CAIRNS (QLD) TO MATARANKA (NT)

Day 1; Saturday 22.8.09
Leaving Cairns, finally, we are already two days behind our original schedule but it doesn't matter because for the first time in years I have no deadline, YES! It's been an absolutely manic week leading up to this point, everyone needed to say goodbye one more time (so did we), Cairns has been awesome. Although I worked ridiculous hours for the majority of our three and a half years there I really grew to love it, Belinda and the kids loved it even more. Hanging out at places like Stoney Creek, Behanna Gorge, The Daintree, trips to the reef and one of my favourites - BBQ brekky on Trinity Beach of a Sunday morning. It was all just too nice, not to mention the friends we made there who grew to be an extension of our family so far to the South.
Anyway it's come to this, we had one last really nice night at the Beach Shack, a top little spot on Kewarra Beach where you can sit in amongst the palms and melaleuca trees overlooking the water as the sun goes down. It's in the sand with tables and chairs, a DJ playing super mellow music with a thatch roof dance floor, an outdoor wood fire pizza oven ($12 pizza - yum) and a little shack that serves as the bar. Kids are welcome and it made for a really nice last night in Cairns, as well as catching up with a few old friends one last time.
So anyway (again) Saturday morning and we pack the trailer and the car, this takes about 3hrs because we really have way too much stuff and before we even set off we're working out how we can dump some gear, I think this will go on for a while. We've packed everything - school gear for the kids, surfboards (feels weird heading for the outback with them but looking forward to WA) portable DVD, Frisbee, footballs, barbie doll + accessories, guitars, cameras, an amazing amount of books and crafty things, music, I-Pod, DVD's enough clothes to cover ten families etc etc etc.
Eventually we got packed and left aiming for Georgtown, 500km west of Cairns. After all our mad packing and 45min of driving Lachlan pipes up -
"Dad, did you remember the sauce?"
"The what..?"
"The sauce."
"The what...sauce?"
"Yeah, the sauce."
"Sauce, as in tomato sauce?" (I'm laughing now)
"Yeah"
At this point we all cracked up. It probably doesn't come across as funny as it was, but after all the lead up, and talk around this trip, we finally get away and of all the things Lachy could worry about, it was the tomato sauce. So we had our laugh and drove, we got very excited as we passed Innot Hot springs as we'd never been any further west, we didn't really stop for lunch as we'd left so late and headed straight to Georgetown. GT was bigger than I expected, but still very small, we got a token for the town pool with our camp site which I found bit funny and set up next to cow paddock. We met a lot of travellers that night, one couple who riding pushbikes around Australia, I was amazed, they'd been riding for two months with eight to go and were still happy. Another couple had come from Western Australia - straight across the desert without using roads, simply navigating their way over. I'd felt like such a brave traveller before I met them, like I was the first person to attempt the circumnavigation, I do have one huge challenge that makes me the most fearless of all though... I'm doing it with Zali. We had a nice night in GT, all excited for our first night on the road, we went to bed early as the week had been very draining and we were stuffed. Oh, the GT public pool had an electric gate like some Colombian drug lords house and the water was freezing.

Day 2, Sunday 23.8.09
We were woken up by about one million lorikeets and the strangest sounding cow I've ever heard. After breakfast we unsuccessfully tried to pack the car and make more room without actually ditching anything, we have now made a pact to get rid of heaps in Darwin and as much as we can before then. Belinda was quite chuffed about 1hour into todays drive when she got to throw out a crayon (although I think it's still in the car).
We made for Normanton today (when we saw it we kept kept going to Kurumba), about four hours from GT. Zali hit her straps today, making me almost wish I was riding with the two we met last night, who we overtook about 50km west of GT, made me glad I was in the car with Zali, life is full of ironies.
There's not a lot to see between towns in Western Queensland and I was stunned driving the last 20km into Karumba. We came out onto the flattest , hottest, most barren place I've ever seen. There wasn't a tree or hill for miles, no exaggeration. In the distance we could see tree's, small stunted things, no hills at all and no grass, the ground was brown dust. Every so often we'd pass a mob of cattle gathered around a bore or some tanks, maybe a dam, after a while there was a creek type waterway thing that followed the road all the way to Karumba. Heaps of Black and Brown Kites.
We saw Brolgas for the first time on this stretch of road, embarrassingly it took Lachlan to tell us what they were. Karumba is another little place (pop. 600) that really doesn't offer much for the traveller without a boat, but we camped in some shade and enjoyed the showers etc. The Norman River enters the Gulf of Carpentaria here and we managed to make it out to the river mouth to watch the sunset over the Gulf. It was great, and for the first time since finishing work I really started to feel I was winding down. Sitting in that spot at that time was kind of surreal, I've always taken the Gulf for granted, knowing it was there but never really thinking about it, but actually being there - it's hard to explain but it felt pretty special. We got real good fish and chips from the shop at the point but the lady serving looked at me like I had two heads when I asked for an extra piece of fish. Service was crap and the lad really mad me feel like I was doing her a disservice by buying from her. Food was nice and the setting sensational though.

Day 6. Friday 28.8.09
Finally in Mataranka. The trip from Kurumba to here was long, flat and almost featureless, we had some good things though. We bought prawns in Kurumba for $12 a kg and stopped at a rest area ½ way to Cloncurry to make prawn and avocado wraps. We'd just started to eat when two road trains pulled in and parked right in front of us, leaving their engines running the drivers got out and chatted while we ate our now dusty prawn wraps the diesel fumes and cattle smells drifting across us, it was funny. We met a guy at the same place who told us to skip Mataranka as it was dusty and nothing there, we were quite disturbed by this as it was our goal in three days time. That night we camped outside Cloncurry by the Corella dam, we were alone and it was beautiful, I got some real nice photo's of the sunset and some Brown Kites fishing in the morning (photo's will be uploaded when we're in Darwin). At 2am that morning a crazy wind storm popped out of nowhere, we'd had perfect weather all trip and so we were up tying things down and running around in the dark, 2.30am and the wind was gone. Apparently in the morning we had about five huntsman spiders under our trailer cover, I wasn't told this and was delighted to find one living in my bike helmet when I put it on yesterday.
From Cloncurry we drove to Camooweal and were stunned by the dryness of the place, there is nothing much between the two except Mt Isa, where we hung out for a few hours at a pretty cool family fun park, kids loved it and Lachlan decided he wants to live there. I told him we'll find a better one somewhere that you get rain more than once a lifetime. We stopped in Camooweal, pop. 60 to grab some water and ice, we were to camp by the Georgina River that night just out of town at a free camp spot called Camooweal Billabong. We were pretty excited for a swim but when Belinda asked the girl at the counter if we could swim she just laughed at her and said we could but we might get a bit muddy. It was very dusty by the Billabong but there was enough water to make it nice to look at and the fishing Brown Kites put on a great show for us.
In the morning we discovered our Jerry can of water was contaminated and I was a little worried about our prospects for finding more without having to buy it. We decided to drive most of the day and try to get to Banka Banka for the night. Both kids have settled into the travelling routine really well by now and as we drive in the morning we play math and reading games, as well as other ones and after lunch if we still have a bit ahead we put on a DVD for them. By the time we hit Banka Banka we were desperate for a shady tree, a waterhole and green grass, as it turns out Banka Banka is the first heaven that the Buddhists believe in. After nothing but dust and yellow grass for 5 hours (short stop at Barkley Homestead, irrigated oasis) BB is a place with perfectly clean spring water running below. They irrigate their lawns and you can drink from every tap! It was great. BB is attached to Helen Springs Station, a 2 .75 million acre property, they put on a slide show and talk about how the station is run, it was really quite good. What surprised me is that the 45000 cattle they sell for beef each year are all sold to Indonesia, shipped out live and slaughtered over there, the NT has no meat works yet has almost as many cattle as people!
Finally we drove from BB to here, Mataranka. Again there was nothing in between, a stop for lunch at Daley Waters (1/2 way between nowhere and Darwin) but despite a couple of warnings against the place it is 2nd Heaven. There is lots of shady trees and the thermal springs are amazing, a really comfy temperature but this amazing clear blue water. They wind out of palm trees and what looks like elephant grass to suddenly open up for about 100m before disappearing into the grass again. It looks quite shallow but once in the water is actually about 12ft deep and you can drift off with the current and wind your way down to a ladder and bridge, climb out and do it again. It's an amazing blue (like the Barrier Reef) with a huge amount of lilies and water grasses growing out of it, my photo doesn't do it justice, I wish I had an underwater camera but I don't so we're stuck with what I got. We like it here so much we're staying for a couple days.