Just a quick word about supplies (For my
sister back in Germany :-).
Karumba had a great supermarket. We were lucky that the weekly delivery had
just come in a day ago with a lot of fresh fruit and veg and heaps of fresh
milk. 2L costs around $5 here. In Normanton we couldn’t get any because it was
the day before the delivery. Apples are great to take along and they are $7 a
kilo while potatoes are cheap with $2.50 a kilo. Lettuce is a treat that we
couldn’t get but two cucumbers for $4. Cheese is also more expensive ($9 for
500g), as well as butter ($5.40 for 250g). You do get a lot of tins at fairly
normal prices and stores are stocked well with them. You can find flour in the
cold section (2-5 kg packs) as well as sugar and big packs of salt (2kg pack).
Here in Adels Grove you can only get frozen toast but at least you can get it! (but the only milk available is long-life skim milk, yak!)
Getting to Adels Grove
The rest of the 90 km wasn’t too bad. Opposed to what the maps said, 50 km of the road was sealed for the mine trucks (even though it’s just a thin layer, it’s so much better than gravel). From the Century Zinc Mine turn off, we had another 40 km of gravel, which I found very exhausting. Also Sarah was more than happy when we finally arrived at the caravan park.
Lawn Hill National Park – a little gem
On our first day in Adels Grove we drove the 10 km to the Lawn Hill NP to go on one of the 6 hikes. It was a beautiful landscape just driving there, a rocky range in the usual light-brown colours with bits of green and white against a blue sky. The Duwadarri Lookout-hike lead us up onto the ridge of the gorge, a great climb for Sarah and she enjoyed that part a lot. We got rewarded with a view over the turquoise water of the gorges, palm trees and the endless country in the back. Following the path further to the Indarri Falls opened the view into a little paradise: palm trees, a little waterfall, and the colours were just beautiful. And you haven’t have a clue what’s hiding behind those rock walls when you drove towards the National Park and even climbing up the rocky path…
The next day we came back to hire a canoe to paddle through the gorge and see it from the other side. …
Paddeling Lawn Hill Gorge and the Cascades walk
After a little morning tea we hiked to the cascades but the water levels were too low and it was just little ponds. Never the less we enjoyed the walk and Sarah was dragging a palm leaf behind her half the way, “cleaning” the track (Irina, do you remember Gosha doing the same thing on one of our hikes when he was much younger :-). We had lunch, Internet connection and a dip into the water before we went back to the campground.
Later that afternoon someone told us that our underbody protection plate at the front of the Jeep was loose. We were really glad that we found out before heading off again. Luckily there’s a mechanics workshop at the campgrounds and Martin was able to get some bolts to fix the problem.