Gregory National Park

Surrounded by bugs to write my blog once again.  They just love that computer screen when we are in the middle of nowhere.

We are camped in Gregory National Park for the night, at Sullivan’s camp ground on the Victoria Highway, on the way across to Western Australia.  The campground has one pit toilet, a few fireplaces, a croc infested creek, and that’s all.  We have met a few lovely couples from Brisbane, though, and have had a fun evening with them.

Sullivan's Camp site, Gregory National Park

Mark and Donna have retired and have been travelling since February around Western Australia, and are about to travel along the roads we’ve just driven, but in reverse.  Mike and Linda have been on the road for four weeks, and are travelling the same direction as us.  Who knows where we’ll meet up again!

Mark and Donna were full of helpful information.  They gave us lots of ideas of where to stay around Western Australia.  Tomorrow we will travel across the border, and apparently they have very strict quarantine regulations.  I knew we’d have to finish off all the fresh fruit and veg before the border, but I didn’t know they wouldn’t allow honey into Western Australia either.  We have two big jars of Gordon’s honey, which is “raw” and straight from the hive on the top of his roof!  I’m trying to work out whether to boil it.  But in the mean time it is honey sandwiches, honey in the lentils for dinner, and honey on your breakfast.  Who knows, we may get through it yet! 

When we pulled in tonight I cut up half of the big watermelon I bought yesterday.  I cooked up about 10 carrots, four onions, a capsicum, 6 tomatoes, 5 potatoes and a head of broccoli for dinner.  Joseph wondered where the meat was.  I said “just vegetables tonight, Joseph, we’ve got a lot to get through.”  It felt like I was cooking chutney, and I probably could have if I knew the recipe!

I put the leftovers in the fridge.  Apparently they don’t mind if they’re cooked, so we’ll finish them off tomorrow night for dinner.  For breakfast it’s the rest of the watermelon and honey sandwiches!  Then, before we cross the border we will each eat a lunch of half a raw carrot, half a tomato, half a cucumber, and half a mango! At the very least we should all be quite regular for a day!

Eggs are another thing I’m not sure about.  I guess we can always pull over and boil them all if need be!

Mark had also found out how to fix our fridge.  We are travelling with a 90 litre fridge inside the van, which includes the shoe box size freezer inside.  It usually works quite well, but a few days into the warmer weather, we noticed a bad smell coming out each time we opened it.  At first I thought it was the milk that had been spilled inside going off.  I wiped it out but no change!  Then I realized it was the cryvaced (not sure if that’s how you spell vacuum bagged meat) meat I had bought.  I had been advised that it would last quite a bit longer in the fridge but the fridge had to stay below 4 degrees.  We measured ours and it was sitting at around 11 degrees C.  That wasn’t a good temperature for anything to keep at, let alone meat. Well, Mark said that most of these fridges aren’t insulated around the outside, which would help a lot, and also he had a little computer fan installed in the back of the fridge which improves the ventilation around the outside of the fridge.  Apparently it makes a huge difference.  Grant is keen to try out his suggestions.

This morning we set off slowly from Douglas Daly Tourist park, and travelled the 30kms back to the Stuart Highway.  Along the highway I again noticed the power poles, which are all made of steel. On a long, straight stretch of road, these eifel tower design of poles look very cool, all in straight lines into the distance.  Everywhere we go in the Northern Territory are massive termite mounds.  At the magnetic termite tourist stop yesterday, the information board said there are even termites who hollow out live trees.  I don’t think our wooden power poles would last very long around here!

We made our way into Katherine, where we stopped to fill up the gas bottle on the caravan, the fuel tanks, and the food supplies. (we needed another box of cornflakes, but I knew I shouldn’t have bought the bag of carrots!)  Grant chatted to Wayne from Edith Farm who had lots of stories to tell him.  He also had two cute dogs, Zac and Pebbles.  We found the local St Vincent de Paul and bought a few more books to keep us going.

Finally, after my retail therapy, we headed off from Katherine on our way to Kununurra in Western Australia.  It felt exciting heading off on roads we hadn’t been on yet.  There were purple tabletop mountains in the distance and the road was quite hilly, compared to what we’d been on.  At one rest stop, the toilet block was covered in bullet holes.  The double thickness steel door stopped them, though, something we should all remember!!

Vicki