Route map
We were up earlier than usual to tackle the road. Ahead lay 600km of dirt road and river crossings. Taking it slowly over the bad stretches and enjoying the time granted to look around when the road permitted, the occasional Leichhardt trees reminded us that the route we were taking was almost identical to that taken by the explorer / botanist Ludwig Leichhardt in 1845. Lea began a traffic census but within an hour of leaving Borroloola had nothing more to record! The river crossings and the jump-ups gave us a change of scenery at regular intervals and at one point, with a minding eye for crocs, Lea waded through the river ahead of Skiv to get a photo. 
Crossing the Robinson River
The Borroloola policeman had told us of a popular campsite at the Calvert River crossing. We made it there by lunchtime and so liked the spot it was easy to extend it into an overnight stay. That evening George went down to cast a line in Calvert and Lea followed once supper was ready. Just as she was trying to ease her way down a steep bank the sight of a metre long olive brown snake slithering away froze her in her tracks.
“Up with the parrots” we put a few hours of travel behind us before stopping for breakfast at the Queensland border. Just as well we didn’t count on staying at the Wollogorang Station on the Territory side of the border as it had ceased trading. Nevertheless the presence of cattle wandering throughout the bush were much in evidence – one section of the road was so heavily mined with glistening cow pats they were impossible to dodge. We recognised the Brahmans but wished we had Joe and Mona to identify the others. For our sanity we broke our journey into parts – breakfast at the border (80km); a break at Hell’s Gate roadhouse (50km, never found out why it is so named and were very tempted to stay in its camping ground); lunch at the Lawn Hill Station turn off (80km) where we were fortunate to find a billabong. The long, hot dusty road gave us an ever changing variety of conditions - one section as wide and smooth as a bush airstrip can be; others full of corrugations and stones; patches of bull-dust; steep descents into creek beds; even some unexpected small sections of bitumen. At the turn off to Lawn Hill Station, the road became nothing more than a farm track for over 100km and the signage at forks in the road left us with a lot of uncertainty. We found driving through Lawn Hill Station particularly interesting with its huge tracts of grassland, cattle (many with young calves) and mustering horses; one really beautiful, strong flowing creek with towering paper-bark trees and lots of wallabies bounding around. We’d loved to have camped there!
Our final destination was Adel’s Grove a campground situated 10km from the Boodjamulla National Park. A park we had never heard of yet comes highly rated. What a relief to reach Adel’s after a long day’s hard driving, to be free of rattling and shaking, and immediately go for a cool shower to rid ourselves of all the bull-dust and sweat. Adel’s Grove has an interesting history. It derives its name from Albert de Lestang, a French botanist commissioned by the government in 1930 to experiment with the growing of tropical trees and fruits. He developed his nursery alongside Lawn Hill creek and by 1939 had over 1000 different species of trees and shrubs from all over the world growing here. Sadly, in the 1950’s a fire destroyed his buildings, taking all his written records of the plants and their hybrids and a large percentage of his grove. This broke his spirit and he died in 1959. Hence this property is often known as “Frenchman’s Garden”.
Savannah Way links five World Heritage Sites, of which Boodjamulla National Park is one. Now, we have come to realise that, unlike Kakadu, only a small part of the park, Riversleigh, famous for its fossil deposits, is a World Heritage Area. Yet another 100km of dirt simply isn’t worth a visit there. Irritatingly, we also found in the same pamphlet that we had to pre-book a campsite in Boodjamulla National Park. A further determinant to remaining another night in Adel’s Grove was adding an unnecessary 20 kms to Getaway now that we had found two damaged drawers, missing screws, even the sink plug had come apart and a shelf inside the fridge door had been broken in half. Arriving in the Park we found two sets of campers, that is all! The requirement to pre-book in October seemed unfair.
After yesterday’s confinement our day visit to it the Park stretched our limbs and gave our hearts a good pounding walking several of the trails available and swimming in the creek. George was delighted to find “tufa formations” to show Lea. He had first seen them in the NT’s Flora Nature Reserve which we had been unable to visit thanks to the fridge! Here were some unexpected examples in this park. Tufa is a porous rock comprised primarily of calcium carbonate that forms small delicate “dams” across rivers, building up in much the same way as coral does in the sea.
Tufa forming the Indarri Falls (created from calcium carbonate rich water)
Although we are glad to have seen the Boodjamulla National Park, and it is spectacular in its own right, we have seen such similar sights in the Northern Territory that we felt a little disappointed. Particularly for Lea as we by-passed Burketown to come down here and she has missed “The Morning Glory”. The latter is something that has intrigued her ever since reading about it. Supposedly a spectacular “propagating roll cloud” and one of the world’s most exotic and interesting meteorological phenomenon. Strangely, we have not had a cloud in the sky until arriving in the Burketown region. Are they propagating clouds?
Friday the 13th is a day gremlins come out according to George! We left Adel’s Grove in some trepidation with 100km of dirt ahead of us. We rattled along with not another vehicle on the road for the first 50km until we reached the turn off to the Century Mine. Thereafter came warnings to be aware of road trains and ominous signs warning of hazardous dust appeared on the ultra-wide road. Grasslands almost like wheat-fields stretched to the horizon on either side of us and in the distance we’d see a white billow of smoke drifting; then it would change to ochre before erupting into red. By then we’d realise it was dust from an approaching vehicle, wind up our windows and almost come to a halt. In quick succession three massive road trains bore down on us and rumbled away leaving us engulfed in their bull-dust. It was a scenario twice repeated before reaching Gregory Downs.
Crossing the Gregory River into Gregory Downs we felt a measure of relief to have arrived unscathed. Glancing down from the bridge we noticed two caravans camped below and after seeing there was little else than a hotel and a store to Gregory Downs we returned to find a site of our own alongside the river. Perfect! A swift flowing river of clear water snaking its way through a wide pebbly river bed, lined by paper-barks and Pandanus, providing us with a week-end hideaway. Getaway was parked to maximise the solar panels as a result we required many dips to keep cool by day. During one of our swims we surprised a little wallaby quenching her thirst. She looked far too young to be a mother yet peeping out of her pouch was a joey. She didn’t dash off, just watched us curiously. The strong current made us wish we had noodles or a tyre - nevertheless we had lots of fun struggling upstream and floating down with it.
Our swimming hole on Gregory River
Birds surrounded us - a flock of crimson finch skipping around, the piercing call of whistling kites overhead to others we battled to identify even with our bird book. In the last of the evening light while waiting for wood on the fire to be reduced to coals, we washed down our rig, drawing buckets of water from the river, to get rid of all the dust. Other travellers continued pulling in, some arriving as late as 11.00pm!
Sad to leave Gregory River, however, curiosity to see around the next corner always gets the better of us. We had a selection of five rest areas for an overnight stay between Gregory Downs and Normanton (350km) but not one matched the standard we are accustomed to. The bitumen road constantly varied in width from single to double and the number of cattle lying dead alongside were extraordinary (44 en route). Black plumes of smoke could be seen ahead of us. It didn’t appear to be a bush fire prompting Lea to voice the hope it wasn’t our much needed fuel stop. By the time we reached the crossroads we were engulfed in smoke with scores of kites reeling above the flaming grass. Burke & Wills roadhouse was scarcely visible. Our fuel attendant, a Brighton back-packer, told us that the roadhouse had lit a fire that morning for rubbish and it had escaped. He mentioned it had been a fearful first hour with the sun blackened out followed by a strange golden glow. At least we had diesel to continue our journey to Normanton. By late afternoon we had a shady site in a caravan park and facilities to do our laundry. No mobile signal and we can only hope Normanton library internet will be able to send off two weeks of blog tomorrow.
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