We had originally planned to stay at Lawn Hill for three
days but the national park camping area was full and at $45/night at Adels
Grove we decided to pack up, do a morning walk and then head off. After a bit
of a sleep in we got our act together, packed up and headed back into the park.
De was feeling a touch worse for wear thanks to Sam and Sally’s effort last night so once
we reached the park the boys and I left her behind and ventured off. Originally
we were going to do the cascades and Island walk but when we arrived we found
that due to a very poor dry season the cascades weren’t cascading so we decided
to skip them!
The walk we decided to do was pretty cool as it was an
island surrounded by rivers, but the whole island had sheer cliffs rising out
of gorges. Once we scrambled up a pretty well maintained rocky stair case we
were afforded an awesome view back up the gorge we had paddled up yesterday,
and beyond! We trundled around pulling of the main track every now and then at
the designated look outs as well as find a few of our own. At one point we had
crept close to look over a sheer cliff that plummeted directly down 70 or 80m
to the water. We coo’ed and had an awesome echo of the far wall of the gorge
and then and even stronger echo from a bloke at the bottom of the gorge. We had
a bit of a chat, not being able to see each other, before heading on.
With the walk completed we had an early lunch and headed
off, bound for Burketown! By this stage of this section of the trip we were all
pretty much over dirt roads. While it doesn’t seem significantly different to
bitumen, it takes a lot more out of you with all of the little bumps and humps
than you expect. We knew what the road out of Lawn Hill was like but the road
over to Gregory was unknown. Thankfully it was as close as you are going to get
to a highway as all of the Century Mine trucks use it so it is very well
maintained!! On the way we finally managed to get a truck on the UHF and as it
passed it honked its air horns like no tomorrow! The boys have been at me to
get a truck to do this since the Nullarbor and while we have had a few toots,
here and there this was the real deal...and we got it on camera!!!
At the end of the dirt is a small ‘town’ called Gregory
where we had to go and have a beer at the pub thinking of our wonderful
neighbours Greg...and Dorothy of course!
Coming of the dirt we had to pump the tyres
back up so, to my delight I gave the boys the pressure for the front, rear and
van tyres, got the compressor out and headed to the bar. 15 minutes later they
came back in and while we had head a number of altercations going on we chose
to ignore them! A beer the wiser we headed on, rolling into Burketown late in
the afternoon.
As per our usual system, it was way too late to check in to a
van park so we headed to the free camp site, 4kms out of town on the riverbank,
and set up for the night.
The boys did their usual thing running riot on their bikes
and cracking the whip while I threw a couple of handlines out in the vague hope
of catching something...anything! We haven’t seen anything that resembles a
supermarket since Darwin so supplies were getting pretty low. We had visited
the ‘store’ in Burketown on the way through and paid, amongst other things
$2.95 for a litre of UHT milk (no fresh stuff available) and $7.15 for a small
container of honey. However we visited the butcher, who is also a baker (but
not a candlestick maker) and even though they were $24.99/kg I bought two of
the HUGEST pork chops the world has ever seen. I cooked them up for dinner and
despite there being 4 hungry mouths, I had to leave for breakfast one chop that
would usually be considered massive if bought at your local supermarket. But
the story doesn’t end there, these chops were absolutely magnificent! You could
cut them with a butter knife and they melted in your mouth! The boys loved them
so much they wanted to go to the butcher in the morning and buy more with their
own money!!!!
Despite being only a handful of kilometers from the sea as
soon as the sun went down the night became cooollddd.....but I am not 100% sure
if it is us, being acclimatised to the heat or if it really is coooollddd!
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