TOD Tour 2.0 Day 64 - Banka Banka Station to Barkly Homestead

Pace deliberately taken off today after two long days driving from Darwin. We need to get home as quickly as we can but not at the expense of Sue's back, so today is the first of three shorter days until we can get to Mt Isa and stay for two nights.

We have the early starts down to a tee now, with another departure before 7:30am this morning. A stop for Sue to stretch out and a change of drivers at The Three Ways, where we left the Stuart Highway. Its been our traveling companion for virtually all of September but we said our goodbyes and left for the east along the Barkly Highway.

We confronted our two dearest fuel prices to date: 209c/L at the Three Ways and a cent dearer at Barkly Homestead. In both cases, we were just topping up. I should add, the photo I took at The Three Ways was someone else's fuel!

We arrived at Barkly Homestead before lunch and took about fifteen minutes to set up. We left our new neighbours still setting up. They had arrived at the same time we did. We went to the Homestead for lunch. They were still setting up their camper an hour later when we returned. How grand it is to have left canvas and tent pegs behind.

Sue left for the pool and enticed my ankles to join her. The rest of my body has never trusted my

Click for today's photos

ankles advice where pool water is concerned but Sue was good enough to warn me it was cold, which means she was either generously good-hearted to protect me or she wasn't prepared to put up with the several hours of whingeing which would have followed full body immersion.

A few cheap beers during happy hour were enjoyed to round out our day.

Mount Isa - Camooweal - Barkly Homestead - The Three Ways - Renner Springs

Fuel at Camooweal

Mount Isa - Camooweal - Barkly Homestead - Three Ways - Banka Banka Homestead - Renner Springs 773(3321) kms

Finally a day which felt like we had the holiday on track! After the frustrations of the week since
Yamba we have both become increasingly discouraged and a wee bit anxious that we were getting nowhere.

We started today in Mount Isa in the worst end of any caravan park in a working man’s town ... among the residents. Sue in particular felt uncomfortable for much of the night. A party raged across the road which at various times had racing cars, screaming young women, foul language and the issuing of threats of violence. At one stage, an older voice tried to ask for calm, only to be very impolitely told where he could go. Despite all this, we did manage some sleep snug and locked in the Forester.

We were up before sunrise again and out of the park by 7:45 am to find some shopping items and petrol. Our target was Barkly Homestead, about two thirds of the way across the Barkly Tableland in the Northern Territory. Given the reputation of fuel prices in those areas, I decided to fill my additional fuel tanks, which effectively doubles my fuel capacity. By complete luck, I found a United Petrol Station selling fuel for 160.9c/L. I soon snapped that up. I was told later in the day that the major companies were selling for 171.9c/L in Mount Isa.

Camooweal was our first stop for morning tea – 188kms from Mount Isa. The fuel here was 193.6c/L, making the Isa purchase a highly profitable one. We ate and drank quickly under some shady vines, whilst admiring a statue of a bullaroo – a mythical creature of these parts which is half kangaroo, half bull. Having seen the statue, I’d say there was more bull than just half!< Onto Barkly for lunch at 1:00pm and we were making very good progress, although driving well under the NT open road speed limit of 130km/h! I tipped in the first of the jerry cans to avoid paying the 240c/L charge on offer! We decided we still had a lot of day to drive in and couldn’t see much point staring at an unchanging horizon for the afternoon at Barkly, so headed in a further change of plan and the chance to catch up one of our two lost days. Sue took over and drove 150kms of the distance to The Three Ways – a Shell service station at the junction of the Barkly and Stuart Highways. We reached there at 3:45pm and decided to pass up the opportunity of staying at the Three Ways or heading south to Tennant Creek (25km). Every petrol station in north western Qld and the Territory seems to also offer accommodation Often, they are also a hotel. We set our destination for Banka Banka Station, a working cattle station that shows tourists what they do as part of their $6 a head charge for a piece of grass to park on and a hot shower. A phone call confirmed that no booking was necessary and that there was plenty of room at the inn, so off we set on the final 73 km.

Just after 5:00pm, we pulled into the driveway of Banka Banka to be met with a “house full” sign and a rather rude instruction to not discuss it with the management! Now we had a problem, as these outback roads are not to be driven from twilight on for fear of damaging the wildlife and in the process, inconveniencing your front grill and radiator. The nearest spot was a roadside stop where several vans had already gathered about 35kms earlier but being intrepid and more than a little foolish, we kept going forward to Renner Springs, 62kms to the north.

We made it as the sun was setting and completed a 791km day, surprisingly fresh and happy at our progress. I doubt we will drive many other days on this trip for as long but strange as it may seem, it didn’t seem a hard day, despite being nine hours from start to finish.

Hot showers, cold beers, a sizeable feed of vegies and rissoles and it was all I could do to complete my chores and then sit down to write. It’s a full moon this evening and it looks down on us outside the Desert Hotel at Renner Springs and readies us for bed. Its moonbeams will tuck me in tonight in the Northern Territory, content in the thought that most of the rushing is now complete and from now on we have lots of time to enjoy what we drive through and to.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

It’s after 10:00pm and Sue’s first snores are frightening the wildlife and the sandman is whispering in my ear that the moonbeams have other to attend to. Goodnight.