The Gulf Report

Hot Springs - YUM

Day 3, Year 2 in our travels. Reporting to you from Lorella Springs Station: a million acre cattle property running to the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria, north west of Borroloola. Recently returned from a soak in the hot springs. Laundry’s on the line. Planning to cook up some “Teamsters Beef and Beans” in our camp oven in a couple of hours. My life as a little bush wife is nearly complete!


There are starting to be signs that it’s time to return to the “real world”. We met up with our friends Mick and Sylv Hurst in Katherine about a week ago. I was struck by how enthusiastic and excited they were by every little thing. We’ve lost that! I’m starting to genuinely believe that a couple hours rest in the middle of the day is a right, not a privilege. We feel affronted when it rains. In other words, I think we might be starting to take this all a bit for granted. Not to mention – “little bush wife”?????, what’s happened to me?

Having said that, we absolutely love the Gulf Country! It’s a little bit like the Kimberley in that it’s remote, with lovely scenery and amazing waterholes – but unlike the Kimberley the area hasn’t really been affected by mainstream tourism. This is country for fisherfolk – so there are fishing camps lining the Gulf, everything from the very basic beach shack to the ultra-expensive fly in fly out style place for wealthy executives. But you don’t see the usual collection of Germans and Grey Nomads – so there’s a far greater sense of isolation and adventure.

We’ve bush camped at a beautiful lagoon. Spent a couple of nights camped by the river at the Limmen Bight River Fishing Camp – definitely not one of the upmarket camps – marvelously primitive, we even had to pump our own diesel out of the drum to fuel up. And now we are here at Lorella Springs, this stunningly beautiful station, with hot springs, waterholes, fishing - even a nudist camp (apparently I’m not allowed to say anything more about nudity). Tomorrow it’s off to Borroloola – which has a reputation as a rough frontier town, so the adventure continues.

Lost City?

One spectacular highlight of the Gulf region thus far has been the “Lost Cities”. These rock formations are extraordinarily aptly named. Huge towers of red, brown and black sandstone, carved into the oddest and most precarious shapes. Just rocks – but you could swear you had discovered some hidden and very ancient Mayan or Incan city. If you let your imagination go even a little bit you could be walking the abandoned streets of New York long after a holocaust had left the buildings to crumble. Very eerie; particularly as we had the privilege of visiting these places completely on our own. One day the Lost Cities will be as famous as Ayers Rock, cost a fortune to enter and you’ll have to stick to the specially marked path or take the $1000 helicopter tour. We look forward to being able to regale Dennis’s grandchildren with stories of how we wandered through the Lost Cities on our own.

Good to be with friends!

Now, I must go back a week or so and report how fantastic it was to meet up with Mick and Sylv in Katherine. The Hursts are doing a two week tour of the Top End in their rented camper/ motorhome and we were lucky enough to be in the area. Their enthusiasm was infectious, their wine was flowing and, as usual, Mick cooked up some fabulous steak. Best of all, they were staying in a great caravan park where every campsite has its own “ensuite” toilet and shower – such luxury!!
We can also thank Mick and Sylv for sending us to tour the School of the Air – one of those things us old jaded tourists hadn’t bothered to do. What an amazing set up. This is one area of education that has been transformed by technology. The teacher communicates from a sound proof studio with her students that cover an area three times the size of the UK. The students have a “class” on air for 40 minutes every day and the rest is handled by correspondence and still needs to be supervised, usually by the parents. The government covers all the costs for running the school and equipping the students with the technology they need. Generally students continue with School of the Air until year 8 or 9 and are then sent to boarding school. The tour reported that students of School of the Air tend to perform very well academically. They don’t suffer from bullying and they are usually able to learn at their own pace, without competitive pressure from classmates. We saw some evidence of this at Limmen Bight Fishing Camp where Patsy, the woman who ran the place, was running School of the Air for her 15 year old daughter and her 6 year old niece. She showed us her little “school” area filled with high tech computer equipment, which was a sharp contrast to the primitive nature of the rest of the place. And the 6 year olds reading skills were exceptional – again a rather sharp contrast to the ragamuffin look of the child.

OK, that’s enough. Just one more small thing. Sitting in the hot springs earlier this afternoon I was very taken aback to find that I was suddenly being bitten by something. No, not a croc, turns out that it was some small fish that bite off all your scabs (I have rather a lot of scabs because of the mosquito situation here). I found this rather unpleasant - but apparently in Thailand you pay to have these fish bite all the blisters and sores off your feet as a health treatment. So I suppose you could say that I’ve had an outback beauty treatment.

Over to Dennis…..

So a year has passed and we are still on the road, 15 days away from having no fixed address, we’ve covered 45,000 kms a lot of it off road so the car is starting to look a little worse for wear, having had a wheel stud and recently a new tyre.

I love this part of the country where the bush meets the sea, it’s my personal favorite and we are now heading for a lot more of it. Oh have to go and collect fire wood now so that we can fire up the camp oven for dinner under the stars, again!

SPECIAL ADDENDUM – DENNIS TURNS GREASE MONKEY

Grease Monkey at Work!

Stephanie again: I am about to put this blog online having arrived in Borroloola, where communication is actually possible. It must be documented that Dennis Moore, former senior Coles executive and semi-retired executive coach, the man who self reported as someone who would always pay someone else to fix his car, seems to have become a grease monkey. He suddenly decided today that he needed to tighten the wheel bearings – which he did very successfully. He has now run off to the neighbour’s to borrow a grease gun so that he can grease a few nipples. The mind boggles!