For the Hot Springs aficionados, Bitter Springs seems to have eclipsed the better known Mataranka Springs just down the road. A picture is worth a thousand words so this should save some typing.

By the way, the water flow and temperature seem to be down a bit on five years ago we suspect that this is due to less than normal rainfall is the last three wet seasons, the spring flows being a point where hot underground rivers break through the surface of the ground.

1000 words

2000 words

We have found the water closet from the future right here in Australia, in the Northern Territory, in Katherine, in the main street fact. The full metal jacket, all knowing, all seeing, musical toilet with electric moving parts. Fascinating!

Press large blue illuminated button to enter and the toilet does the rest.

Magic computer voice… “Welcome to Exceloo press blue button to close door”

Toilet flushes, just in case.

Magic computer voice….“door is now locked and toilet is now ready for use, toilet will flush when you exit or wash your hands, you have ten minuets to complete your usage of Exceloo”.

Music starts “what the world needs now is love sweet love dooby dooby doo” etc. After ten minutes of this, trust me, you will be ready to leave.

So, having done whatever you have to do and having washed you hands under the automatic soap dispensing, water delivering, hand drying sink, the toilet flushes again.

Magic computer voice. “Please press illuminated blue button to exit and thank you for using Exceloo”

You can’t help but say thank you especially when a surly dude sitting outside the shopping centre toilet across the street demands a dollar to use their toilet and doesn’t even sing “what the world needs now is love sweet love dooby dooby doo”.

Doctor Who’s Office or his preferred place of business.

Well we finally reached somewhere not flat! We had to travel through a lot of flat to get to the not flat however (see picture of flat below). We did see some mountains of to the side of the road on the way with names like, Mount Doubletop, Mt. Affleck, Mt. Vergemont,, Walters Knob, Commissioner Mountain, and The Bluff. However lets not get carried away here thinking we are in The Alps, the highest of these reached a miserable three hundred and seventeen metres above sea level (one thousand and forty six feet, give or take). So you see it’s pretty flat which is what makes the non-flat bits more interesting.

We are now, or were when I wrote this in Limmen National Park just south of Roper Bar in the Northern Territory or “Discovery Territory” as they say in the advertising.

Limmen became a National Park in two thousand and twelve and is regarded by those who should know as one of the best parks in the N.T. The Rangers asked us to keep that to ourselves if we didn’t mind as they are concerned that it may end up a bit like Kakadu or worse still Uluru (over developed and commercial). The real reason I suspect is that with over one point two million hectares of park to look after (land and water) the Rangers don’t want to be interrupted by annoying visitors with stupid questions like…

Q. When will the rain stop?

A. Tomorrow.

Q. Why are there so many flies?

A. So none of the visitors miss out.

Q. Are the mosquitos particularly bad today?

A. No. They will be bad tonight though.

Q. Are the roads always this dusty?

A. No, in the wet season they are muddy or under water.

Q. Is it safe to swim in crocodile infested water?

A. Sure it is, don’t worry about the signs they are for other people. Actually we would prefer you went swimming.

I would love to be a Ranger.

The wet season runs from December to May closing the roads so the Rangers don’t get a lot of visitors for six months of the year however they cant get a lot done either being up to their armpits in water as it were.

Below is a selection of N.T. highlights to date.

The Flat Bits

Cows on the Run. (Fred…..Cows with Guns)

Bird 1

Bird 2

Bird 3

Bird 4

The Lost City

Inside the Lost City

City of the Ancients

Escape from the lost city

Sunset

The Struggle

Paper Bark

Mail Box

After passing through Mount Isa, stopping only for fuel, a real estate sign and gaffer tape to build our new back window we headed east. Just out of town were struck by the sheer glamour of the ant colonies. So much “glam“ for such small and normally retiring insects. Dressed as they were in designer clothing with so much panache it was like a Milan fashion week only on dirt. A description of the display would I’m afraid be pointless, suffice to say that the catwalk is over five hundred kilometers long (the length of The Barkley Highway in fact) and the range of exhibitors is huge. Being dedicated fashion critics we have selected the top two entrants which I include for you’re viewing pleasure.

To more holiday related matters, Rob turned out in his shorts this morning with a bold announcement that we were now in the tropics. I initially suspected that he was wearing faded blue jeans but then realized that it was the hue and texture of his legs giving the appearance of an aged pair of Levi 901’s.

Blue legs aside we left for Camooweal to see the caves however as National Parks have decided that it is unsafe to enter them we just looked from a distance. I for one would never disobey National Park regulations. That would be un-Australian.

By the way at Camooweal one can choose to pay fifteen dollars for ten litres of water, eleven dollars for two take away coffees or ante up twelve dollars and change for a couple of streets ice creams. It’s a deal, it’s a steal it’s ………..

We are overnighting at Barkley Homestead Roadhouse where water is a more sensible dollar twenty a litre. Fuel unfortunately is one dollar and ninety cents a litre (seven dollars sixty per US gallon). Note to self, “must build H2O separator to distill swamp water and run car on hydrogen and get drinking water (and possibly rum) as by-product”.

Heading north tomorrow.

Rob and his legs

And the winner is…..

The Gordon Chris Collection for 2015

Sometimes less is more as evidenced by the his simple example of the outback hat collection

The Alfred Hitchcock classic has none of the drama of a rock bouncing of a caravan and hitting the rear window of your car at ninety kilometers an hour. It’s quite an explosive experience. Such is life in the great outback of Australia.

We are now two thousand kilometers into our trip to the northern regions and boy are we having fun. Three hundred bucks in fuel every thousand kilometers, broken back window, twenty bucks for a shower, things are tough…. even Jack Daniels has deserted me. Jen hasn’t deserted me however and is confident that things will improve. Well they couldn’t get worse… unless it rains he says looking skyward.

No it’ll be good, trust me, we will head off early from Bedourie (which is just west of nowhere, and that’s according to my map not just my opinion) and aim for Mt. Isa where there will be a sale on two thousand and one model Landcruiser rear windows and Jack Daniels.

We had planned to give Mt.Isa a wide berth having stayed there a couple of times already. It’s not a bad place it’s just a little too… no forget it … the place gives me the creeps sucking all the goodness out of the earth like some giant leach that relies on minerals and money to survive, I hate the place. There I’ve said it so deport me! No, you can’t, I’m an Aussie now and I can whine about everything, for example…. “How about those Roosters eh! Couldn’t score a goal to save their lives”. I don’t have the slightest idea what that means by the way, I just heard a fellow Aussies say it. Good on ya Kirsty and “go Parra… Maaate”, did I say that right?

By the way, Parra is a football team the name is apparently short for Parramatta (similar to the Green Bay Packers in the US only no where near as successful.)

How about those Packers!!

As an afterthought we drove through Burke the other day. Above is a lovely painting of Bourke and Wills exploring Australia. Which is which evades me as I was not fortunate enough to meet either of them. I have however been through a town called Bourke but I have never seen a town called Wills. The lesson is, always try to get top billing. Equally unfortunate, the horse’s name is lost to history.

After two days of driving through the outback of New south Wales and Queensland there is little doubt in my mind that what my newly adopted country lacks in quality (read diversity if you like) it makes up for in quantity. There is so much flat mulga scrub that it literally defies description. You drive and drive and drive and nothing changes, it’s just flat, red and dry, except when it rains then it’s flat, red and boggy. I ask myself how can anybody make a living out here? Yet they do. Probably one cow or a couple of sheep per hundred acres or so, the poor critters fighting tooth and nail against the feral pigs, goats, camels and whatever, not to mention the native stock of kangaroo, wallaby, emu etc. You have to admire the owners and managers of these outback-alternate universes they really do make something out of nothing.

Now to a more serious matter, I am not happy about the way you earlier migrant interlopers have been treating our wildlife. The wholesale slaughter of Kangaroos and Emus has to stop right now!

Already these noble creatures are on the menu in restaurants all over Australia (particularly South Australia, the culinary vandal state) and it’s just not right. Today Jen counted over a hundred Kangaroo carcasses and that wasn’t all day it was in ten kilometers! I kid you not there are millions of these little skippies out here lining up to get squashed by the next eighteen wheeled assassin that happens by. I know what you’re thinking, if there are so many why worry about eating them, well, if you hadn’t noticed they are on the coat of arms and they do adorn every letter from the big house in Canberra. They are our representatives in the animal kingdom. Do we want to end up like the USA where the eagle has been hunted almost to extinction? Or England where there is not a Lion to be seen? Or New Zealand where they have to settle for a Kiwi because there is just no better alternative.

Just think about getting rid of your cat or dog and getting a nice joey or emu chick that’s all I’m saying. Think of the benefits as they grow bigger and bigger over the years… what joy they will bring to the family, what a great conversation piece at the next dinner party.

By the way we are in the boring part of Australia. That’s not to say this blog site will get any better…I’m just saying that’s all.

National Treasures out for a stroll Hungerford

Click to enlarge.

I really have to get used to this. In The USA everywhere had wifi, everywhere had fast food in fact everywhere had, well, everything and that’s because, let’s face it America defined the concept of availability and the resulting mass consumption.

Out here in my newly adopted outback there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in fact there is so much nothing that it becomes something. If ever there was a case of less is more then this must be it. The sky is clearer and cleaner the quiet is overwhelming (even for us half deaf folk) and the essence of space is omnipresent.

This truly is the back of beyond and we are just out of Bourke, a good days drive from Sydney in Hungerford on the Queensland border. We are in fact parked in a national park at a place called “The Granites” which is in an area of “mulga scrub” in an area so flat that rain water does not drain away.. There are several thousand acres radiating out from our current location however we are the only people for miles. Access is by dirt road only which is closed if it rains, so if it rains it could be a long time between blog posts. Not to worry we have plenty of nothing, which I guess is something at least.

One of our number suggested that this was the place that the moon landing was filmed but we all know that that occurred on a back lot in Hollywood.

Things have been a bit rushed to date, however below are a couple of pictures which will no doubt fill you with awe and envy he said with tongue firmly pressed to inner cheek.

By the way you can add to the list of “man made things that can be seen from space” our camp fire…. It’s still cold out here!

The bottomless waterhole at Byrock

Byrock Water Supply en-route to Hungerford

Sunset out of Hungerford

Man on the moon.

“The Camp Fire” as seen from space.

Leave Monday the 13th July head North by Northwest. Stay well clear of Cary Grant, Martin Landau, Eva Marie Saint and in particular James Mason!

The end.

Are you sure this is where we left the Caravan

Highlights should include but not be restricted to: Hungerford, Mataranka Springs, Darwin, Kakadu, Litchfield, Mitchell Plateau, Gieke Gorge, Tunnel Creek, Wolf Creek Crater, Bungle Bungles, Kununurra, The Old Ghan Railway Track, etc.

By the way we have left already.

Let it be known that on the Ninth of July 2015 after 57 years of living in Australia, apparently under false pretenses, I became a citizen of the land down under and I now claim dual nationality English and Australian. I know, I know….. it’s been a long time coming but I have been busy going to school, working, paying taxes, getting married, having children, paying more taxes, having a short holiday, then more work, more taxes… you get the picture. Truth is I have always considered myself as  Australian as the next person being as how my parents were invited here by the Australian government back in 1958.

Notes on becoming an Australian:

Before being considered as a candidate I had to demonstrate that

a. I was here

b. I was allowed to be here based on historical fact and

c. and this is the big one, I had to promise that I was not now or have ever been a terrorist.

Fortunately I was able to do all three things. I must say it’s a good thing we have that crucial third test or all sorts of lying terrorist types would be able to infiltrate this great country.

Six months later it was off to the ceremony….

I had to register to vote, something I have been doing for the last forty five years. This leads me to wondering if perhaps the results of several “close call” elections would have been different if I had not been voting. I remember the milk monitor vote at Windsor Primary been a close run and hotly contested election back in the summer of sixty two.

People much younger than me and who had been here much less time than me spent a fair amount of time telling me how privileged I was to be accepted by them to their great country. I appreciate the sentiment, however I would have preferred that an Aboriginal welcomed me being as how us English have been welcoming ourselves and helping ourselves  to this country for over two hundred years (and several others for much longer). I’m not ungrateful just confused as to why there were no “traditional owners” at the festivities. I suspect they don’t want me, moreover they may not even want you, have you checked?

The band played Waltzing Matilda no less than three times and every one sung along (if only to themselves). The National anthem got a single look in and only the choir knew the words to the second verse. Do you know them, be honest now!

I got a tax refund! This was in the form of a specially minted one dollar citizenship coin. Unfortunately it is dated 2014. Oh well I will still treasure it.

Anyway having been told that “I am, your are, we are Aastraliunz” by the well tuned, and heavily supported by the band, choir of greying non-waltzing matildas and two fellas, I was granted a certificate of citizenship of which I am mighty proud.  I will no doubt spend some time deciding what place of honour to keep aforementioned certificate.

After the ceremony my new best mate Kim (Mayor of Hawkesbury City Council) treated me to a meat pie and lamington, (traditional Ozzie food) washed down with a cold glass of Coke. Vegemite was conspicuous by it’s absence probably being deemed to radical for us new comers …maybe at the first anniversary, come on Kim Maaaaate.  Give me Kangaroo fillet and a Coopers Pale Ale any day. Note to self.. when next down the ruberty throwing back schooies with me new mate Kimbo, we’ll have to have a yarn about putting Vegemite sangers and maybe paverlova on the me and you. (translation: When next at the local hotel drinking fine Australian Ale with my new found acquaintance Kim we should discuss the plausibility of including Vegemite sandwiches and perhaps Pavlova on the menu.)

Genuine Meat Pie

Genuine Lamington

To celebrate  the head rabbit and myself along with some fellow citizens will be off for a tour of the great north west of Oz in part so I can survey my new home.

Oh.. By the way, I can now get a cheaper passport not that it was in any way a motivating factor.

Technical problems are a fact of life. A technical problem, with say a kettle is quite minor, the lack of hot water being the worst-case scenario. Car won’t start equates with late for work. Burnt toast, reset the smoke alarm. My point is most technical problems are relatively minor not critical.

Our plane was delayed today due to an undisclosed technical problem. I put it to you that any technical problem with an aeroplane, especially if it is undisclosed in nature, is not to be taken lightly. It’s a critical problem not a technical one.

There is nothing worse than getting on a plane that has experienced a technical problem. Why? Because it might not have been fixed that’s why. Airlines run on timetables and there is huge pressure on staff to get the plane back in the air. I know how these things go and this knowledge leads me to imagine the following.

Timetable Manager: Is the plane’s technical problem fixed?

Technical Problem Guy: I can’t find anything wrong!

Timetable Manager: So it’s all good?

Technical Problem Guy: Guess so!

Now this is the real problem, the “Guess so”. That and all the question marks and exclamation marks. There should be no guess, not even in my imagination because I’m pretty sure that if I can imagine it then it’s possible. Remember Leslie Nielson’s rocket scooter.

Aeroplanes are very complex things. That’s why pilots get the big money to fly them. Pilots are people who go to bed early, never ever drink, have a loving relationship with their family and above all are not the least bit suicidal. They should not have to deal with technical problems, technical problems in fact should just not happen with aeroplanes. They should be prefect all the time due to a rigorous maintenance regime that prevent any such technical problems.

That said, we did finally get off the ground. Maybe the technical problem has been fixed after all. Or maybe, it will raise its no doubt very disagreeable head when we try to land. Let’s just hope it’s not one of those “Oh crap the wheels have come off “ sort of technical problems.

With all the flying we have done lately I’m beginning to worry that we are pushing the flight envelope a little. Logic dictates that because planes fly some will crash therefore the more you fly the more chance you have of crashing.

This flying business has also given me the opportunity to study the principles of flight. Quite simply flying is something that should be left to birds, bats, foxes, and winged insects. Even some of these natural flying creatures crash, usually with serious consequences. As clever as we are, being able to use a knife and fork with our special opposable thumb and all, we really shouldn’t be flying.

We are now flying over Noumea so there’s a chance, slim though it may be, of being picked up from the ocean should there be any fishermen out today. Lets hope the fish are biting.

Things that should not fly.

Potential Technical Problem.

Should fly.

Should fly.

Should fly, despite long nosecone.

Unsuspecting Flyers. Note proximity to bar.

More unsuspecting flyers. Note drink.

Well that’s it for this blog. I must remember to post it if when we land safely in Sydney. Thanks for pictures Jen. In fact…

Thank you one and all. 🙂