Trice proving she has no fear

Trice Sandboarding......Here she goes

My Computer with all my photos

I was almost suicidal 3 days ago as I got the news that the harddisk had failed and I had lost all data since my last backup. Nooooooooooo!!!!!! that was all my photos and videos from the trip. Well Mr Super Geek decided to take my computer with him to see what was going on. 

Mr SG rang me today while I was wandering around Bunnings, hardware and computers, it doesn't get much better does it? The news is "My computer has been fixed and all my data has been saved" 

This is a photo of me feeling a bit of relief........

We have made it home.......

We left in the rain and now returned in the rain, what a drive from the Sunshine Coast. After Rollinstone we stopped at Airlie Beach, 1770, Bundaberg, Alexandra Headlands and now home. WHAT AN ADVENTURE.
I am patiently waiting for the computer guy to turn up and when I get my computer back I will finish the blog. You will have to wait to see the video of Patrice sand boarding at 1770, I didn't know someone could scream that long without taking a breath.

Townsville to Rollingstone

We have just had a fabulous couple of days, today Trice got up to watch the sunrise on the ocean, she was just getting away from me I know. We had our first cooked breakfast for quite some time, had a swim, watched a couple of movies, had a walk along the beach, Patrice occupied herself for ages by just wandering along collecting shells and coral, now I a bucket full of stuff that I have to transport back to Brisvegas. We had another swim, a couple of drinks, a beautiful dinner with a bottle of wine. Today was an absolute chill out in a beautiful place only metres from the water, this is what life is all about, it would be so easy to say 'stuff it' and pull up stumps and stay here for some time as it is idealic. We are slowly heading back so tomorrow we will head to Airlie Beach for a couple of nights.

We Made it to the East Coast

We we have made it to the East Coast and here we are with our caravan up against the sand just north of Townsville in Rollingstone.

 We spent a night in Hughenden, nice little town apart from the caravan park. Now picture this, caravan park with drive through sites, shady with wash down booth for vehicles, 30 metre swimming pool. We get there, pay our money and drive around the back to park the van, that is the main railway line just over there, what the heck let's just have a swim. Trice and I wandered off looking for this enormous pool, well we found it, it is the bloody public swimming pool next door which is closed for maintenance. That night when I went outside it was like rotten egg gas so I raced back inside. The next day I asked one the the council guys what that smell was? "What Smell?" was his reply. I think they are all immuned to it cause it really did reek!
Hughenden's main business since the early days is Cattle & Wool - It's all brought here by the road trains from the whole region to the rail yards for distribution.

Hughenden is part of the dinosaur trail, they have dinosaur replicas everywhere made out of fibreglass, scrap metal, you name it they have made it. If you look closely at the photo above,  there is even an old shovel for the front leg. We dropped into the FJ Holden cafe for breakfast and met Francis James and Jan Holden, quite a unique little cafe with all types of holden STUFF. Even a sticker which said that they would rather push their holden than drive a ford - how rude. I made sure I pointed out to Jan that they had a Ford Sierra car model on their top shelf, she said that that was OK as Peter Brock drove that one.
We have heard about the Prarie Hotel so we stopped on our way to Townsville, there was an older couple sitting on a bench outside who had been there since 9.00am, it was now 11.00am and the pub was still not open, "Oh no, we are too early again" "seems to be the way our whole holiday has been. A young girl next door suggested that I go down to their house and get them to come and open up - I said it was OK and we headed off to Charters Towers, the home of the first Stock Exchange in Queensland. It was a very rich town in it's hey day and the architecture reflects that which has been beautifully preserved. The townfolk of yesteryear named Charters Towers "The World" as they thought they had everything there that they could possibly need. Hence the naming of the World Theatre & a painting of the World on the side of a building.
We stayed in Townsville last night and had a lovely dinner with some friends. Dropped in and had a coffee with Larry and Sharon before heading off to Rollingstone.

 After getting from Tennant Creek to Townsville in just 3 days we are pulling up stumps and just chilling out for a couple of days. It has been eventful in that our air conditioning packed it again so we were stuck in Charters Towers for 4 hours getting it fixed again and the biggest tragedy of all is that my computer has gone on strike. It looks like either Windows is corrupted or the harddisk has failed, I am hoping it is the first which I can't do anything about until we get home so unfortunately the bloggs may cease until my computer is fixed unless Trice let's me

onto her computer. All my photos and videos are on my computer and if the disk has failed then I may have lost them. So I am now going to grab myself a cold Rum and Cola and sit back and watch the water wash onto the sand, it is just so stressful and I can hear you feeling sorry for us having to put up with this life. I know it is hard, but being the caring sharing people that we are, I thought that we would save you the trouble of having to sit here just listening to music, having a drink or 2 or 3, bugger I missed my afternoon nap.... 

Driving, driving, driving ....not much to report

11/04/2010

Camooweal to Cloncurry

10/04/2010

Had a swim this morning before we made our way out onto the main street to find out what was happening in this place, what were the attractions and to investigate the character of the town. We headed to the museum as a place to start, opening hours were 9.00 and being 9.30 I hought that we may expect someone to be home. We then went to the community notice board as it did have a section called Things To Do, it was blank. So we did the next most interest thing and stand in the middle of the main street and what for some traffic.

Tennant Creek to Camooweal

09/04/2010

Left Tennant Creek and drove to Camooweal around 450 klms of nothing just long straight roads and not much in the way of scenery. We stayed at the Post Office Hotel, quite a few vans here, we are starting to see the tourist season hotting up. Trice and I decided to have a beer in the public bar and have a chat, it was packed, 2 locals and the barman, the bar was humming.

Daly Waters Pub to Tennant Creek

08/04/2010

Had a swim and water aerobics session this morning at the Daly Waters pub. We met the park manager Errol, another grey nomad who stopped for a night and didn’t leave. His wife Lyn works as a kitchen hand in the pub and now looking at staying for around 6 months. It seems that is you want a job you will get one in a flash in the outback. We had a good chat and a coffee with Errol before we headed off for Tennant Creek. I have never put so much fuel in anything for a long time, I filled up in Katherine and I need to put a bit in to get us through to Tennant Creek. I slide up to the pump Renner Springs to look at the price, $1.98.5c per litre, my god you have to be kidding! I put $50 in and bought just over 25 litres. This should get us through to Tennant Creek where fuel was $1.49.5 on 180 litres that is a $90 saving over Renner Springs. I must have been a bit heaver on the foot getting to Tennant Creek as we averaged 25 litres per 100 kilometres. It was nice to finally pull up in the caravan park. Now that we are here we decided to see some of the sites we didn’t see when we were here last time. Off to Kunjurra also known as the Pebbles, quite disappointing after seeing Devils Marbles. Lake Mary Anne was pleasant and we met a couple from Coffs harbour who are sharing a bus with a group of backpackers, you could tell that they were dying to talk to some adults, they just about chased us down when they saw us. They also mentioned Kings Canyon, it seems that this is a place you have to see so we are now planning our next trip to Alice Springs.

Katherine to Daly Waters Pub

07/04/2010

Today I had to get the car serviced, so I booked the car in and Trice and I were picked up and taken to Aboriginal Art Lessons. We met up with Manuel the aboriginal from Arnhem Land who we met last time we were in Katherine. He is one of the loveliest guys I have ever met. He is extremely intelligent but where the white fella is bound by the clock they, the black fellas, as he calls them, have no bearing on time.

He calls the half cast aboriginals yellow fellas. Manuel first took us through his history and then introduced us to the art work. We were given canvas, brushes and a piece of reed and acrylic paint. Although he can use the traditional methods for painting, most aboriginal art now uses acrylic paint. We were then guided through the process but we had to come up with our own design first. The other people chose the normal Kangaroos, Emus, Yams and fish I wanted to be different, what could I draw in aboriginal art and be unique? I know, I will draw a caravan, I want our Jayco reflected in traditional aboriginal artwork, so off I went.

Trice drew and painted a barramundi that looks like a bream and I finished the van, it was great fun. The reed was used to paint the lines, it seemed very clumsy at first but when you dip it into the paint and then lay it down on the canvas and then drag it away from the body you start to get the hang of it.

Now it was time to learn how to use a Woomera to through a spear, Trice’s heritage started to come out as she was a natural. Just think about it she can blow a Didge, throw a boomerang, eats camel and kangaroo, and now throws a spear. My little lubra Trice....

Got the car back and luckily no issues so we pack up and get on the road a little late as we were supposed to be out by 10 and it was now 12. Daly waters here we come.

We stopped at the Cutta Cutta Caves on the way, had an hour and a half tour, very interesting. A great collection of stalactites and stalagmites in these massive caves. This is where the water starts for the Katherine Hot Springs.

We arrived at Daly Waters mid afternoon and there is already around 20 vans in the park, we thought that the pub would be rocking tonight until we found out that most of the vans were the Salvo’s band on their way to Katherine so went across for the traditional Beef and Barra night and good chat to a few travellers and then returned for a good relaxing night.

Katherine Day 2

06/06/2010

Today we are driving around to see a few sights in Katherine other than the locals and went to have a look at Springvale homestead onto Low Level and then out to the museum. At Springvale the place was built around 1890 and has been kept in its original form. Trees have been planted for the birth of children around that time and these same trees are still here, they are South African Rain Trees. They are huge lumpy trees with masses of leaves that rain moisture in the evening. We came across other old trees which we were told were African Mahogany trees, these things are over 100 years old.

We couldn't help but notice the heat 42 degrees with high humidity, it was a dash and flash for photos to get back to the car.

Through Low Level which is an old one lane bridge west of the current road bridge which must have serviced the traffic heading to Darwin many years ago and onto the museum. The museum was the original airport which was bombed by the Japanese; parts of the old runway are still there. It was typical of most old museums which I love and Trice hates but I managed to drag her around for some time. During our tour we were shown a documentary of the 1998 flood and it just confirmed the tenacity of this town, I was growing to like the place to which Trice said “You have got to be kidding!”

We raced back to our van to get dressed up as tonight we are off to have dinner with ‘Marksie’, the Bush Tucker Man.

A bit of spit and polish, a bit of wine in the bag and off we going to meet up with Marksie at the museum grounds at his bush tucker camp site. We were met by a family from Darwin, a young couple from the USA and another young couple from the Netherlands. The camp fires were

glowing and Marksie met us with a real bushy greeting. Between serving jungle juice and meals Marksie told yarns all night. He served up an entree of Kangaroo marinated in a secret sauce, Camel sausages, barramundi and damper. This was followed up with a main of lamb, beef, peas and pumpkin seasoned with bush herbs. Dessert was a traditional billy tea and damper scones. It was a very entertaining evening and the food was delicious.

Katherine Day 1

05/05/2010

Left Cooinda around 10.30 and headed off to Katherine and arrived just after lunch. We had heard about the hot springs on the Katherine River so after we settled in we walked out the back gate of the caravan park and down to the springs. You should have seen the mud everywhere from the enormous of water that had been through here, I forgot the camera so I didn’t get any photos. The water must have been 20 or 30 feet above the normal height and with that everything had been awash with trees, mud and sand. In 1998 the whole town went under, the railway bridge is so far above the river it is not funny yet the water was around 1 ½ metres above the bridge. When you walk through Woolworths in the main street knowing that the water was up to the ceiling it makes you wonder how the town survived. They were hit with yet another flood in 2006 but not to the same levels. They had started sandbagging shops when the river rose again earlier this year.

The spring had been cleaned and is obviously a popular place for people to come to on a hot spring day..... There were quite a few people swimming and the water was a constant 32 degrees. I found out later that the water that comes to the surface here comes all the way from the Cutta Cutta caves.

Back to the van for a quiet evening and some planning for our next 2 days in Katherine.

Cooinda Day 2

04/04/2010


We got up for our 6.30 boat cruise on Yellow Water this morning. Holey smoke how bloody hot is it, I had a shower and then I got out of the van and had a bath.
Off we go to get onto the 4wd bus that took us through the flooded road to the jetty as the sun was coming up. Every time you want to take a phot you need to wipe the lens due to the humidity.

It wasn't glass bottom but it was a large boat and the captain was a woman who was very passionate about the environment and the waterways. The wildlife was a bit sparse but we were shown many things, the most amazing was the fact that the flood plains that are covered in lillies and grass have around one and half metres of water over them and the grass can unfurl its roots up to about 3 metres. She was saying that this area will be dry in the near future. The crocs were a bit docile and sparse but we did see 4 of them but I think that they were asleep as it was early. The cruise was great and they gave a good hearty breakfast when we got back.
We headed off and walked 3 klm into the bush looking for the rock pool at Gubara after visiting the Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre. We seemed to be walking forever and the heat was so intense but

when we go to the rock pools it was beautiful and cool and again there were the sooty grunter fish swimming around. The only issue with the walk in is the fact that we had to walk out again, I would have hated to have walked much further as we had run out of water and were soaked with sweat. When drove off thriving on being back in the air conditioning of the car. Suddenly a dingo shot across the road just ahead of us so I stopped to try and take a photo of it but all I got was photos of the trees and he eased his way into the bush.

It was a little disappointing that the wet season has delayed the opening of many sites as we would have loved to have gone to Jim Jim Falls. On the way back we saw a sign leading to Jim Jim Billabong but again the road was closed but this one wasn’t a gate is was a sign across the track so using the old ‘It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission’ we went around the sign and headed towards the billabong. The road was washed out in a couple of spots but other than that it was Ok until

we came to a creek crossing, there must have been nearly 2 feet of water running over the road so we didn’t take the chance. Living there on the bank was an aboriginal family who were quite friendly but we left them to their own privacy and headed back to camp.

We got to know a couple of older fellows who live on the Gold Coast and are simply travelling around Australia filling in time. They had been out barramundi fishing spending $180 each to go out on Yellow Water,

they returned with nothing, it seems that with all the fresh water around the fishing has been very poor.

Off to Katherine tomorrow to start the journey back to reality ...