A man walked into a bar. The bartender says to him, “Did you want the usual, Donkey?”
The man replies, “Yes thanks”.
A lady sitting at the bar leans over and says to the guy, “He just called you Donkey. Why did he do that?”
The man replies, “Hee-haw, hee-haw, he always calls me that …”
I’ll explain that later.
Last night we stayed at the Banka Banka Station which is precisely in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
After I’d posted the day’s blog, we went up to the campfire for drinks and a chat with other campers. Probably all of the same people that I’d overtaken at some time during the day, and most likely people that I’ve complained about at some time.
I didn’t see BMW guy anywhere, so that’s not a bad thing.
We had a nice chat with some fellow retirees. They all seemed nice and not too financially broke, so I guess that there is hope for us yet.
You always pick up some good tips around the campfire, like where to stay, where not to stay, what to see, what not to bother with … you know how it goes.
One of them went to get a beer from the bar and came back to report that “the rules about buying alcohol are different here in the NT.” You have to give them your name and ID, and they keep a tally of how many you’ve had over what period of time.
Something to do with limiting the amount of alcohol that is consumed by the locals, I believe.
It pays to just stick with soda water, me thinks.
It was cold this morning. Actually it was cold last night.
Actually, to be completely truthful, it was cold when we were up at the campfire, which is why we didn’t stay long. I noticed that the people drinking alcohol didn’t seem too cold.
Hmmm, maybe I should reconsider that. Alcohol seems to warm you from the inside out.
We rolled out of Banka Banka about 8.45am and it was nice and warm getting into Elsie. Once again today we are having a driving day, aiming for Daly Waters for the night.
Also once again, the roads are long and reasonably good, with the occasional flood damage. There was one spot where we had to stop for a red light, and they had some serious roadwork going on.
There were quite a few times where we would see a SLOW DOWN sign, or similar. I had been wondering why they hadn’t dispatched a crew to fill in some of the many potholes in the road … so it was good to see a serious effort at fixing up some of the worse problems.
You see and hear some interesting things out on the road. UHF Channel 40 is the channel that everybody uses by default, but there are some numpties who insist on using something else – like UHF Channel 18 (which I admit is a recognised caravanning channel), or channel 50 which is … well, which is plain dumb.
In my opinion. Because nobody uses it, and if you want to talk to them, you have to change channels. Which is not easy at 100km/h on a bad road.
All of the truckies and majority of other road users assume that you are on UHF40. I get it that you might have UHF18 written on the back of your van, but if a pilot vehicle is coming towards you and they want to warn you of a wide load following them, they assume you are on 40.
And if you are not, then you don’t get the message.
I’ll get off that soapbox now.
The cross winds today were ferocious. I felt at times like I was going a couple of rounds with Percy, and it felt like Percy was winning. The cross winds – along with the bumpy roads – made keeping everything on the road a challenge. Plus dodging potholes.
Plus taking note of signs that say “Unfenced road. Beware of cattle.”
There was one point in the trip today where I had managed to overtake the first of two caravans that were travelling in convoy. So I was the middle of them.
While I know that MBW hates it when I get too close to the caravan in front, the fact is that you need to keep the gap fairly small to minimise the amount of runway that you need to overtake them.
In any case, it’s not like they are going to stamp on their brakes.
And then the driver in front of us stamped on their brakes, and yelled out (over the CB radio), “COW”.
I actually thought that was really unnecessary and inappropriate, and I was about to stick my head out the window and shout back “PIG”, and then I realised that there was a cow on the road. And it wasn’t happy.
I think that cow needs to be nicknamed “Lucky”, because we all avoided it. And if someone did hit it, then “Mincemeat” might be a better nickname.
Most of the other retirees towing caravans seem to be happy to plod along at 90km/h, while I am sitting on 100km/h.
That means a couple of things. Firstly, it means that I will inevitably catch up with them. Secondly, it means that I will have to overtake them. And unfortunately most of them don’t seem to understand road etiquette which says that you tell the vehicle behind you when it is safe to pass.
So that is a challenge.
But the bigger challenge is that most of them never seem to need to make a comfort stop, so when we stop briefly to … stretch our legs … they go whizzing past, and then I have to overtake them all over again.
C’est la vie.
At least that means that they get to see “2AussieNomads.com” on the back of Percy as we go sailing past them, and they get to read all about themselves on the blog.
So we rolled into Daly Waters today about 12.30pm.
It is a quirky and eccentric little place that has obviously become this way through someone’s artistic genius, or because of a lunatic.
Personally, I’m leaning towards lunatic.
Tim’s junkyard has an entry fee of $6 each to look at his junk, yet I can look at my own junk anytime I want for free.
There is a whole menagerie of animals around Daly Waters. I mean, just wandering around.
Chickens. Horses. And Donkeys.
Donkeys. That is the rather tenuous link to the donkey joke at the start of today’s blog.
There was a chicken that we saw crossing the road, and I so wanted to ask MBW “Why did that chicken cross the road …?”, but I thought better of it. She has no sense of humour.
The camping area is right beside the pub, and Daly Waters is a quirky (albeit pretty) little place.
The actual pub itself is … interesting. I wasn’t sure whether I should be blown away by the collection of historic artefacts that grace every surface of every wall, or horrified at the amount of junk that is pinned to the walls, and the amount of dust and dirt that is clinging to the junk pinned to the walls.
Honestly, I needed to go home and sanitise after walking through the pub.
Tonight some guy (Tim, maybe?) who runs the place does a talk on Daly Waters and the history surrounding the place.
I assume that it is the bloke who gets around on a mobility scooter with a large pair of horns attached to the handlebars. The same bloke who appears to be the correct weight for someone who should be about twice as tall as he is actually is.
I hear that the talk is very interesting, so I’m looking forward to that. We considered eating at the pub tonight, but the prices plus the grubbiness of the place (mostly the grubbiness) caused us to reconsider and put something out of the freezer for dinner.
Anyway, that’s about it for tonight.
MBW snuck a photo of me doing the blog, so that illusion that I have been trying to create that I am slaving over a hot computer is now blown away.
And on the subject of the less attractive parts of daily life on the road, MBW also snapped a picture of me emptying the can the other day.
Charming, right? Well, now you know what I have to do every few days. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.
The more observant amongst you may have noticed that today’s blog is dated 21 May 2024, but was actually posted via the FaceBook a day later. Well done for noticing.
Daly Waters is lots of things, but in the 21st century is not one of them. While my phone says I have 4G coverage, I really don’t. I don’t have enough of anything to upload photos or the blog.
Sorry.
Tomorrow we head for Katherine, so I’m hoping for more Telstra coverage, and more civilisation. We will be there for 3 nights, so it will be nice not driving long distances for a few days.
There might even be a shopping centre where we can stock up on fresh food, and MBW can get some retail therapy.
We are also seeing an outback concert while we are in Katherine, so that should be fun.
You’ll hear about all of that as it happens.
Ciao
#Retirement2024
#VanLife