Originally the plan today was to head down the road to Cloncurry, and also drop into Mary Kathleen on the way. But while the Macgyver fix on the sunroof is holding really well, as I mentioned yesterday, the windscreen crack is still getting bigger. So I wasn’t really keen on putting more stress on it by driving down the freeway… and also just keen to keep the drives as close to a home base as possible for now. We dropped…
Happy birthday, Debbie! We’re back to cold nights here in Mount Isa. It took us a bit by surprise, and everyone was a little cold during the night – so sleep wasn’t the greatest. But we still tired to make time this morning to shower birthday love on Debbie. We have a notebook that we write each other’s birthday messages in (in place of cards), and so the kids and I had written in that in the last couple of…
Today we’ve made it into Queensland! And this evening we’ve arrived in Mount Isa, which is the traditional lands of the Kalkadoon people. We acknowledge their elders past, present and emerging. Aside from that little tyre hiccup back down in Victoria, we’ve had a great run with our VW Tiguan, Estelle, on this trip! That was, until this afternoon. But more on that soon… We headed off from Barkly Homestead at about 9am – not as much of a rush…
From one roadhouse / pub to another! The Barkly Homestead is looking pretty polished – from what I’ve read, it’s essentially brand new, after some significant renovations over the past few months or so to get ready for this dry season. I think it was planned, but it certainly became more necessary after they got hit really hard by floods and storms in December 2022. The result is a very nice looking roadhouse for the first and last pub in…
We’re sitting in the Daly Waters Pub at the moment. Daly Waters is on the lands of the Jingili people, who are the traditional owners of the land around here – south to Renner Springs and north to Newcastle Waters. We acknowledge their ownership of this land, and their elders past, present and emerging. This is such a wonderful place! It’s really remote – but it feels like you’re down at your local. Plenty of cabins, plus a huge caravan…
The final day in Darwin today, and third last day in the NT. Our Volkswagen Tiguan, named Estelle, is getting close to the next required service. It would probably arrive at some point next week, based on kilometres driven. Aside from here in Darwin, Cairns is probably the only other place we could get it serviced between here and home – and given we had spare time here, and we really don’t have any in Cairns, I booked the car…
Today was mostly about Crocodylus Park. This place wasn’t on our original plan, but with the growing excitement and intrigue into crocs in the NT from most of us, we decided it would be worth a visit to see a few more and learn a bit more about them as well. We arrived a bit after 9:30 and had a brief wander before heading back to watch the croc feeding and the talk about them. The feeding was a bit…
We were 50/50 on doing a night or two in and around Litchfield to explore the park when we were planning the trip – but it’s only an hour and a half drive from Darwin, so we decided to do it all in one day. That meant a little bit of driving today, but it was a brilliant day. We came along the Litchfield Park Rd from the north and really enjoyed the drive into the park. Our first stop…
First stop of the day was another markets – the Parap Village Markets. A really well known and loved market by Darwin locals – so much so, that people apparently trek across Darwin to come here to have a laksa for breakfast from Mary’s every Saturday morning. I did have dreams of having laksa for breakfast, but I didn’t end up feeling keen for it at 9am in the morn. And by the time 11am rolled around, the line was…
We had a slower morning today – Debbie headed off to Lifeblood to donate some plasma, and the kids and I enjoyed our bacon & eggs breakfast that the place we’re staying in had generously left for us. Mid morning, we headed down to Pudakul, a beautiful Aboriginal family business who operate cultural tours and a bunch of other experiences of their land and community, just down the road from Humpty Doo. On a whim, we saw a brochure yesterday…