We stopped at Katherine and refuelled, shopped, washed the car and made phone calls. We then drove 40 kms up the road to a campsite at the turn off to Edith Falls. Two others were camped there and we had a drink and a rather intense chat about Gonski and other education matters. One woman was rather bossy so we made our escape and enjoyed my lasagne that had been in the freezer from home and salad, finished off with a meringue case with strawberries and cream. We certainly eat well when we are away.
We drove into Edith Falls the next day and walked up to the swimming holes, a 15 minute walk. The holes were a welcoming sight and we had several swims before heading back down to the day use area. We needed another dip in the bottom pool after that !!
We drove back to our campsite at the start of the road and stayed another night. It was very hot. Thank goodness for our fans that Randall installed - one over the table and one over the bed. The one over the bed went all night!!
From there we headed to Pussycat Flats at Pine Creek. Pussycat flats is an old racecourse that is now a caravan park. We have stayed here before and it has real atmosphere. The caretaker remembered Randall from our last visit - we had run into some fellow Tasmanians that we knew and we enjoyed quite a few bevies. Randall had pulled out the bagpipes late in the evening much to the annoyance of some of the campers there. Luckily she enjoyed bagpipe music, so she had a bit of a laugh about it.
We plugged into power this time, as our battery needed a top up. It had not been on charge since we left home. The evening was lovely, so we went for a bit of a walk.
It is nice to have the air conditioner going while we are on power - a rare treat!
The open air bar opens at 4pm each day, but you can sit and do your computer stuff in the cool of the shade. I took the opportunity to update the blog. It is hard on the road to upload photos without good service.
Randall practised his pipes one morning and the caretaker loved it - she even put a video up on Facebook!
We spent 3 nights here and really enjoyed it. On the last night we had the roast dinner on offer - roast pork and vegies followed by apple crumble. It was the first bought meal of the trip and very enjoyable!
From there we headed to Litchfield National Park. Initially we were headed to Buley Rockhole, one of our favourite places to stay on each of our visits up north. Randall had read that it was now only a day use area, so we went to Florence Falls nearby and found a nice spot there. In his search for phone service we moved when Randall got one bar of 3G. He had bought these special aerials at home that enhanced the signal, so here we are walking around, me with one aerial and Randall with the other and the wireless hotspot connected to them. It was so hot and we were both getting grumpy. We ended up going back to where we were, and funnily enough the next morning we got 1 bar of 4G, enough for us to download The Mercury newspaper and for Randall to make a phone call.
We set up and went for a walk. You have to go down quite steep flights of stairs, 135 steps in all, to get to the bottom and swim in the plunge pool. On talking to the ranger, there are some other shallower pools you can swim in that don't involve the steps. We ended up doing a loop and walking the 1 1/2 ks to Buley rock hole and were very sad to see that the lovely camp ground is now an ugly sealed carpark. We had a swim in the pools there then walked back, had another dip where the ranger suggested and another dip in the plunge pool. It was very hot, and by the time we had walked up the 135 steps, we felt like another dip!!
Our solar panels were really struggling to keep our fridge cool, so Randall gave them a bit of a wash with the car brush. It seemed to help a little bit. We only have one 'house' battery to run the fridge, lights, water pump etc. In our caravan we have two, one just for the fridge, which made it easier. We weren't allowed to run the generator here, but we started up the car one evening and used the car aircon to cool us down a bit. A couple of campers knocked on our door and asked us to turn off the car - I suppose it was too noisy!
A lot of campers here light up their camp fires to cook. I couldn't stand being near the heat up here!!
This was our last stop before Darwin. As we headed up the Stuart Highway we finally saw the Ghan, with lots of carriages. We had been looking out for it all the way up.
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