Driving East

Monday 29th
We don't need to bring bags with us to shopping! Man this is confusing for me. In Mt. Isa on Saturday we parked ready to go into Woolies and Baylee, Josiah and myself headed in forgetting about our bags. I stopped and said " Hang on I forgot the bags. " We turned to go back to the car and I realised with my lightening fast mind, we are in a new state! I don't know what the go is in this state. So we just stopped and watched someone come out of the shop. They had grey bags, so, that means we don't need to take bags in. So we walked in with no bags. We can find Farmers Union Ice Coffee too so it's looking good for the SA family here!
We left Mt. Isa and headed for the hills. It was quite hilly, rocky and dry. The next town was Cloncurry and again we hear about these towns on Imparja tv and Central 7 tv so it was great to go through them and see them and get a feel for the area. It is dry at the  moment and quite isolated. Through Julia Creek and we started seeing horse trucks heading west. We knew that in 2 weeks time the Mt. Isa Rodeo was on but we thought that might be too long to wait around. Then we found out the next weekend the Cloncurry Rodeo was on but again that would b 7 days for that. So we assumed that these horse trucks were getting to Cloncurry early for the weekend. Then as we came into Richmond at the rodeo yards there, there were a lot of horses and trucks and people riding so we assumed again that maybe there was a horse clinic and people had been at that this weekend and then headed to Cloncurry. A lot of assuming on our part!

This is what we had to look at for a lot of the trip.
 A lot of people wearing big hats around here too! Just very dry all the time we were travelling. Any cattle we saw were thin and didn't have much to eat in their huge paddocks. That night we camped in a free spot in between Richmond and Hughenden.

This was our camp spot.

Swimming Sunday

Sunday 28th
There was just enough time before church to start washing all the bedding. As the kids and I drag 4 garbage bags full of washing to the laundry we often get the comment " the work is never done is it!" This is true. The same jobs need to be tended to and you can never tick these off. They will be back again next week. BUT the weather up here is excellent for drying and I am still appreciating that.
9:30am we were at Isa Community Church. We all enjoyed the service and appreciate how much effort goes into putting church on for us to just rock up and enjoy it from the pew. The notices were a little clip on the screen and were well done with a couple that were very funny. The kids laughed and that was a great way of doing notices, that have to be done every week. You would look forward to that each week when it is like that.  Again great music and a heap of different nationalities there. The preaching was on missions and the Pastor spoke very passionately as he has done a lot of missions trips and says it changes your life seeing how others live. I so agree and this trip has been excellent for showing our family the diversity within Australia and how blessed we are. The Pastor talked about having passion in what you are doing, a purpose and drive. I have seen so many people without a drive, so much so that they are walking dead. Nothing to live for and the days just pass them by. That just makes me sad and I know it is sad for God as He created us to thrive and each person has purpose here on earth. Anyway it was good and again, we are so blessed!
Again it was lunch at McDonalds but we have discovered that we can save nearly $40 if we go to McDonalds for tea instead of lunch. Isn't that crazy! There are family meals that are only for tea and it would save us that much! It has taken us nearly 4 months to work that out. Please don't add up how much we could of saved, I don't want to think about it!!!
As we drove around Mt Isa we are noticing a lot of shops that are advertised on our tv channels back at Minnipa and it is funny to finally see them for real. We are so far from home and could never really make use of the places advertised yet when we see them they are familiar due to the tv. Funny. We are 2 weeks too early for the rodeo here in Mt Isa but we might catch one somewhere else.
We headed back to the caravan finishing off the washing then headed to the pool for a swim!

Looks lovely but it was as cold as surfers beach at Venus Bay! Ahhhh. Manning jumped in, popped up and frantically swam to the steps nearly crying and exclaimed "I HATE THIS WATER"
In the picture is Kimberly, Zane, Baylee laying down, Josiah and Manning bending over.
The rest of the day was taken up with putting clean clothes away, making beds and organising ready to head off tomorrow. Heading for Cairns and may not have signal for a while again.

Mount Isa

Saturday 27th
Not so cold a morning and we were thankful of that! We were on the road and got into Mt Isa at 11:30am and into a caravan park of average price but we got ourselves an ensiute which is nice as we were fairly grotty. I have forgotten how nice, or maybe I didn't really think about it, having your own toilet and shower is. THE KIDS CAN GO BY THEMSELVES. Baylee, Josiah and myself hit Woolies and now we are stocked ready for our next stretch. This took all day.

Queensland

Friday 26th
Man is was hard getting out of bed! Freezing cold! The kids didn't want to get out of bed. We nearly turned around and headed back to Darwin. Instead we turned nearly every gas burner on, started to cook toast and make coffees for everyone even if they didn't want it, cooked teas for the next week and made everyone exhale twice as much! We were in shock. We were not use to this and were trying very hard to avoid it. Where did we go wrong! We had come inland! BUT all my clothes had dried, even the denim shorts. They were just very cold. After our attempts to get warm we finally braved the outdoors and packed up, jumped in the car with jumpers on, all sat on the passenger side of the car where the sun was, leaving Tim on the drivers side and having to keep us on the road. We were off.
At one point on the road side there was a dead cow and as we passed I saw a cat next to the cow eating it. I commented on this and Baylee looked very puzzled for a long time. He then proceeded to ask me what sort of cow it was, then what sort of cat it was and asked if cows eat meat sometimes. I said cows don't eat meat at all. Baylee said he thought that, but why was the cow eating the cat. The whole car load laughed as I said " The cat was eating the dead cow, not the cow was eating the cat."

This is not what it seems. Yes the water is not suitable for drinking and we are filling our 10L up but the tap was so slow that Kimberly offered to sit on it so Tim didn't have to hold it! But it did look a little funny.

We got fuel at the Three Ways Roadhouse. Turned left and headed east. Some trees and shrubs but long stretches of not a lot. Tim and I have discussed what you would do if you were out here with a raging fire coming towards you. No other roads to turn on.

 This is what we had to look at for a long time. A lot of road kill on these roads and they vary from cattle, kangaroos, dog, cat, wedgies.

We pushed on and at 5:30pm NT time we got to the Qld border and took our photo. State number 4 we have been in this year. We made camp at the Georgina River ( like our friend back home) near Camooweal in Qld!

Mataranka

Thursday 25th
Got fuel at Mataranka as well as filled up gas cylinder. Drove out to the Thermal Pool which is near the Mataranka Homestead Resort. You could spend quite a while there too as there is the Roper Creek that you could canoe or swim in.

The thermal pool was very green as if it had copper in it. 34C. We were a bit cold as we got out. Like a bath!

 It was a nice place and we got to see the house that they built for the movie "We Off The Never Never".

This is the house they built for the movie.

 At lunch I tried to train a Kite, bird like a hawk, to come down to get my piece of bread I threw it up in the air, just like the lady did at the wild life park at Berry Springs. It took a while but I did the same thing over and over again and he did it twice for me. I threw it up and he dived out of the sky and hit my piece of bread, making bits go everywhere. I guess he got some but it was a great achievment I thought!
We drove quite a way. Got fuel at Elliot then found a space on the side of the road to camp on. It was about 5pm and just enough time for the kids to go exploring. There were a few rubbish piles and it is amazing what they will amuse themselves with. Manning found a box that he called his home. They found a huge spring that they tied a rope to and when they bounced it it made a loud ringing sound and sprung high in the air.

Josiah found this shirt and sneakers. He was very sad when we said he couldn't take them with him! He is holding the box that Manning called his home.
Now this place was cold. I had washing that I had done in my white buckets in the back of the car so I hung that out and they were only hand squeezed out at 6pm, it was cold but you never know when things might dry!

This was our camp spot that we had all to ourselves!

Edith Falls

Wednesday 24th
Tim and I decided to not go to Twin Falls and Jim Jim Falls as the road was 2hours one way off the main road and the falls were not flowing much at the end of the season and you had to pay to get to them by boat. So the decision was to head to Edith Falls. On the way we stopped at Pine Creek for lunch and fuel and we saw the couple that we met at Kununarra! That's just amazing. They had just done Darwin and were heading to Qld too.
We think that we must be use to hot weather as it was feeling cold at Pine Creek and the temperature was 25C they told us. We were use to 33C.
We got to Edith Falls and had a swim. Got to chat to this couple from Kununarra as they were staying at Edith Falls. It was a big pool and a very nice area. Would of been nice spending a few days there. The water was cooler than Berry Springs but nice once you were in. The kids and Tim swam over to the waterfall and said that was warmer there.

The kids with their noodles ready to swim to the waterfall.

The waterfall in the distance. It was a decent swim over there.

After spending the afternoon there we drove out to stay near the main road with about 20 other vans.

This was our camp site.

And these were the clowns making dish washing a funny time!

 Later on we had to get our jumpers out! They hadn't been out for a long time.

Kakadu

Tuesday 23rd
After a huge effort of packing up we were able to leave before 10am and a little sad goodbye to the place we have called home for 4 weeks and the people that have let us have a taste of what life is like up around Darwin and Berry Springs. They say to truly experience it we have to come back in the wet season!
We drove through Kakadu and stopped at Jabiru, Bowali Visitor Centre.

Look what they had. This amazing creation of a seat. It was very comfortable and smooth to touch. The man that made it just keeps looking for wood and fallen down trees that are the right shape to make what he wants! Very clever.
We drove to Malabanjbanjdju camping area. No I didn't hold down the keys or randomly let Manning have a go at naming a place! We had to fill out a card to say where we were staying. Tim was doing this and he asked me the name of the camp ground. I smiled and handed him the map! What a name. Anyway we unhitched the caravan and drove to Nourlangie rock to look at the Aboriginal paintings on the rock. That was really easy to get to and it was great to see paintings that they had done years ago when they would camp at this rock. The kids kept trying to guess what the paintings were about and how they painted them. It gave us a little idea of how they lived. There were a lot in this area to see so it was worth coming.

At the lookout before we walked to see the paintings.

The angle of these rocks. The breeze was cool coming through here.


Back at the caravan the mozzies were starting to come out and I very rarely get bitten but they were attacking me in what felt like hundreds! So tea was eaten very quick and dishes were done inside! The night was a little cooler than what we were use to at Berry Springs.