Another slow news day, I’m sorry to say.
One of the things that I’m finding about the Northern Territory (NT) is that you travel long distances and see little.
And when I say “little”, I mean nothing.
Seriously, there are places on the map that we have driven through (Ranken, for example) that has a road sign, a postcode, and (allegedly) a population of 44 … but I don’t know where they live, because I saw no houses. Or pubs. Or anything.
Last night we stayed at the Barkly Homestead. It was very pleasant and they did happy hour and a live band.
We wandered over and took a couple of photos of the sunset, but that was about it.
Dinner, showers, read and bed.
We pulled out around 9.00am, which is 30 minutes after Brisbane time.
The roads were pretty good, except for where they were really bad. They have had a great deal of flooding here in the last couple of months and there was some doubt whether we could get through the Barkly Hwy.
It was certainly open, but there were some potholes … that could also have been craters caused by meteors that have hit the earth.
Funny, the roads got so bad in places that the 130km/h speed limit was reduced to 40km/h … and even that felt too fast.
In fact, the roads have been so bad that even Google Earth thinks that they are closed, and diverts you around a different way.
It was our plan to travel to Tennant Creek and stay at a HipCamp for a couple of nights, however a few things happened:
- The wind kicked in and the temperatures dropped
- We drove into Tennant Creek to get fuel, and felt no real desire to stay there any longer than we needed to.
We had read reports that you needed to be careful in Tennant Creek. We got fuel and went for a drive through the town to find that nothing was open (it is a Monday, right?), and there were groups of young kids walking/milling around that just made the place feel … unsafe.
After a drive up the main street and a U-turn at the end, there was absolutely nothing that made us want to stay or return to TC.
So we booked a power and water site at Banka Banka West Station, and kept driving.
An hour north of Tennant Creek is home for tonight.
I’ve just been watching an older (than us) couple getting assistance to back their van into the space beside us, and they have now spent the last hour making centimetre-by-centimetre adjustments to the position of their van, interspersed by using a spirit level on all external surfaces of their van to ensure that it is completely, 100% level in every dimension.
Don’t get me started.
There is no Telstra reception here, and the Banka Banka free wifi internet is glacially slow, and about as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle.
I’m getting frustrated, so I’m signing off.
Ciao
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