Day 4!
Yesterday we ended up at a place on the old Stuart Highway called Churchill Head. It was a small camp area that was surrounded by Spinifex (?); a seriously spiky tough long grass. It’s not tough enough to make you bleed, but it will prick you if you look at it the wrong way. Once we found the spot we set up camp and went about finding fire wood. This was a much easier task than I thought it was going to be.
The land out here has gone through a bush fire not all too long ago, and there are a lot of standing dead hardwood trees. Short trees mind you, only about 2 to 3 meters tall. However the bases of all of these trees sprouted new gum trees with nice green leaves. I walked up to a dead looking tree and grabbed it at about chest height. I pulled on it, and with a bit of force, it snapped like spaghetti right at the base; No splintering, no strands, just the one long stick that was once a tree.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to break spaghetti before but you should definitely try it. If you grab both ends, one end with each hand and bend it just until it breaks, you get not just two pieces but most of the time three or even four pieces! That’s what happened to some of these standing dead trees when I broke them down.
So we made a nice fire and it was hot, really hot because of the hardwood we used to fuel it with. So just as we started to relax and think about preparing dinner, I saw a white something sail past us slowly on the road. It squeaked a bit and sounded like a push bike, and it was. This man had been riding his bike since this morning from Renner Springs, approximately 70 km north of where we were. His name was Chris and he was from the South of France; he was travelling from Darwin down to Yulara. On a $70 bike with a $100 trailer attached to it, he told us all of this with a thick French accent and much joy in seeing a nice fire with welcoming people.
After dinner we all went to bed and there was hardly any wind, which was great for the night. I set my alarm for 5:30am local time (6:00am home time) and went to sleep. I got up at about 6am because after the 5:30 alarm went off, I was told that I was much too early. It didn’t matter; I’d rather be early and wait then be late and miss it. I got dressed in warm clothing, and grabbed the camera and video camera and made my way up the hill towards the communications repeater tower; the highest point around.
I got there and I waited… and waited… and waited… and there it was! At 7am the sun brimmed the mountains, and filled the valleys with an abundance of sunshine. I took many pictures and a video of the sun rising over this marvellously coloured land. After all of this I walked back down to the camp site where everybody was up, including Chris. We all said good morning and started to cook breakfast; bacon, eggs, tomato and baked beans. This time there was also toast, yummy!
We completed all of this and packed up camp yet again, setting off at a leisurely 9am headed for Katherine, a good 600km to the North.
More Pictures!
Thanks for reading,
Trav.
