Across the Top part 1 - See You NT

We have left the Northern Territory and are now in Queensland.  

First stop was Camooweal, a dusty old droving town just inside the border.  We had coverage again, and also sadly a bit of extra time on our hands while Nissy P was awaiting a diagnosis from the local bush mechanic. We’d packed up on Sunday after one night here to head in to Lawn Hill.  

As I was manoeuvring the car to the recycling point, the steering started to get much harder and some worrying noises were coming from under the car.  Powered steering was kaput and fluid was leaking heavily.  She’s a big heavy car and almost impossible to manoeuvre without assistance at low speed. There’s one mechanic in town and we get to see him at 2pm this afternoon (Monday). 

There are worse places to be marooned so for now we wait and will have to see what Dave the mechanic has to say.  The weather is great, there are only a handful of flies and mosquitos and there is a pub.  That said, Camooweal is very much a one night destination.  Most people have long evacuated by mid-morning each day. According to TripAdvisor there are only two things to do in town and one of those is to look at a statue of a drover.  The other is the Drovers Camp Memorabilia shed which we did on Saturday when we arrived.  

So anyway we have had some time to catch up on reading and washing and internet things. And plenty of time for catastrophising about what happens if we can’t get the car fixed, or we can’t drive it, or we do and something bad happens.  I don’t fancy driving a car without proper steering the 4,000kms it is til we get home.  On outback roads it might be OK, but towns will be difficult and crossing the great dividing range (twice) will be almost impossible as the steering is harder at low speeds.  And what if we do more damage and lose the whole steering mechanism?  Mechanics in Mount Isa are booked 4 weeks out./ These are the sorts of things that start to contaminate your mind.  It took a pretty big jolt back to reality to get things back into perspective.  We were with the kids at the pool when a fellow temporary Camoowealean had a medical incident and fell and cracked her head open on concrete near the bathroom. We were first responders prior to the ambulance and helicopter evacuation.  She was unconscious for a long time and unresponsive. We will never know for sure whether she will have made it.  Life can just change in an instant.  Just awful. 

I’m adding the video of the drive into Maguk which we didn’t have time to compress while in Kakadu.  We had a few things shake loose on that short trip, and more again during our recent trip through Limmen National Park which I’ll get to, including a sheared mounting bar for the cargo barrier. 

We were also alerted to an ABC news story on Kakadu’s Cahill’s Crossing where we’d seen a lot of people doing the wrong thing and taking pretty big risks with the crocodiles.  Only a matter of time before someone gets munched.  We’ve sadly seen plenty of people doing the wrong thing, including an atypically rebellious Singaporean couple who drove the whole Reynolds Track despite it being closed (and gated) beyond Sandy Creek where we’d stayed.  “Nothing wrong with the road” they told us, “just lots of fire” (which was obviously why the road had been closed).  Sure they wouldn’t have tried that at home.

Anyway, back to how we got to here...   

After leaving Kakadu we headed to Mataranka, stopping en route in Katherine for a restock and some fuel.  We didn’t bump in to Wally and Margaret Bower this time, but we did see some friendly and dirty faces from Kakadu while we were doing our shopping.  Shapes were on special at $1.75 each, compared to $6.50 at Jabiru and the bottle shop was offering an all you can carry allowance so we took full advantage.

Couple of ferals outside the supermarket in Katherine

We camped at Elsey National Park, outside of Mataranka for two nights.  It’s an expansive campsite on the banks of the Roper River, downstream and a 15 minute drive from Mataranka’s hot springs. There are commercial caravan parks close to each of the springs but I’d recommend the national park as the quieter option, especially if our kids aren’t there.

Our Elsey National Park camp spot.  The stars were amazing.  Plenty of hee-hawing from donkeys each night.

We had a couple of lazy days enjoying the hot springs at Mataranka and nearby Bitter Springs.  The water was completely clear and a steady 32 degrees, warm enough for even me to get in.

On Wednesday we headed east through Roper Bar and into the remote Limmen National Park.  Limmen is now fully graduated from ‘proposed’ into a real national park.  When we were last here proclamation of the park was subject to finalisation of outstanding land claims.  It was initially planned to become the second largest national park in Australia, but some iron ore mining leases cut out around 1,000 square kms from the final boundary making it number three or four.  

The road from Mataranka starts as a single track bitumen road.  This is fine until a 59m long road train comes screaming towards you over crest at 130km and you have to get off onto the gravel on the side in a hurry.  Mostly, but not always, we had a bit of warning with UHF 40 crackling if a road train was headed our way.  There was also some exciting controlled burning underway which attracted lots of kites hunting the fleeing wildlife. 

After about 130kms the road turned into a bit of a corrugated mess and we were very happy to finally pull in to the Roper Bar Store for lunch and an ice-cream.  It’s an incredibly well stocked shop given its location - fridge freezer for $699 anyone?  Over lunch we talked to some people who had just come north out of Limmen National Park who shared some useful road condition reports.  We’d been toying whether to go through Hells Gate after Limmen but some seasoned travellers were saying the road was the worst they’d ever been on (lost their fridge and two antenna).  That firmed our decision to head south when we left Limmen We were told the road through Limmen was bad in parts but generally OK.  WikiCamps reviews were pretty dire but one said they’d seen a grader somewhere.

Roper Bar store, come and grab a fridge

After lunch we turned into Limmen National Park and headed the remaining 40kms to Munbililla / Tomato Island spot.  The road was better than we expected.  On arrival at the campsite we were amazed to see green grass, but drove straight past the Tent Camping area sign assuming it was day use and instead camped 500m further along the river at the end of the campsite.  This made for a 1km round trip to the dunnies and J-Loo as she is now known is a reluctant coopy downer.  All good for the step count.  The 4G coverage and excellent facilities were most unexpected.  We found a lovely shady spot and I got some firewood for a damper.  The kids made friends with a French /Chinese /Australian family who had the best colour coordinated Ute and trailer we’d seen and were travelling for a year.   Their youngest Wei Wei joined us for marshmallows after dinner. 

With hindsight we should have stayed longer, but the next morning we headed on a further 160 or so kms to Butterfly Falls.  The Parks NT website promised beautiful falls, swimming hole and butterflies so we’d booked in for three nights.  The road started pretty good but after 30kms turned very very ordinary.  We passed some cattle musterers driving bull catchers like you see on the TV, old converted 4WDs with side arms supported by a spotting helicopter.  We let some air out of the tyres which helped a bit but we had around 40kms of shaky road, holes and bull dust.  We were just commenting that the one road sign we’d not seen much of on this trip was “Road Plant Ahead” when one magically appeared, shortly followed by a grader. The road improved markedly along with our mood but we were still held up for close to an hour by a 4WD caravan which had come unhitched during a creek crossing.  

After a quick stop at the deserted ranger station we arrived at Butterfly Falls to find a deserted campground.  The spot we’d booked turned out to be the only one without any shade.  This exposed one of the problems with the online national parks booking system for very remote areas.  You need coverage to make any amendments. Travel plans in remote areas change for many unexpected reasons.  We’d left coverage back at Munbililla. So we had the choice of setting up in a dust bowl in 35 degree heat, or choose a site that probably wouldn’t be taken but risk someone showing up after dark.  Anyway the drier than normal wet season meant that the falls weren’t falling and the swimming hole was just a stagnant pool,  This was attracting cattle whose poo was supporting a healthy number of flies.  So we didn’t hang around to see what the mosquitoes were like and headed on to the Southern Lost City.

The Southern Lost City has five allocated camp spots but fortunately plenty of day use and drive through areas.  This supported the 20 or so groups actually camped there for the night, most there a day or two either side of when they were planning.  We’d paid for three nights at Butterfly Falls so didn’t feel too bad.  We put the tent up alongside some other squatters in a drive through space.  The online system is still new here and apparently the rangers aren’t policing it. 

We packed up early before the heat arrived and stopped for morning tea just outside of Limmen at the Heartbreak Hotel Roadhouse at Cape Crawford.  It was mid renovations and we decided to push on the 400kms across the tablelands to the Barkly highway.

The road was mostly dead straight and like the road out Limmen was mostly single track so there was occasional slowing down sufficiently for oncoming vehicles that you could safely put two wheels on the gravel.

It was a massive day in the car, but well rewarded with a surprise free gig from Kasey Chambers and her dad at Barkly Homestead.  Tired camping facilities but the bar and restaurant were excellent. We met some lovely people, including Michelle from Lismore who was off to see her son in Alice for the first time in two years.  She was still living with her brother months after the February floods which had seen 5 feet of water in her single storey house.  After my own trip back to the UK in May it made me very emotional to think how important this trip is for Michelle, but another reminder of how delicate our stability is and how quickly our worlds can be completely turned upside down.