Timber Creek
On leaving Darwin, we had to head back down the Stuart Highway to Katherine, to pick up the Victoria Highway across to Western Australia. We stopped overnight at Timber Creek which is halfway between Katherine and the Western Australia border. This is the heart of croc country and it was a little unnerving to see a freshwater crocodile basking on the bank of the creek at the back of the campsite.
Locals don’t seem too worried about the ‘freshies’. Winston didn’t get a walk that night though!
The Border
There’s a quarantine checkpoint on the NT/Western Australia border. We had our quarantine booklet and I was confident the 2 ½ Bradshaws were compliant as I showed the inspector our fruit and veg. However he said he would have to confiscate our tomatoes and cucumber, and potatoes had to be peeled and cooked. Jonathan said I shouldn’t have quoted the booklet at him but it was incorrect. Not willing to hand over our food, we pulled into the rest area for a salad lunch and boiled up the potatoes before heading on through.
We were heading for the campsite at Lake Argyle, Australia’s largest freshwater lake. We only realised that Western Australia is 1 ½ hrs behind the NT when we arrived at reception and saw the clock. We are now only 7 hrs ahead of the UK. It was a little disappointing to find that the campsite wasn’t actually on the lakeside although after reading it’s home to 30,000 freshwater crocodiles, maybe that was a good thing. Jonathan didn’t hold out any hope of catching a barra with that lot in there. The weather is pretty much perfect at the moment. The temperature doesn’t go above 30 degrees during the day and it cools down at night. Back in Alice Springs, it’s now dropping below zero at night.
We sat with drinks and watched the sunset over the lake while listening to Steve Case, a travelling performer. He could do with adding a few cheery songs to his repertoire. It felt strange that the sun was going down at 5pm.
