Entry 4 – 5th July – 14th August. Finally, some permitted Australian travel subject to covid-19 conditions.
After a superb three weeks of caravan travel in the Flinders Ranges, we returned home in need to obtain repairs for the second time on our faulty, now 12-month-old, Lenovo laptop. Grr. We ordered a new caravan table leg to strengthen up it’s stability and making it easier to expand our bedding area if need be with an adjustable telescopic leg.
Our son took possession of our old trailer and Steve decided to replace the aging bearings prior to delivery. On inspection he located a broken leaf on one of the springs resulting with a planned half day job, stretching out to five full days of work for him. We were unable to get replacement bearing, (they don’t make the same type anymore) with the same scenario for obtaining new springs. The end result was a new axle, new bearings, new springs and new wheels. Steve made some rotisserie stands to flip the trailer as he needed to cut off the old spring retainer brackets and secure the new ones including altering the spare wheel envelope as the new wheels where a different shape. Lots of Grr.
Our state of South Australia was covid-19 free but the nearby eastern states of Victoria and New South Wales were experiencing an onslaught from a second wave of infections resulting with people from those two states banned from entering other areas of Australia. Directly north of us was the Northern Territory and late July they opened their borders to a selection of other interstate travellers including us.
We had some lovely time with our Adelaide based family, including a grandchildren fix. We hooked up the caravan and started driving north towards the warmer regions of the Northern Territory, looking forward to escaping the current cold winter conditions in southern Australia.
About 300 kilometres up the road we spent our first night in the beautiful setting of Mount Remarkable National Park, at Mambray Creek campground. Once again, it showed to be a soul pleasing splendid quiet bush setting helping to place our thoughts into a good state of mind. It is also a wonderful environment for our younger generations. Two pictures below show where some children had spent time building a cubby house in the hollow base of a tree using rocks from the creek bed and tree branches for a roof. It is so easy to stay longer and longer in this lovely setting if it wasn’t for the predicted cold daytime maximum temperature’s around the 13 C for the next week and we were “so”, looking forward to soaking in the current 30 C temperatures of northern Australia.
From Mambray Creek we headed north with a big day of driving for us of around 500 kilometres, stopping at a roadside parking area for the night about 90 kilometres south of Coober Pedy. The scenery for the day was a bit dull and uninspiring. We did stop to view some of the vast inland salt lakes. At one point we had to brake hard to avoid colliding with an eagle as it took off from atop of a dead kangaroo on the roadside, initially flying out onto the road in front of us. The whole day was spent driving into a strong head wind which was impacting our normal average fuel consumption where we needed to recalculate availability of fuel along our route. We had travelled north along this route once before and could vaguely remember an increased fuel consumption travelling north along the Stuart Highway on our previous trip.
Not the best of picture obtained from our dash cam, but you can see the large shadow from the eagle spreading across the road directly in front of us helping to show how big eagles can be.
We spent the following two days driving. Pictures below, showing some of the scenery along our route near the opal town of Coober Pedy.
One overnight roadside stop we were in company of two motor homes and ironically Steve knew both the male occupants from his former work place. The morning conversation went like; “did you hear the vehicle pulling up nearby in the wee morning hours?” Yes, everyone did and all of us watched them for a bit, making sure they were not up to anything untoward. Well that turned out to be one very safe roadside stop.
We were stopped by Northern Territory police at a border control check point, setup compliments of the covid-19 pandemic to prevent unauthorised persons from entering the territory. We had complied with directions to submit an electronic entry permit prior our arrival, with the police officer recording our particulars with our entry permit. We were held up for around five minutes and were welcomed to the Northern Territory. Of interest, at the check point, there was an unoccupied vehicle connected to a caravan stopped in the middle of the road displaying registration plates from the banned state of Victoria. We had to deviate onto the side dirt verge to get around this vehicle. We suspected the occupants were experiencing a thorough examination of their movements and reasons for entering the Northern Territory.
Just up the road we stopped for a couple of nights at a caravan park in Alice Springs. The first night we caught up with Mary’s brother, Michael, who lives at Alice Springs. Day two we had planned to spend viewing the wild life at the Alice Springs Desert Park. It required an early morning start and we both woke seemingly too early to the sound of the alarm clock. It didn’t take long for us to realise the fast pace of the last few days had caught up with us, as we were both feeling exhausted and decided to sleep in.
Another interesting sight at the Alice Springs airport, compliments of the coronavirus / covid-19 pandemic with most international flights ceasing around the world. The climate of central Australia suiting the long-term storage of aircraft.
We left the caravan park early the next morning with our caravan in tow, feeling refreshed after a day of rest, of sorts, heading for our Alice Springs Desert Park experience. This turned out to be good strategy as we arrived at opening time, immediately starting our walkabout stopping at several bird aviaries where we viewed many different varieties of birds whilst fluttering about at their best during the crisp (about 2 degrees) early morning prime time. We did obtain some splendid photographs, still with difficulty due to the birds flittering about constantly.
The above reference to our rest day, of sorts was due to being unable to locate our external toilet door lock key, to empty our loo! Steve thought the key may have been left about 1500 kilometres back down the road at our home. Our son kindly searched all the possible locations for the missing keys but sadly without any success. Steve spent several hours walking around the caravan park borrowing other people’s loo keys hoping for one with the same key combination to no avail. It wasn’t long before everyone was talking about this strange man borrowing loo keys. Late in the day two well-built males came over for a look and when Steve wasn’t watching they yanked the door open. Steve removed the offending lock and made some repairs to the door taping it in place. With a visit to a caravan supply business and a locksmith it appeared we were destined to be using tape to keep our loo door in place until possibly returning home?
Ironically or should we say thankfully, 5 days later, we located our missing loo (and water tank locking cap keys) in a container that had been moved from the shelf near the placement of our missing keys. It seems Steve had put the keys away correctly. If we had tried to dislodge the keys with this container it would have been nearly impossible even after 20 attempts. More Grr’s.
At least we had a wonderful time at the Alice Springs Desert Park, returning to our caravan for a lunch time bite to eat and assess our photographs, returning to the park (it was an all-day pass) to try for a couple of better pictures and another walk around.
There was also time spent in the special Nocturnal animal viewing house with some of central Australian wildlife, like the death adder snake, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world.
Late afternoon we headed north from Alice Springs with the thought of diminishing some of the required kilometres towards our planned destination. We managed, about 140 kilometres, spending the night at a roadside stop. We continued north over the next couple of days, not stopping at the few places of interest as we had previously travelled this route a couple of times in the last nine years, exploring most points of interest to us, prior.
Some of our sights over a few days of travel, including plenty of termite mounds some with human shirts.
For us we were making good progress, arriving mid-afternoon at the town of Mataranka and we immersed our bodies in the warm flowing waters of Bitter Springs, happily conversing with other floating bodies participating in the same activity. The natural hot waters of Bitter Springs, was one of the activities that drew us to this region of Australia and it didn’t disappoint, putting us in a good state of mind. Some of the information we obtained whilst chattering with other people in the beautiful waters showed it was a Thursday and not what we thought to be a Friday. The approaching weekend was a long-weekend with a public holiday on the Monday and it was expected to get very busy with an invasion of people during the long-weekend.
We spent two hours in the water obtaining wrinkly bodies with the last half hour discussing available options and strategies for the approaching long-weekend in an area anticipated to be swamped with people, mostly from Darwin. We decided not to stay an additional day at Mataranka as initially planned, instead to push on, heading north towards Katherine stopping at another roadside stop about 46 kilometres short on dusk. We didn’t obtain a photograph of Bitter Springs due to not having a waterproof camera in our equipment and have attached a photo from our previous visit 2016.
The following morning, we were driving by 7 am, stopping at Katherine for fuel and food. Sixty kilometres north of Katherine at 8.45 am we arrived at Leliyn/Edith Falls campground, part of the Katherine gorge region / Nitmiluk National Park with crossed fingers hoping to obtain a campsite from a departing camper. It was a non-booking campground with campsites available on a first come basis. The campground was at capacity and we were both feeling rather nervous. We had to wait till 10 am before entry, allowing for any exiting people to leave and we were ecstatic to obtain a solar friendly site and instantly decided to book it for a week’s stay.
All the available walking trails with various water falls were accessible from the main carpark and nearby campground of Leliyn/Edith Falls, providing the tow tug with a deserved rest after nearly eight days of driving close to 3,000 kilometres.
All through the long-weekend the campground was at capacity. Each time we ventured out there was a regular flow of people moving about along the walking trails and gathered around the main swimming water lake grassed areas. We were content to have a daily dip in the cooling falls waters and laze about in the now very pleasant daily low 30 C temperatures. After three days with minimal activities we were feeling rather laid-back, glad to be over those long driving chores.
Monday morning most of the campground occupants moved out. By late Monday afternoon the campground had returned to near capacity, with a very different clientele and accompanying background noise. Over the weekend, it was a constant racket from screaming, laughing, crying children with the associated yelling from frustrated parents. Monday evening you could actually hear the chattering of the local birds, with the noise from the then, prominent adult occupants almost undetectable.
Each day we would have a dip or two in the coolish fall’s waters. Mostly during the late afternoon when most people had left the water.
As the Australian saying goes, ‘where there is water there are birds,’ certainly stood out at this location with quite a loud background noise of early morning bird chatter.
The upper falls waterfalls provided a pleasant walk (2.6-kilometre circuit) and also delivered a good cardio workout with plenty of uphill steps. Each visit, we would spend time in the agreeable temperature waters, cooling off for the return walk.
After a most relaxing week at Leliyn/Edith Falls our bodies were feeling very relaxed without the need for a shower with soap as our skins were feeling magnificently soft and clean to touch from much time spent soaking in the fall’s fresh waters. Our whole bodies were feeling a sense of euphoria and we decided to stay another week, as we could, stretching our permitted time there out to the maximum of two weeks for any given period.
Even when the temperatures approached the 36 C mark we improvised when the light breeze went missing. Thankyou Tim for the fan.
We farewelled the special location of Leliyn/Edith Falls heading up the road a bit for some more adventures.
Isla loved the bird photos!
ReplyDeletegood reading guys, glad you found the Loo key solution!
ReplyDelete