Saturday 2nd July

It was a long drive but we are spending the weekend at an oasis in the middle of the Queensland outback. Boodmajulla National Park (Lawn Hill) sits on the Queensland/Northern Territory border up near the Gulf of Carpentaria. It was 77km of dirt road just to get in here but SO worth it as you can see. We arrived a bit after 5pm and set up camp very quickly and then escorted some very impatient children down to the river which is so beautiful words can’t describe it. After the disappointment of not swimming tonight we headed back to camp and had a thrilling game of Toy Story Bingo which was played by the rules Sam was making up as he went along.

After dinner and a few wines, the boys were sent off to have cold showers (Claire and I opted for a Baby Wipe bath tonight – who says they are just for babies!). During the showers the automatic lights went off so the boys were plunged into darkness – let’s just say any fresh water crocs that were lurking around have gone into hiding to get away from the screams. It doesn’t end there – there only one of the boys who knew where the light switch was located on the pole outside was Paul, who at the time of the blackout was stark naked. Claire and I were very helpful by pretending we didn’t know them.

Sunday 3d July

Days really don’t come any better than today. We left for an early bushwalk to Indarri Falls, it was a fairly easy 1km wallk that took us through what smelt like bush lavender, across what was once a riverbed but was now just rocks and through a mass of wattle in bloom. After a short climb up a rocky path we walked around a couple more rocks nad were greeted with this sight. It was a bit unreal at first like when you see those amazing pictures of beautiful places and they are so lovely that you think no normal person would ever see it – it was like that. We walked down the rocks to the bottom anmd it just seemed to get more beautiful the closer we got.

Claire and Luke decided to not let the ‘Freshwater Crocodiles inhabit this area – swim at your own risk’ sign worry them and took a quick dip (or maybe they just didn’t see it), while Sam decided to have a rest on the rocks (although I don’t know why he was tired because this is his idea of bushwalking). After half an hour or so of soaking in the beauty we decided to head back and hire some canoes to explore the river.

While we waited for some canoes to become available the kids took a dip in the river and enjoyed floating around on some inner tubes. Finally it was our turn on the canoes and it ended up being a girls canoe and a boys canoe (I definitely got the better end of that deal). We paddled down the river and by the time Claire and I got to the gorge we were the only ones in it so she decided to test out the acoustics and belted out a song from Wicked which sounded fabulous (despite her head cold) and we agreed the acoustics were incredible.

We got all the way to the falls and while they still looked wonderful I did think they looked more impressive when we walked to them. As we were paddling back we caught up with the boys who had found a croc sunning himself on the bank of the river so we paddled inn to get a good look at him (just close enough to be far enough away!)

After luch we decided to take another walk to the Cascades this time. Again it was about a 1km walk with the promise of a dip in the rock pool once we got there. Someone should really amend the signs because when we arrived there was a pool alright, except it was of mossy green stagnate water! You could see from the rock formations that when the water used to flow through there it would Have been wonderful but clearly the water has been diverted at some point and it now very unappealing. To ease the disappointment of the kids and to cool off we headed back and all grabbed an inner tube and spent the next hour just relaxing and floating in the river. We all agreed at dinner tonight that we easily could have spent way more time here. I think Sam summed it up the best when he said “this is real camping”.

Monday 4th July

What an eventful day we have had. We were all a bit sad to be leaving Lawn Hill but we must move on because we are meeting the Wooldridges and Burgess’ no later than Wednesday in Mataranka. We had a creek crossing to get out of Lawn Hill and took a bit of damage – as we came out we heard an awful noise so pulled over to see what was wrong – as we stopped a kangaroo jumped across the road right where we would have been driving. The noise turned out to be a plastic guard that had come loose. One of the driving lights had come off too – a bolt had shaken itself off and it was hanging by the electricals so I managed to use the gaffa tape to tape it to the bull bar. As we were happily bumping along the dirt road we came across these two couples heading into Lawn Hill and we pulled over to see if we could help. Neither of their phones had reception but for some reason mine did (the only place I had signal all day I might add), so they were able to call for a tow truck (which was going to take three and a half hours to arrive) and the most important thing was that they were from Newcastle!

Further along our fuel light came on. I of course told Paul very confidently that it would be fine and we would make it to the next roadhouse about 50km away – yeah, turns out i was off by 650 metres. It also turns out that a 20 litre jerry can of fuel is not enough to start our car. We ended up being towed into the roadhouse across the highway – I will just add here that this is the first time I been allowed behind the wheel other than to reverse in to hitch the trailer – of course when you can’t start a car you have no power steering or brakes. As we are being towed I have all sorts of costly repair scenarios running through my head – turns out filling it did the trick!

After a long boring but relieved drive we arrived in Mount Isa only to find every powered site and most of the unpowered ones already booked. We eventually found an unpowered site at the Big 4 and were able to camp next to our wonderful friends the Woolridges. The kids were all very excited to see each other and promptly entered into a ‘settin up’ competetion – we claim we won because we were done first Matt claimed he one because he was the first to have a beer in his hand – in the end we called it a tie and celebrated with a couple of glasses of wine.

Tuesday 5th July

Left early this morning and treated the kids with maccas for breakfast and Thomas and I headed off to do a grocery shop while Paul and the other kids went to get petrol and some minor repairs. Once we were on the road again we were headed to Three Ways – with a stop of course as we crossed the border into the Northern Territory. We had a lovely picnic lunch at Barkly Homestead where all the kids enjoyed stretching their legs and letting off some of their energy. Next stop was Three Ways Roadhouse where we camped the night. The kids were all pretty happy to see the roadhouse stop had a pool and were more than happy to make use of it – Maree and I were good mothers and supervised (with a glass of wine in hand).

Wednesday 6^th July

Another long day of driving – but with the excitement of knowing we were meeting up with the Burgesses at the end of it. There weren’t a lot of things to stop and see along the way but one thing we decided we had to stop for was “Churchill’s Head” – a rock in the shape of Winston Churchills head that someone had stuck a stick into so it looked like a cigar – Wikipedia described it as one of Australia’s crassested sightseeing spots – in our book that is a must see. Turns out it was more of a blink and you miss it. One of the dumbest things ever – looked nothing like Churchill and the only way we knew it was the right rock was because of the big stick sticking out of it!

We eventually arrived in Mataranka where we headed into Elsey National Park – our camping spot for the night and there waiting for us were the Burgesses. Once we were set up we headed into the thermal pools – a lovely way to end a long day of driving. Once we got back to our campsite we discovered the mozzies had shown up for the night – everyone else was fine because they were all eating me! In the end I had to take refuge in the camper trailer which meant I missed the ranger talk which was a bit disappointing but better than being eaten alive.

Thursday 7^th July

A shorter driving day today but it seemed to take just as long? We had a fairly long stop in Katherine to get a few more groceries (some tropical strnght aeroguard!) and then we were on our way again. We had lunch at a beautiful park in Pine Creek where my nature spotting husband found trees full of flying foxes, personally I thought they looked like fruit bats but either way I was pretty glad they were asleep!

Further down the highway we stopped in at the Railway Museum other than the old railway carriage that reminded me of catching the ‘flyer’ up to Newcastle with my nan when I was really young it was pretty boring.

Finally we entered Litchfield NP – after a stop in Batchelor for beer we went in search of some campsites – a pretty fruitless search – I think we had left it a bit late in the day to arrive so we ended up in one of the caravan parks which is just lovely – we have three nice shady spots along the back fence and across from us is a huge grassed area for the kids to run around on.