Well here we are in Katherine, its hot but a lovely breeze is blowing through the trees here so its very comfortable.  The park we are staying at is 11 kms out of Katherine, on a working property and homestead.  The caravan park is set in amongst a grove of mahogany trees, they are beautiful and so big, they provide a lot of shade and home for so many different birds.  The songs of a morning are amaz ..quite different from what I am use to hearing, its lovely.

However I should continue on from where I left off last time, leaving Mt. Isa.  So from there we sauntered up the highway to Camooweal and a free camp area alongside a billabong.  It still amazes  blows my mind how much water is out here, and how many pelicans are here fishing and socialising, so entertaining to sit on the banks and watch. It was so nice here we stayed 3 nights and enjoyed relaxing.  There is a fantastic Drovers museum there too and the old drovers run it and regaled us with stories from the droving days, we wondered why this sort of history isn’t taught in schools, its very interesting and we saw a different side to Australia’s past.

On we went heading west, and finally reached the Northern Territory border.  We stopped for the obligatory picture to prove we had, in fact left Queensland

(and surprise surprise, there was a geocache here so we picked that up also) and on to Barkley Homestead overnight, then on to Banka Banka another working property for another overnight stop.  This was where I had an encounter with THE biggest spider I have ever seen! Check it out!!

There was a walk of a couple of kilometres down to a water hole so we wandered down there in the afternoon, it was ama  a surprise, once again to see the volume of water here.

(I know, down the heart of the country, Longreach and such are having such a bad time with no water and drought, just seems strange to me being in the outback and seeing all this water!)  Next day we headed to Daly Waters as this was a “must see and stay over” pub spot! Dust? Oh my goodness, it was soooo dusty, but the bara and smorgasbord of salads for dinner made up for the dust.  The pub itself is one of those where people leave behind something of themselves, you know, like bras, undies, hats, thongs, foreign currency.  Weird place but very interesting. Was glad to be back on the road the next day tho.

Gosh, I haven’t quite got us to Katherine yet!  We went on to Mataranka next for 3 days, beautiful spot and so enjoyed our time there.  Will tell you about it in the next blog.

Until then may God bless you abundately

Jack and Christine