Friday 2 October
But having followed the directions, you eventually get to this!
The water was lovely and cool, and despite a sign warning a croc had been sighted in the area recently, we weren't bothered. In fact we put into practice what we'd learned on the Yellow Water Cruise in Kakadu - the guide told us he was taken down to the water as a young boy and the women stomped on the bank and slapped their forearms on the water to warn the crocs they were coming, so they didn't accidentally step on them. We did this, and weren't bothered, but we never saw the croc. We think he might have been further upstream.
As you can see, the weather is still very hot up here, and the humidity is staying high. It's not particularly comfortable, so swims like this are magnificent!
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| 41 degrees C (top right corner) |
We headed back to the caravan park, picked up the van, and headed down to Katherine, where our first stop was the Katherine Hot Springs! We came here on our last trip, and the thing we loved about it was that it WASN'T too hot! Mataranka by comparison is somewhat warmer - someone said they'd measured Mataranka at about 33 degrees C, and if that's true then I'd guess Katherine would be in the high 20's. Cooler, but not cold by any means. Refreshing and cooling enough to cool off a bit.
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| Back in Katherine! |
The Poor Caravan Fridge!
One of the problems with the persisting hot weather has been the fridge in the caravan. It's a 3-way absorption fridge which is an old design though still used widely, which allows the fridge to run on 240V (when you have power), 12V (from the car while travelling) and from gas (while stationary without power). It is also completely quiet as it relies purely on convection to move the cool air around the fridge compartment, and to move away the hot air outside. So it's a good design. The downside is that it doesn't cool down as well as more modern fridges with compressors, and when the weather is 40 degrees during the day it really struggles, especially when overnight the mercury doesn't drop much below 30. We've been running it flat out for a couple of weeks hoping it'll cool down enough overnight to get us through the next day but it's been struggling and we've had to throw out a few lots of meat. Generally 6 degrees C is about the best we've had, more often it's been 8-10.
So to help it along the way I bought a bag of ice and stacked it in the fridge to help it cool down overnight. It certainly made a difference for 24 hours! If you're in the Facebook group the video's here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theroaming5/permalink/4457189437688043/
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| Mim filling all the water bottles up with spare ice! |
The hot weather is certainly trying, and the poor fridge performance means we don't really have nice cold water either. The water tanks in the van heat up to 30 or so degrees during the day so the water's lukewarm; the fridge is already running flat out so we don't want to make its job even harder by adding water bottles. We've bought cold water a couple of times, and also use a portable drinks cooler we brought along, but that only get the bottles down to 15 or so which is better than nothing.
All in all the heat and humidity is making us all a bit ratty.
Saturday 3 October
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| We also got a few smaller 12v fans |
These allowed us to have some much-needed breeze while sleeping and through the day without having to run the inverter and the 240V box fans, which together drew about 10A which is a lot to be using all night. I have to say, the big box fan has been very useful in ways we hadn't anticipated. It's got a small battery inside it which powers the fan for a few hours, so you can turn it on and get a breeze while stopped for lunch for example, without having to plug it in. A small convenience, but a convenience nonetheless.
Anyway back to Mataranka, and the next challenge we faced! I set the solar blanket up and it seemed to be producing less power than we'd expect for the conditions. After a few minutes it stopped producing any power at all. It was also scorchingly hot, so much so that when I poured some water on it it steamed! This restored the power output but a few minutes later it died again, and this time for good! This established, we coughed up the extra $5/night for the next two nights for a powered site, and packed the van partly up to drive the 150m to the powered camping area. The fans would need to be running all day and night, and there was no way the batteries would go for 48 hours straight (of course once you move the car's alternator charges the batteries, but that's no help when you're parked).
Having set up twice now in 40 degree heat we were overdue for a swim, so jumped in the car and drove 10 minutes to Bitter Springs. Bitter Springs is a bit cooler than Mataranka and was just what we needed!
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| Bitter Springs |
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| Bitter Springs |
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| Look who the springs washed up! Sam and Leah and their family |
We were most surprised to see the familiar faces of Sam and Leah and their family just by the bridge at the end of the stream, who were up here for the school holidays! We calculated it was over three months since we last saw someone we knew - that was in June in Townsville when we stayed with Uncle Colin and Aunty Shirley whom Mim knew, and before that it was in May while we were in lockdown in Wamuram with Luke and Tammy and their family. So it was nice to have some very familiar company, even for just half an hour or so before we had to go our separate ways.
We headed back to Mataranka for the night.
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| Red termite mounds near Mataranka |
One of the main reasons we had headed to Mataranka today (Saturday) was for Nathan 'Whippy' Griggs' last show for the season. We'd heard this fact while we were in Kakadu so had been moving swiftly to see it for a last time. We also wanted to get a second whip.
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| Mim is on the left at the nearest table. The kids are all on the table behind them and to the right. |
We ended up meeting up with the other two families (Family.Gap.Year and Venturing Four) and had tea all together. The kids love playing together and while we all still do our own things it's nice when our paths cross.
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| Bek's been working on copying a photo of Nathan |
Nathan's final show was pretty good and had a few extra bits in it, including getting the staff from Mataranka and anyone else who wanted to from the audience up on stage to dance the 'Nutbush' while he whipped along to the tune.
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| Nutbush with the staff from Mataranka |
If you didn't catch our video of the show from a few weeks ago, here it is again.
We picked up a new whip afterwards, an orange one this time, as did several other people, and the night air was punctuated with some whooshes, some 'ow's and a number of cracks as some newbies and some oldies cracked the evening away!
Sunday 4 October
A quiet day. We watched Brighton's meeting, Mim had a hair cut from Bek, and we went down to the Mataranka springs for a swim during the afternoon.
Monday 5 October
I gave the solar blanket one last test but still to no avail. I had also tried charging the Pajero's battery but also no good. So it really seemed dead. So I took a bunch of photos and a few videos and lodged a claim with 4WD Supacentre.
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| With the blanket in full sun, it should be producing about 20V. Here it's producing well less than 1V. |
You may remember back in April we had problems with our first solar blanket the 120W model, which ended up getting refunded, and we put that money towards this 200W version. It's worked fine to now, although the loops for hanging the blanket on hooks have started to tear a bit. So I was a bit disappointed this unit also failed. Having gotten all the data I lodged the claim and then went for a swim while the inevitable back and forth communications could take place before we got out of signal. The main problem here is that there's no 4WD Supacentre until we get to Adelaide so we can't take it back to a store to get it replaced. We also need the blanket to recharge the batteries when we're stopped. So I put my case to them that we needed a replacement shipped ASAP to Alice Springs in the hope we could collect it there and move on.
With the paperwork lodged and awaiting review, we headed out of Mataranka. We refuelled there at $1.30 or so and headed south. The rest of the day was just driving and we stopped the night at a roadside rest stop near Newcastle Waters. Again it was a hot day followed by a hot night, although we did get about a minute's worth of rain! We'd heard it was cool down in Alice Springs so maybe this is the start of some relief from the hot weather
Tuesday 6 October
Our first stop was Three Ways, the junction where the Stuart Highway meets the Barkly Highway which takes you east out to Mt Isa in western Queensland. This is the way we came into NT on our first trip
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| This was our first visit to Threeways, in August 2017! |
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| Back at Threeways, October 2020 |
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| I think these truckies enjoyed setting up this photo! |
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| I have a minor case of 'Whippers Arm' - the results of not QUITE having mastered the art of whipping safely! I can appreciate how Jesus and Paul felt now! |
As we travelled south we started to see evidence of the changing
weather we'd heard about. The skies were now clouded over and it felt
cooler.
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| Certainly once we consulted the temperature gauge in the car it was clear we weren't imagining things! |
Tennant Creek Telegraph Station
Not too far south of Threeways is the Tennant Creek old telegraph station. We've never stopped at one of these so we pulled in to take a look. We couldn't get into the main buildings but some of the outhouses were open, and there was enough information to get a good idea of how it worked.
There are many of these telegraph stations dotted along the Stuart Highway. They functioned as repeater stations for telegraph signals sent between Adelaide and Darwin, and indeed to other parts of the world as the line continued up to Indonesia and beyond. The staff who worked in these stations had a hard and lonely life. Their job was to man the line 24/7 to relay any messages which were sent. They also had to go out for weeks at a time to maintain and repair the line. They only received supplies once every six months from Alice Springs via camel train, so the rest of the time they had to be self-sufficient. This meant their own sheep for slaughtering, growing their own grain and vegetables, maintaining their own equipment with their own blacksmith's shop and making any tools they needed. One has to admire the resourcefulness of the men who worked in these stations, their mental strength to deal with the isolation for months at a time, relieved only by travellers who would bring through news of the world and the messages sent along the telegraph line.
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| Inside the Blacksmith |
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| Me and my boys :) |
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| Us by one of the old telegraph line poles |
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| We also saw this sorry old truck on the way down. |
Based on how we were travelling, we realised we'd need to stop somewhere around Tennant Creek for the night. Just north of the town, we saw a sign for Lake Mary Ann. We've been down this road twice already but had never heard of, much less seen, any such lake, so checked it out. It looks like a river that's been dammed to turn it into a lake for entertainment and cooling for
the locals - hardly surprising out here in the middle of Australia!
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| Lake Mary Ann |
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| Some friendly geese near Lake Mary Ann! |
We actually found a place we could have stayed the night but it looked like a place the locals took their cars for a bit of fun so we eventually gave that a miss. We drove into Tennant Creek to refuel, as it's the cheapest spot between
Mataranka and Alice Springs. I think we paid $1.26/L or something, so
we filled up all the jerry cans to avoid having to refill at the
expensive smaller stations (think $1.70+ per litre). While we were debating whether to stay in Tennant Creek or drive on we refilled the van water tanks. In the process of this I found a heap of Singapore ants had gotten into the water tank so I drained both tanks and refilled them to try to get rid of all the ants. These ants by the way are terrible creatures. We first read about them at Normanton in the caravan park. They came to Australia in the 1920's but can eat through wiring in cars and caravans if they want to, so you have to spray ant spray on your wheels and anything to stop them getting into your van. They're a small brown ant, quite innocuous to look at but Mim can testify they have a nasty bite!
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| The resultant water dump created plenty of fun for the boys! |
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| Waiting for the tanks to refill |
The caravan park was going to be about $45, which we didn't really feel like paying for just a 'secure' patch of dirt. So we drove on in search of a suitable free camp.
After a couple of false leads we found a side road which after about a kilometre or so led to the Adelaide-Darwin train line, along the side of which was a service road, along which was a nice little parking bay just made for a Pajero and a Jayco Expanda! Apart from the obvious train line 30m away, it looked a quiet spot and certainly the road noise, though audible, wasn't enough to be a problem.
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| About 20km south of Tennant Creek |
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| Sunset behind the train lines. |
-- Greg
Loving the catchup, cooler back home if you want a change of scene=)
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