Friday 29 August 2008

Darwin to Broome

This is quite a lot to write about as the distance between these two places is pretty big and covers a lot of cool places, I'll also upload all the pics rather than just these sample ones when I get the chance, but here goes for now:

We decided to leave Darwin after only 2 nights and head to Katherine via Litchfield NP.  This is a popular spot for Darwinites (or Darwinians?) as it's so close to the city, and was suitably busy.  We had a quick look at the main attractions, except one where the car park was full!  The only respite was a 4wd track to get out of the South of the park and closer to Daly River NP.  The 4wd track was pretty and not too hard, the great thing was the first creek crossing was 70cm deep (and it soaked everything on the car carpets, again!) so it kept out all but the very determined!  Daly River was a quiet, odd spot, mainly for fishermen I think, but a very pretty river nonetheless.  Turning around we headed back to the Stuart Highway and down to Katherine again, aiming for the Springvale Homestead where we had stayed before with Darren and Nik.  Arrived as it was getting dark, but set up near the billabong where we camped last time as we knew where everything was and that it was a nice spot.  Guinea fowl were noisy through the night though, roosted above our tent!

Next day was a big one, lots of driving.  We headed directly West on the way to Kunnunara, on the Savannah Way, but before getting to Kunnunara, which is the gateway to WA, we veered South into Gregory National Park (named after explorer Augustus Charles Gregory) on a dirt road to the homestead Bullita, which is now a ranger base.  The original homestead has been restored and is now a kind of museum, but was fascinating, one of the best we have seen in fact, you could almost expect a stockman to come home there and his wife be cooking in the kitchen!  There are boab trees (more info at the end of this article) all around the tracks and area, some were marked and called "hotels" by the stockmen as they often camped under them.

We camped at Bullita campgound with two other campers (it's pretty quiet around this area, as the dirt road in was rough and keeps out the caravans, yeah!), but not until after beginning what is known as the "Bullita Stock Route".  This is a very rough track which the cattlemen used to drive stock over on the way to Kunnunara and Wyndham on the coast.  My god it was rough!  The entrance to it was across a rough river bed and was scary enough in itself.  We drove 10k down the track, had a heated discussion about what we were doing, as it was getting dark, then turned around and headed back to the easier to reach main campgound!!!  The rest of the NP is hard enough to drive through anyway, and is amongst the remotest NP's in Australia.  We also registered our trip intentions with a free phone reg service where they take all your details about where you are going, including $100 on your credit card, which is refundable as long as you deregister, otherwise they send out a search party and you get billed!  Better safe than sorry though.

Bullita Stock Route, the start:

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About 10kms down near where we turned around (the picture doesn't do it justice - there were also rougher patches than this, it's just my photographer was petrified in her seat!):

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Humbert Track, Wickham Track and Gibbie Track were the three tracks (these are most definitely not roads) South through the park, we had to drive all three of them, about 200kms in total - not far you might say, but when you can only go between 5-25 kms an hour, it takes some time, patience and a bit of low range gear work to negotiate, and it certainly felt remote which adds to the atmosphere.  When we left the Bullita campsite in the morning, we didnt see another human for 8-9 hours until we finished the tracks and got to the quirky Aboriginal township of Kalkarinji.  There were signs on most of the tracks, but we almost got lost at one stage as the creek crossing just didnt look like part of the track!  And a station about two thirds of the way down, but no workers there at the time.  Lots of cattle, horses, a camel!  And birds of course.  All in all an awesome day with some spectacular country crossed and not a sole in sight.  Brilliant.

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We've got some little video clips of the off road stuff that I'll put up on the blog when I get some more time.

Kalkarinji was an experience.  Darren had told us about it.  Apparently a few Aussie Rules Aboriginal footballers have come from here.  Me & Em could see why.  The local people were big!  When we arrived there were only a few groups kicking around, which is always an odd sight, as they just seem to amble around looking like they are looking for trouble, most often they aren't and its a dry community too which helps.  But we were relying on getting fuel there and the servo was shut, and it also looked like it had closed down forever!  Panic set in a bit (we could still get to another town 170kms away, but in the wrong direction making it an expensive detour) and it was getting dark.  I wandered into the closed Police station area and asked a white bloke on his balcony whether it was open and he curtly told me yes, at 9am and that's just the way it looks (rundown and closed).  The "caravan park" was next to the closed servo, this also looked run down and shut, but there was one old guy in there in his caravan so we camped up nearby.  He owned the Rare Rocks shop in Katherine and had been coming to Kalkarinji for 30 years, they were "an ok crew here, shit yeayh" as he told me.  Nice chap, lent us his key to get into the toilet block.

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Next day we got fuel from the buzzing and vibrant servo and main store, a variety bash (we still arent sure what this means, some of them were in clown setups, and they were all driving old cars) crew turned up to add to the weird feeling of the place!  We set off with a full tank and feeling like we had had a special treat in K'rinji and especially completing the tracks through Gregory NP without problems (and had also remembered to deregister our trip with the bushwalker's phone service people!).  The road out is along the top of the Western deserts, and was suitably boring - just dirt and dust and corrugations - and hot.  It runs just North of some of the remotest roads in the country, the Tanami Road and the Canning Stock Route, maybe one day we'll get to see them....Anyway we got over the border into WA without event and into Halls Creek for some more fuel.  This is near Wolfe Creek crater, which is the namesake of the stupid film that we neither liked or talk about on this trip.  Needless to say we didn't go there (we heard it's just a massive hole in the ground anyway).

Monday 25 August 2008

Tardiness

A quick note to say I have been very tardy recently with my blogging, however I have a reasonably valid excuse, i.e. internet access.  Only Darwin has had anything like internet access where I could think of uploading, and we were only there long enough to sort a load of washing, the car tyres and shopping!  So I am back in Katherine (still in the Northern Territory) at an internet cafe uploading what I can.  It's been at least 6 weeks since Cairns (before we headed upto Cape York) and so much has happened, I am sure I have forgotten stuff, but hopefully it still makes for an interesting read and a good diary for me in years to come.  Some other interesting stuff is Em & I have made a decision to return to UK or Europe for work and family commitments in Dec 08, to stay for 1 year before returning to Australia in Dec 09.

Don't forget to check the Archived Posts links on the right of the blog, as some older posts will be dated in July.  Cheers.

Thursday 21 August 2008

Kakadu

Kakadu National Park is somewhere I have wanted to visit since working with an Australian when in the MoD 13 years ago.  Darren and Nic - who we are still hanging out with - were meeting Darren's brother Andrew, who lives in Darwin, to go to two different camp spots that require permits.  We were invited along as it was Andrew's birthday and the more the merrier.  We are so glad we took them up on the offer and that we were invited as we got to see Kakadu from a different perspective, not just the main tourist trail.  Kakadu is best seen in the wet season when it is alive with bird and animal life, this time of year it is very dry, lots of fires everywhere, but the roads are passable at least.

We camped at Umbrawarra Gorge, which we weren't expecting to be much, except a pleasant walk down the gorge, but were treated to a spectacular display of a bush fire at close quarters and that went through the night:

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Everything was still smoldering in the morning when we left.  The only bad thing was the fire drove the flies out of the bush and onto us.

From Pine Creek we drove to the Southern entrance of Kakadu, Mary River Roadhouse, to pick up the key to gain access to the first camp spot "Koolpin Gorge".  This was our camp for the next two nights.  There was one car there when we arrived, and only one other car when we left the day after - out of about 15-20 camp spots, and this was the weekend, so we were lucky!  We did a full day bushwalking, which Andrew had done before, which was through spectacular gorge country.  He knew where some Aboriginal rock art sites were, and we also found some sites that he hadn't seen before.  It was a pretty special experience as we were bush bashing at times, and crawling over rocks/hanging off rocks over the river, etc.  Great stuff.

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Our second camp spot was Ferny Gully.  The NP only let 8 people in per month to this site.  It has a natural spring running right past and was at a dead end of a 4wd track about 10kms off the road.  A real private retreat and truly relaxing.  We stayed there for 2 nights and were sad to leave.

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On from there we headed to Maguk Gorge with Andrew and the others, then Andrew headed back to Darwin.  We camped the night at Garnamarr Campground just before the start of the 4wd track to Jim Jim and Twin Falls.  Next day we drove the fairly easy 4wd track to Jim Jim and Twin Falls (saw our first Freshwater croc, or rather 3 of them) and the stunning gorges and waterfalls.  Jim Jim was not flowing, but has a spectacular beachy pool area and a 22m deep plunge pool.  Twin was flowing and was quite picturesque.  The dry season becomes very obvious as when you see how high a drop Jim Jim is, the wet season must truly be a sight to see.  Lots of Euro tourists about, old and young.  Still a nice ambience however. 

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On the way back out of the 4wd track a Nissan Patrol hire car came right at us along a forked road, i.e. they came the wrong/left (or European) side of the road at us, so I continued at them, they stopped in a sandy part of the track and so did I, then they waved erratically at me, so I reversed, then I drove past them on the right side of the road at which stage I realised they were stuck in the sand! I asked if they were stuck and saw it was a car full of 5 young lads and lasses who didnt speak much English.  On parking up safely out of the sand I found they were German and clearly didnt have a clue what they were doing in their Nissan 4wd hire car.  They didnt have the tyre pressures down or 4wd engaged (you have to lock the front wheel hubs in) and so we pointed them in the right direction and off they zoomed.  This played a part in fate of the day as it meant we didnt get to the Yellow Water boat cruise and therefore saved ourselves $140! 

We camped at Jim Jim Billabong, after visiting Yellowwater Billabong which was a special experience for us both, as we took the boardwalk (rather than the $140 boat trip!) and a 1.5m croc surfaced about 5m in front us and proceeded to arch his back and do a spectacular snap of his jaws for us.  I think he was a salty, but not sure.  Then on walking back to the car a massive (seriously, this guy was 4 metres at least) salty was sunbaking at the base of a tree with his jaws wide open quite oblivious to us.  It really is like being in Jurassic Park when you see these beasts.

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Aboriginal rock art has been a real treat for me & Em as is not something we thought we would be interested in.  However being with Darren and Nic (both are fine art graduates and have a real interest and knowledge in this area) really opened our eyes to it.  Kakadu has some of the finest rock art in the world open to the public, we had already seen some at Koolpin, and now visited Nourlangie Rock to see the Lightning Man (Namarrgon) and other superb examples of age old rock art.  Camped that night at Sandy Billabong, which was absolutely disgusting as it never got below about 26 degrees all night and the air was thick with insects, especially mossies.  Also tried our hand at fishing and I lost my hook and bait to something big....but it got away.  Got up the next morning early to try again, this time caught a reasonable Saratoga (I think that's what it is anyway!).  Lightning man:
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Next day we visited Cahills Crossing for lunch, a great spot and we got there just as the tide was pushing the rive over the causeway into Arnhem Land (an exclusive Aboriginal area of NT).  This causes a bit of a stir as the local population of salty crocs sit either side of the man made causeway with their mouths open waiting for the fish to get pushed past!  Quite a sight.   And yes that is a croc behind the bloke fishing:

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Then camped at Merl Campground, which was very close to Ubirr - another famous rock art area.  It was full of quite stunning rock art and we got to listen to 3 different talks by a ranger who had spent a lot of time with Aboriginals in Kakadu and Arnhem Land and was really quite interesting; I never knew their social and cultural structures were so fascinating and complex in fact - especially when you see the wandering types in Melbourne and esp. Alice Springs, Katherine, etc.  The rock art was also amazing, like a menu card for other tribes to read when they reach the area in the wet or dry seasons.  And paintings of "whitefellas" with their hands in their pockets and pipes in their mouths (early settlers/buffalo stockmen)!

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We were sad to leave Darren and Nic on Friday morning, but they had decisions to make and we had to get to Darwin.  We may meet up again for a coffee in Darwin if we are all still here in a few days.  We said some goodbyes and then me & Em drove out of Kakadu via a 4wd track past a few pretty billabongs and across very dry swamplands.  All in all a great way to leave Kakadu and continue onto our next stage of the adventure.....The Kimberley.....

Tuesday 12 August 2008

Limmen Bight National Park to Katherine

Darren and Nic had already decided on a way to get to Katherine in NT, via Borroloola and the Limmen Bight National Park (which on our maps was still a proposed NP), and invited us to come with them.  We thought it sounded like an excellent idea as we probably wouldnt go that way on our own, due to its remoteness, and teamed up for a few more days.

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Limmen Bight was named after Mr Limmen (dont remember his first name), a Dutch explorer from the early 1600's who first sighted the area.  Our route took us West/North West through the National Park and some stunning country, quite green, but still dusty.  There are also some amazing rock formations called Lost City's - we visited the Southern one which was easily accessible off the dirt track through the park.  Quite gravity defying some of the sandstone rock formations and amazing colours.  They are not very much visited as they are off the beaten track and apparently there are some politics (e.g. Aboriginal sacred sites) surrounding them too.  We had them all to ourselves which made it even more memorable.  In fact it was so surreal I thought I wasn't there or was dreaming - I know that sounds a bit spiritual for me, but it was a fantastic experience and so far removed from anyone or anywhere.  The Lost Cities will one day probably be more on the tourist trail, but for us it was an unexpected treat to see and we felt quite privileged.

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Borroloola was the last town before we hit the park.  It was a rough, poor looking community, but had a store (the Borroloola Bulk Discount store or BBD!) with some expensive fresh stuff so we stocked up on a few essentials and filled up with fuel.

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Anyhoo, Darren had already suffered a punctured tyre before we met him, but was carrying two spares.  Just as we turned into the camping area he got another one and so was down to no spare tyres.  The roads were incredibly rough - small, sharp fragments of limestone sticking out and bad corrugations so it was no surprise, I was expecting a puncture at any minute.  The Disco seemed to be lasting ok, but toward the end of the day I found some bolts in the diff had shook loose and also the bump stop for the rear airbag suspension had broken its spot weld and come loose, luckily both were quickly and easily fixed by a bit of tightening up (and again in the morning when everything was cold) and a cable tie + duck tape!

The next day we visited the Ranger, who was a very helpful young, local lad studying environmental sciences, not at all what we were expecting, who graciously helped repair Darren's tyre and then wouldnt accept any money as a thanks!  It was interesting chatting to him; we found out he does Mon - Fri, odd hours, stayed there in the wet season to do weed spraying and upkeep of the park and so on.  He helped us decide that the Southern Lost City was the way to go as the Western one was 30kms, but would take 1.5 hours due to the condition of the road!  And with only one repaired spare tyre it probably wasnt a good idea to attempt something so tricky and remote.  The old homestead is now where the rangers live; they have freshwater springs on the site and plenty of tranquility and solitude.  When Darren offered him some cash and said buy yourself some beers, he politely asked "Where?"!

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We camped at Butterfly Springs which was a great spot.  A little waterfall with a swimming hole and some cold water was a welcome thing to do at the end of a dusty day.  The most noticeable thing was at night there was not a sound, no bats, no insects, no generators (!), nothing.  We slept really well both nights after sitting around the fire and putting the world to rights.  And we had no booze which helped the quality of sleep!  The nights get quite cold up here, so the duvet was back out too.  The pastel pinks on the rocks at sunset were a sight for sore eyes too.

Before leaving I found my fuel cooler to be leaking coolant over my diff, which may be related to the bolts coming loose, nothing too serious, but a minor annoyance anyway.

When we left Limmen Bight we drove up to Ropers Bar, which was surreal with an Aboriginal woman who had crazy big hair sat on a plastic chair with her 3 kids running around (and across the dirt road) in their underpants in front of the shop, an odd sounding local woman running the store and a massive bush fire raging in the distance with black smoke everywhere and nobody paying any attention to it (its a fact of life up here).  It felt to me like a dreamy film set.  We bought a can of coke and got out of there. 

We spotted an awesome beast - The Buffalo - on the way out of Limmen Bight, these were introduced in the 1880s and are now feral in some areas of NT, farmed in others, this big dude was definitely feral!

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The next town on our way was Mataranka which has thermal pools bubbling out of porous limestone at about 32 degrees - a bit similar to home I guess!  We parked up and almost ran to the pools for a well deserved dip at the end of another dusty day.  Dinner was at the pub that night, chicken parmi and chips and a few beers.  The nights sleep was spoilt by some local Aboriginals and pub regulars being really loud for hours.  We got a pie from Mataranka roadhouse the next day - probably the nicest pie we've had in Australia, but not a scratch on the 2in1 pies from Avening of course.  And headed North on the Stuart Highway to Katherine.

Katherine is a reasonably large town with all services, it gets flooded every year, 1998 saw the river at 6kms wide and the waters rise 21 metres!  Apparently saltwater crocs were seen cruising down the High St raiding the butchers!!  At Katherine we spent two nights at a pleasant historic homestead "Springvale" camped next to the billabong.  They conducted a free tour of the homestead which was very informative with some bush tucker tips too!  We saw freshwater croc eyes at night just the other side of the billabong.  It gave us time to resupply with meat and groceries in town (a town with a lot of poor looking Aboriginals hanging around in the streets - where the shops play loud music so they dont loiter!)  And I serviced the car, greasing the tailshafts, changing the oil, filters and doing lots general checks before we went bush again into Kakadu National Park......

Thursday 7 August 2008

The Savannah Way and Gulf Country

The Gulf Country (Gulf of Carpentaria) is a large area stretching across North West Queensland upto the border of Northern Territory, mostly flat and boring - the roads amongst the most boring we have seen in fact.  And in some places dangerous as the tarmac was a thin stretch in the middle and gravel lanes either side of it, so if a road train passes you have two wheels on the tarmac and two off.  Quite disconcerting with a very large truck flying at you at 100kms an hour!  Most of the time the best idea is to get off the road altogether and hide behind a tree until it has gone past.

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This area is where Burke and Wills were trying to reach the Gulf, and unbeknown to them they were almost there, but the two of them on horseback thought they would never get to the sea, so turned around perhaps 100kms from it and headed back on their doomed mission.  Only one man from their party made it back alive and the whole story is a tragedy from end to end.  I can really recommend "The Dig Tree" for a good read.  And can see how desperate they must have been as it goes on and on forever up here without any change in the landscape.

Anyway we floored it from Chillagoe to a dodgy little roadside rest area to get some sleep, got up early to get away from the grey nomads, got to Normanton which is a major town in the area, but quite unremarkable with some weird locals, took a brief side trip to Karumba which is a prawn town, did some fishing with no luck, had lunch and headed back to Normanton and on to Gregory Downs to camp overnight in a nice quiet spot, only after we found where everyone else was down by the river!  Apparently the river is the towns supply (unfiltered and untreated) so they dont like people camping there, but most Aussies don't listen and camp there anyway, we just obeyed the rules - but had a camp spot all to ourselves rather than surrounded by 20 other campers!

From Gregory Downs it was a 100kms drive to Lawn Hill (Boodjamulla in the local dialect) National Park.  Lonely Planet reckons this is a must see NP in Australia, and when we got there we spoke to the Ranger and were lucky enough to get the last pitch he had - not that the park was busy, they just limit numbers.  And Lonely Planet were right.  A beautiful, small NP with a gorge, river you can swim in (freshwater crocs only - they dont grow to more than 3 metres, but more importantly only eat insects and fish and not unsuspecting mammals).  Lots of little walks and lookouts.  The weird thing was the water has a high content of calcium carbonate, so our skin was really dry the whole time we were there and swimming - and if you drink it you become even more dehydrated!

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A highlight of the park was also catching up with Amalia and Paddy (who we had met at Punsand Bay on the Cape) and their Discovery.  They were camped near to two other Aussies, Darren and Nicola, and we spent a bit of time getting to know each other on a sunset walk.  On the way back it was getting dark, and a European hiker on his own had been past us, we heard him playing the drums in the hills on his own.  Some sort of spiritual weirdo "finding himself" no doubt.

We spent two nights at Lawn Hill relaxing, walking, swimming and on the third day teamed up with Darren and Nic to head North West and onto the NT border.  Sadly Paddy and Amalia were heading back to NSW and work so couldn't join us.

The road out was uneventful, but interesting travelling with "new people" and through some sparse pastoral land past car wrecks and an old roadhouse called Hells Gate....apparently this is the point where the Queensland police in frontier times would escort people too, after this you were on your own.....

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Tuesday 5 August 2008

Leaving the Cape

OK, enough of the military style, albeit an easy style to blog in as it is far less time consuming, and one does find oneself busy when doing nothing but camping....

We got to Laura without event, and on chatting to the local store owner decided on a less arduous route out of the Cape to get us to Chillagoe.  The route was still dirt road, but through pastoral land - and very pretty it was too.  There were a few small creek crossings, plenty of cattle and horses and some pleasant looking homesteads (Fairlight and Fairview mainly) to break the monotony of the long drive.  When we reached the end of the cross country track we joined with the Savannah Way (alternate) route and headed South East to Chillagoe.  The light was fading fast at this stage so for the first time I got to use my driving lights.  Luckily no kangaroos decided to jump in front of the car lights and we made it to Chillagoe and set up camp about 7:30pm at a friendly little eco lodge, made a quick tea and a fire and crashed out ready to explore Chillagoe National Park and the township tomorrow.  Fantastic starlit cloudless sky as usual.

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Chillagoe was an odd little town, but interesting nonetheless.  Being part of an old volcanic area there are all sorts of different rocks and thus all sorts of different mines and caves around.  We visited an old copper factory and smelting tower, saw lots of massive marble blocks being extracted from the ground, visited a daylight cave - which we had to register with the local info centre before visiting in case we got lost, and it was all of a 10 minute walk in daylight!

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We set off again looking forward to reaching sealed roads (tarmac) in around 150 kms.  On our way out of the town we saw a beautiful (they are actually quite stunning creatures if you can appreciate them for the period of time you see them), long snake about 1.5 metres I reckon.  I think it was either a King Brown or a Taipan, both of which are amongst the deadliest in the world.  He just wanted to get out of the road and out of our way which was nice.

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Once we hit the "blacktop" road it really felt like we had left the Cape and our next adventure was about to begin......

Monday 4 August 2008

Cape York Peninsula - Days 12 to 15

Day 12: 2nd night on North side of Jardine River.  Didn't want to leave.  Spent hot day under shade of tarp and fly-proof (flies were worst yet) gazebo.  Occasional fishing.  No luck.

Day 13: Drove South on Bamaga Road to Vrilya Point.  Had been recommended by "ambos" from Airlie Beach; supposedly good for mudcrab catching and oyster harvesting.  Met Victorians (Shepparton) Chris and Wendy and asked for advice; organised impromptu nightime mudcrab and fishing trip along beach.  Said crab and fishing trip successful: x2 mudcrab; x5 mullet; x2 banjo sharks; x1 bronze tip shark.  Very kindly Chris and Wendy gave us x2 mudcrabs for supper.  Boiled them in seawater in camp oven over fire for 15 mins; delicious.  Most enjoyable time and a solid memory of a fun night (although nervous of salty crocs as well!)

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Day 14: Chris and Wendy departed and very kindly gave us x2 large mullets already gutted and cleaned; to say thanks for our assistance the night before (mostly nervous as we were fishing in the shallows in the dark, in croc territory).  Mullet bbq'd in fire, very nice, similar to swordfish or tuna steak.  Met Paul and Emily in the afternoon and decided to travel separately from now on as agenda's have changed.  Savage sandflies bit our legs and arms, plus many persistent bush flies, most annoying for such a top spot.  Sandfly bites remain for weeks and turn into welts, so I have nicely scarred/welted feet and legs now!

Day 15: Departed Vrilya Point after very enjoyable and relaxing 2 nights, didn't want to leave.  Lasting memory will be Chris and Wendy; fish and mudcrabs; the rocks at night; the wind whispering around the headland and our campspot 5 metres from the high tide mark.  Drove to Archer River Roadhouse (350 kms on dirt road - not an easy drive, very corrugated in places and lots of dips/unexpected sandy patches, aka bulldust, etc.) via Captain Billy's Landing.  Interesting place where Aboriginal guide led explorers in 1880 into an ambush.  Explorers escaped but only just after spears pierced through their tents.  Rocks there date back almost 300 million years; pre-dinosaur.  Bleak, windy, godforsaken place. 

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Drive to Archer River witnessed many small bush fires by side of road.  This area South of the Jardine River appears more prone to bush fires.  Bought some beer (ran dry two nights ago and not easy or cheap to replenish supplies).  On our way out of the Cape brings back many good memories of people, experiences and the country itself.  Tomorrow onto Laura and then bear West/South West towards Normanton via the Savannah Way across Gulf (of Carpentaria) Country.