Through
the Limmen NP – 6-8/7/15
What a lovely first 26 km on bitumen. At the turn off to Limmen NP we hit gravel road again, but it actually wasn’t too bad. We drove about 50 km to Batten creek and found a lovely free camp all for ourselves. Far enough off the road there was nothing except us, birds and stars. A relaxing afternoon and a good night.
Next day we drove on into Lorella Springs, which is a 1.000.000 acre farm (4,000 km2) with a lot of (some hot) springs, waterholes, mountains, and waterfalls. A 4WD paradise. Unfortunately it’s 30 km off the main road and the grader hasn’t been here for a long time (even more unfortunate that the owners are apparently not allowed to maintain the road themselves, even though there have their own grader…). Well, my back hated those 29 km and I paid for it the next day. Due to this we didn’t go exploring the vast area but also weren’t too unhappy about it. Most of the waterfalls and hiking/lookout spots or hot springs are about 20-40 km away and it’s more of a rough 4WD drive to get to them.
Sarah found a new friend, Taiya, and had a great 2 days with lots of swimming in the hot spring, riding her balancing bike and making birds nests filled with seeds to attract little birds (so they can collect eggs in the morning for breakfast). Martin finally found out how to make a damper and we tried the recipe at the fire this night. Delicious! We even got ourselves the treat of a glass of wine from the bar ($8/glass which is better than $6 for a can of beer). So overall a lovey 2 days in Lorella Springs!
The southern Lost City – 9/07/15
We took our time this morning to give Sarah and Taiya a bit more time to play. We all went for a swim in the hot spring again just before we were ready to leave to enjoy a clean child for half an hour. Saying good-bye to Taiya and her family was a bit sad and Sarah was asking about her friend probably 10 times during the day.
Martin was very kind to my back and drove about 10 km/h on the most horrible stretches of corrugation on the 30km out of Lorella springs. It took us about 1.5 h but I was happy! Another 30 min and we reached the turn off to the Southern Lost City – 4km of narrow and corrugated road but, hey, what’s 4 km once you’ve done Lorella?? And this was well worth the effort. A beautiful campsite with views onto the secluded rocks. Can lunch be any better? Even though it was still a very sunny 30C (better than Brisbane, it’s not humid!!) we decided to go for the 2.5 km hike because Sarah was full of energy. Walking into the “City” was magnificent. Amazing to see how the trees seem to follow the line of erosion and bend into the same direction as the rocks. While the rocks in Caranbirini Reserve were much higher, the setting here was nicer. Probably because the pillars were smaller and varied much more in diameter, hight and shape, we felt much closer to them..
Towns River and Lomarieum – 10 & 11/7/15
Driving on from the Southern Lost City we had quite a good road. We stopped for a break at the Butterfly Springs. Sarah had time to play in the water (no waterfall) which unfortunately started to turn green and will probably be stagnant very soon. We pushed on to get to Towns River, which was a long drive again. Sarah is so good in the car and apart from having to listen to the same song over and over again (“Herrn Pastor sin kau”, “Allein, Allein”, “Break my stride” and “Backe, Backe Kuchen” are her favorites) we are amazed at how easy she takes those long hard drives. It looks like we are more exhausted than she by the time we stop. Towns River was lovely. A camp spot right on the river and luckily there was 1m cliff to prevent Sarah from playing too close to the water since Salties have been seen in the area. Martin tried his luck at fishing for a Barramundi and Sarah told him how to do it! They didn’t succeed – we had rice with (frozen) vegies for dinner. Our fresh fruit and veg supplies are nearly empty.
After a slow and relaxed morning (including a chat to a couple from Brisbane that is using a Bushtracker from 1998) we hit the road again, not looking forward to corrugation. It turned out to be quite bad and after an hour and a half we stopped at the old ruins of St Vidgeon and the Lemarieum Lagoon for lunch and a bit of relaxation at the water.
The next stretch was a mixed bag but at the turn off to Roper Bar the street got better (we drove up to 60km/h) and we had some great views and very diverse landscape again. Beautiful young green grass shimmering through the burned stems and soil or yellowish savannah-like grass fields. Tomato island campground had phone reception but was very crowed so we decided –unfortunately- to drive on. The last 20km to Roper Bar were badly corrugated and Martin was exhausted by the time we reached the campground. We soon figured out that the campground and shop are a rip off (but well stocked): Fuel costs $2.20/L and all the food was way overpriced (2L milk for 6.90). We’re not in the middle of nowhere anymore. Mataranka (at the Stuart Highway) is only 180km away and only 45 km of this is gravel. And Kathrine is only another 100 km from there. Even the dust patch (campground) costs $15 a head and they tried to charge for Sarah an extra $10. Fortunately for us the sing at the entrance said $10 per adult and only children 4+ have to pay. After pointing this out to the owner they reduced the price for us. We don’t mind spending some money in remote communities as these people have it hard enough and deserve our money, but if we are getting ripped of we spend as little as possible. i.e. instead of filing up the car, we’ve only filled up 20L Diesel and we only bought little fresh fruit and a bread.