Across The Gulf

The road into Lawn Hill is a lot easier than the road out...

Whoops – I’ve been pretty lax in my blogging of late.  I’d like to claim it is a natural consequence of this kind of a trip.  We are on Island Time now (albeit one very big island).  I stopped counting the kilometres somewhere in Far North Queensland and lost track of the days of the week not long after that, so how can I be expected to turn on a lap-top with any kind of regularity?

To bring us up to date:

After leaving Gregory Downs and the Scorpion incident behind, our Journey took us up through Boodjamulla ( Lawn Hill) National Park where we hired Kayaks and took a paddle down the gorgeous gorge and swam under fabulous falls and in, er, revitalising rivers.  The way out of the park was through creeks and rough tracks.  Always fun until somebody loses a rear windscreen.  I was actually glancing in my wing mirror as a lump of rock flicked up from our tyre, bounced off the half an inch of the trailer that is not protected by the stone guard and took out our rear window.  Several rolls of masking tape later we were back on the road again. 

The Southern Lost City

Initially, we made the decision to do the 1300k’s to Darwin as quickly as possible along the bitumen and miss out on the remote and rarely visited Limmen National Park, but we just couldn’t drive past the turn off without taking just a little look...   In the end, Limmen was well worth the journey , even though, without a rear windscreen the car was steadily filling up with fine red dust.  We camped all alone in the shadow of the geologically bizarre Southern Lost City rock formations and the next morning swam at the aptly named Butterfly Springs. 

Of course, as is the pattern with life; where there is Ying, there must also be Yang, where there is sunshine, there must also be rain and where there is a nice little creek crossing, there is also a brand new starter motor just waiting to fill up with water... So a big drive and an overnighter at the hot springs at Mataranka and we were in Darwin.

In the end we stayed here for 6 nights, which is the longest we have stayed anywhere on this trip.  Partly this was enforced for the fitting of a rear windscreen and fixing of a starter motor, again (interestingly, we are trying a new tack with the starter motor now.  Rather than trying to keep water from entering the unit, the auto electrician who cleaned it up has kindly drilled two holes in the bottom of the casing.  It won’t keep water out anymore, but at least it won’t keep it in either!) but we also extended our stay because Darwin is a great spot to spend a few days.  Jules loved the Mindil Sunset Markets, the kids loved the pool, the water park and fish feeding at ‘Aquascene’, and I loved the all-you-can-eat seafood and steak buffet at ‘The Jetty’ (four deserts might have been one chocolate cake too far however), and of course getting to meet so many more friendly mechanics.  Nobody was too keen on the ‘unusual’ level of mosquito activity or the ‘unseasonal’ thunderstorms that had us up defending the integrity of our home at 3.30am one morning though.  (Yang, again!)

And so, with that lightening tour of the last couple of weeks over, we are at the end of our Gulf trip and ready to set out again on the next phase of the trip.  Only a few more days before we reach the Kimberly...