Crossing Pool

It's still hot here at Crossing pool, and there are flies and red dirt, but we are camped right beside the river and can go for a swim and cool off whenever we like.  It makes a huge difference.

Some school work this morning.  Very reluctant students, but we are getting there slowly.

Halfway through the morning a monitor lizard wandered past our van.  He's a little goanna, and we all took a break and watched him lick his way past in the dirt.

Little star finches are flitting around in the reeds on the side of the river, and Corella parrots (like a sulphur crested cockatoo, but no crest) are screeching in the trees overhead.  It is a lovely place.

Today we had pancakes, a little cereal, UHT milk and some tinned peaches for breakfast, then tinned spaghetti or canned tuna on rye crackers with cucumber for lunch, pikelets for afternoon tea, and tuna casserole for dinner.  We've eaten so much flour we won't be able to go to the loo for a week.  We have one litre of UHT left, but a bit of powdered milk, no bread, no fresh veg or fruit....we're really camping now!  It's been tinned peas and carrot or dehydrated peas and corn for a few nights now.  Certainly saves a lot of time in vegetable peeling and chopping!  We're planning on heading to Karratha tomorrow, a mining town on the coast, so we should be able to stock up there.  Don't think we'll get scurvy just yet.

Dominic and Joseph are enjoying the shallow rapids at one end of the camp ground, and made boats out of paper and plastic bottles to float down.  Nadine and Oskar love to chase them down on the bank.  They've come back a few times today soaking wet from head to toe.

Late this afternoon we drove back over near the visitor centre and swam in "deep reach", a stretch of the Fortescue River that is wide, deep and beautiful to swim in.  Grant and Joseph and Dominic swam across to the other side and back, while Nadine and Oskar jumped in from the edge.  There was a kangaroo watching us for a bit - they are sometimes spooky, kangaroos.  The water here is a little warmer than where we're camping because it has a spring deep under the river feeding it.

The sign at the waterhole said this was where the rainbow serpent lived and he swallowed two boys for killing and eating a parrot.  I guess this is a different rainbow serpent from the one who lives in Kakadu.  But they both have to do with water and killing little children.  Very nice.

After our cooling and cleansing dip we drove further up the road to the visitor centre, and walked around the homestead trail next to it to the Jin...... Pool.  The whole path was full of little streams crisscrossing the area, and they were some of the clearest streams I have ever seen.  They looked like mountain springs, but were 27 degrees.  You can't swim in this pool unless you're invited, because it is sacred to the aborigines, but the little boy who lived here when it was still a cattle station did, and he loved it.  His grandmother even planted the water lillies that make it look so lovely...

We've had a lovely few days, this is the nicest camping spot we've had, but we think we'll keep heading out to the coast tomorrow, to catch up with Katie by phone, get some food, and pick up more post that Grant had delivered to Karratha.
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Vicki