Aug 11 travel plans update

 Hi all,

Just a quick review of where things are up to with border closures and our plans from here.

We intend to leave Umagico tomorrow August 12 at this stage God willing, and start heading back down south. The aim is to head south towards the bottom of the Cape, and then either south-west along Dixie Road from Artemis Station towards Normanton, or if the road turns out to be too bad to go all the way down to Mareeba and then take one of two roads directly west to Normanton. The first road is about 160km, the latter two options about 1200! But we're not in a hurry really. We do want to visit Lawn Hill which is close to the QLD-NT border, a little way down from the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The NT border is still open at the moment to those who aren't in a hotspot, which we aren't, so we hope this situation remains the case while we make our way down. If things change, we plan to explore more of western Queensland, in particular Longreach which we loved last time we visited. If the NT border does open then we'll go on through and try to see things we missed last year, in particular Kakadu, Arnhem Land and a mandatory revisit to Mataranka!

The WA border is not looking like opening anytime soon, so that part of the trip may unfortunately be off the cards unless things change. That will be a real pity, however there are still plenty of places to enjoy out here. And we did get to WA last year anyway.

Presuming the WA border remains closed, we will assess once we're in NT whether we come straight back down the middle down to SA or not. I think it's more likely we might go back into Queensland for the rest of the year and come back to Adelaide later on.

God bless!
Greg