnight saw a certain youngster join us in our bed for the evening and I wondered how I was going to clean all that bedding!
Butterfly Springs Bush Camp (Free)
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