Forty minutes out of Kununurra I arrived into the NT. The immediate difference was an increase in the road speed to 130kpm, accompanied by a deterioration in road conditions. Interesting. The other more useful change was in the time zone. Kununurra was light at 5:30 in the morning and dark just after 5pm. With the change in time zone that moved to 7am and 6:30pm – much more to my liking. The first day I drove six hours to Katherine with both side windows open in the 30 degree heat in order to get a cross breeze happening. Not terribly effective and by the time I arrived I was cooked and dusty. All sorted by a ten minute soak in the park’s salt water swimming pool. Wednesday was a rest day – washing, lunch and a flutter at the Country club and an afternoon sitting in the shade of a tree reading.
Thursday I headed south along the Stuart Highway, stopping overnight at the “iconic” Daly Waters pub – or rather, along with 50 other vans, in the dirt paddock beside the pub. Daly Waters used to be a refueling point for Qantas international flights in the 1930’s and the pub was built to service them. This stop over, and the pub, is very popular with caravaners as well as some of the young jackaroos from neighboring properties.
At the pub, there’s a tradition of leaving something behind after you visit. Lots of bras hanging from ceiling🙄. $4.50 happy hour from 4-6pm, live music from 6pm, a nightly “beef and barra” bbq and the most portly goat ( maybe it’s a she and she’s very expecting) wandering around the beer garden. Everyone was taking photos of the beer garden dunny, but it looked just like the one at Tina’s next door, so I didn’t bother. I ate dinner with a couple from Melbourne on their way up to Gove to catch up with one of their sons. They have a holiday home at Bonnie Doon and were asking if I knew the owner of the pub. One of the Kirleys ( for the non O’Brien readers, the kirleys and their 12 ( or thereabouts kids) lived down the road from us at Tolmie – Mansfield). Nice to be able to lay in bed and listen to the live music later that evening.
Friday night pulled up at the Banka Banka West Station 100 km north of Tennant Creek. This is a 350,000 acre cattle station with a quite nice little park in their front paddock. No internet, no phone, no TV, but an Asian Street food truck. So, Friday night takeaways it was.
Bit of a shock overnight as it got down to 10 degrees. I had to dig out some long pants and my doona. At least it solved the air con issue. On Saturday I headed east along the Barkly Hwy stopping overnight at the Barkly Homestead park/pub. This has only just re opened after major renovations following flood damage and it’s all very nice including a brand new facilities block. Saturday night live music and seafood chowder at pub.
Round about 