Drive: 320km; Total towed: 4212km
11-26 deg C
We were
both awake just after 5am which was really 5:30am; might take a few days to get
used to the new time zone. Not to worry, we dressed and did our stretches and
core exercises before heading off for a walk. It was still dark so Wendy took
her headtorch on her walk. The runway was all lit up and whilst Greg went all
the way to the other end, Wendy turned back at the start.
We were all ready for an 8am departure and Greg had pulled into the fuel station to wait whilst waiting for Wendy to complete the check out. On her return to the van Wendy heard her name being called out; her cousin once removed, Ryan Squires, just happened to be refuelling and cleaning his windscreen and saw Wendy. So, we had a chat and rang Wendy’s cousin, Jenny, Ryan’s mum as it is her birthday today. She was just as surprised as we were. An obligatory photo was taken and we left at 8:15am. Ryan had to get back to Mt Isa for work tomorrow and had already had a big weekend of driving to recover a motorbike for a friend of his.
Back on the road, we stopped just before Tennant Creek at Mary Ann Dam for two things – mornos and to fill up our water tanks for a night at Devil’s Marbles – another no water, no power camp. Not free, but at only $3.30 per adult per night, it was very close to being free. So, this is our fifth night of off-grid caravanning. Whilst Greg loves it, Wendy is still getting used to the idea of not having endless water. Power has not really been an issue to date as the days have been really sunny so the solar is earning its keep.
After a quick refuelling stop in Tennant Creek, we arrived at Devil’s Marbles just before 1pm and after setting up we had lunch. We then set off to do one of the walks around the ‘complex’. We started off with the longest – a 4km walk with a difficulty score of “easy”. We then incorporated three other walks to finish the day with 4.8km. We have one walk left to do which we will try and do in the morning before leaving. As we were coming back to camp, we saw that G&Y had arrived so stopped in briefly to say hello. Unfortunately, they were not able to get a spot next to, or even near us, but did manage to get a spot up the back of the park.
The rest
of the afternoon was spent relaxing – reading, sorting photos and writing the
words for the blog.
Y&G came down to our spot for pre-dinner drinks and they were already primed – they had had a few with their neighbours; at least they had nice neighbours to have drinks with. On one side of us, all they did was tune their Sat dish so they could watch TV all afternoon and night, and the other side were cranky with us because they perceived we had taken one of their sites (they are travelling with two other couples and wanted to be next to each other). They had however, come from the back of the camp as if they were leaving so had obviously come into to see if there were any better sites, and by the time they came back out, we had taken one of “their” spots. He was not a happy chappy, and to top it off had broken a spring on his caravan suspension. We were not surprised as the way he drove in and out of the site was like a real cowboy. Anyway, we are happy with our spot.
After dinner and nice hot showers, it wasn’t long before we were both in bed.
Mornos at Mary Ann Dam
