On the last day of July we entered new territory - the Northern Territory. Neither of us have been here before but we passed up the photo op at the border. But we did gain half an hour. (Now being on Central Australian time)
It was a long straight road to our next stop, Barkly Homestead. Pretty much just a servo, with cafe and the caravan park behind. We did consider a free roadside camp about 50 kms before there, but as we have a longer drive the next day decided to go for the relative civilisation of Barkly Homestead.
It is a very popular stop with sooooo many caravans checking into the powered sites. We are self contained and with our solar power don't really need a powered site so we set up near the fence under a tree filled with squawking corellas, looking out over the scrubby bush - we could have been in the middle of nowhere - oh, wait....
The good thing about the roadhouse was that they had rather excellent cakes - I had to opportunity to try out my caramel slice survey again!
Also for people who are tenting there is a nicely watered grassy area, which was occupied by a guy travelling by bicycle - strange, but true. Honestly this country is pretty hard to travel by car - but by bicycle? Crikey!
The next morning it was noticeable that we were nearly the last to leave! Most people left around 8am or earlier, but we are on holiday!
Hey, what's the rush people?!
The Tablelands Highway stretches north from Barkly Homestead and is a single lane road. Sealed, mind you. This means that you have to move over whenever anything else comes the other way. Luckily it is a fairly quiet road. There are maybe half a dozen travellers that we crossed paths with.
We stopped at the Brunette Downs rest area for a leg-stretch and G stretched his legs rather more! Brunette Downs station was founded by Harry Redford apparently, he of Captain Starlight fame. (See Longreach entry)
There is some bleak old country out there. We drove for mile after mile over the Barkly Tablelands, great cattle-grazing country but one of the most sparsely-populated areas in Australia. Not surprising! Sometimes we saw not a tree! Sometimes there was low scrubby bush, and sometimes some trees.
It's only 338 kms from Barkly Homestead to Cape Crawford, but it took us 5 hours. We don't travel very fast.
We bypassed the Heartbreak Hotel, which is the only thing at Cape Crawford for the pocket-sized bush camping area at Little River 10kms away. The lagoon has got some water in and a few waterbirds and is a pleasant enough spot.
We put the canoe and paddled around. It was cooler on the water.
We stayed there 2 nights as we wanted to go to Caranbirrini Conservation area which has special sandstone formations, like the lost cities further north, or a mini Bungle Bungles.
We elected to do the longer 5 km walk, having been cooped up in the car for the last 3 days and no exercise whatsoever. There was a nice breeze blowing which made it more pleasant. There is a pretty water-lily- filled lagoon there as well with a bird hide, a conveniently shady place for lunch.
On the way back we stopped at the Heartbreak Hotel for a cooling ale - the bar area was closed, so we sat on the wide verandah, but it also means that we have no idea why the place is famous!
Anyway we had a nice chat to a lovely Irish Lass from County Galway who is doing the working-backpacking-thing. All these places are staffed by young backpackers. When you walk onto on of these roadhouses you don't know what accent you are going to hear - pommy, Canadian, German....
I give them all full marks for managing to stay in these places for 3 months - I hope it is worth it for them.
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