Just Drive

Drive, drive, drive and drive.  Drive is the majority of what we did after leaving the east coast.  We got on the Savannah Way Gulf Developmental road and headed west for over 650 km on what started out as a great road then quickly turned into a single lane which we shared with mostly the locals and road trains, but we did see a few animals...some very large Emus' (we just about hit a couple that looked down on us as they ran across the road in front of us), dingos, freshies, and taipans (the worlds most veromous snake).  The road took us across to Karumba and the Gulf of Carpentaria, still in the northeast of the county.  We stayed in Karumba at the Sunset Caravan Park for a few days...a nice spot to catch up with laundry etc and get off the behind for a bit, but after a few days it was time to cover more ground (we only have 7 months here after all).  Heading south we took the Burke Developmental road from Normanton to Cloncurry where we finally got on a main road, The Flinders Highway, which took us through Mt Isa and into The Northern Territory, a quick 1140 km in two days.  

Drive, drive, drive some more.  We caught onto the Stuart Highway which traveled south...another 530 km to Alice Springs.  

A couple of days with not much more than this to look at.  It's a long, long road!

With only one lane to share, it is a good idea to make room for the "road trains".  It can be a little testing on the nerves.

After leaving the coast a quick stop at the Innot Hotsprings can rest a weary butt, but look out for the 'freshies', the Australian word for fresh water crocs.  The water was so hot coming out of the sand in the creek we had to be sure to mix enough cool creek water into our pool so we didn't poach.

Termite mounds line the side of the road.  At times there were millions of mounds and at other times the mounds were just huge.

In Normanton 'Krys - the Savvanah King' could have easily taken my head off!  He was killed in 1957 by a woman croc hunter, Krys weighed in at over 2 tonnes and measured 28 ft 4 in (8.63 metres).

 

At Karumba, hundreds of grey nomads spend their winters fishing and prawning but without a boat we settled for a drink or two as we watched the sunset.

Checkout this road train.  They can be up to 53 metres long.  How would you like to have the bill for this guys 70 tyres?

Flys? What flys?  I don't see any flys.

Even I took mt turn at the wheel a time or two.

Ken cleans out the van before we get into bed.  We don't want these little critters crawling into bed with us at night.