Grey Nomads

Posts Tagged ‘travelling around australia’

Growing up in the 1960’s I recall all the historic events of the day played to the sound track of a monotonous click clack, click clack, click clack; knitting needles a blur, as my mother’s nibble fingers wove their magic.

“This is Brian Henderson, live from the studios of TCN Nine” click clack, click clack… “President Kennedy has been shot”, click clack, click clack… “The Beatles have touched down in Australia”, click clack, click clack… “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah”, click clack, click clack… “I have a dream!”, click clack, click clack… “Choppers flying into Nui Dat” click clack, click clack, “Harold Holt is missing” click clack, click clack…. “One small step for a man”, click clack, click clack… “one giant leap for mankind” click clack, click clack.

I can still picture my mum perched on our very modern black and white sofa, beneath her version of a Kandinski abstract that she had artistically rendered on the base of our old playpen, surrounded by balls of wool.

As a young child I would spent hours at her knees observing her knit until, at the age of four, I nagged her into casting a few stitches onto a pair of knitting needles for me and so I learnt to knit. With my little fat fingers I was no match for her agility but still I managed, in my awkward style, though my first endeavours more resembled Venetian lace than the rows of neat little chevrons my mum produced. Gradually I became more proficient and I outfitted all my dolls with leftover scraps of wool.

Money was hard to come by back in those days and my mum, who was born during the great depression, took recycling seriously. The jumpers she knitted for my elder sister were handed down to me 12 months later and when I outgrew them they were fastidiously unravelled. I remember, as a small child, sitting on a kitchen chair opposite my mother, while she wound the wool into skeins around my out stretched hands, held about 30 cm apart. I loved to watch it unfurl from its knitted form, all kinky from the years it had spent confined in a garment, washed and worn and washed again innumerable times. The skeins of limp wool were then laundered and hung out to dry on our Hill’s hoist. By the time the leaves had fallen from the trees it had all been re-knitted into new garments.

Knitting seems to have become a lost art, one which younger women, even many my age, have been reluctant to embrace. Perhaps it is considered old fashion or superfluous in this modern age of all things disposable.

For three weeks we house-sat for a lovely couple, Paul and Deb, who had gone sailing off the coast of Turkey (tough life for some). During that time the curbs of Melbourne’s charming south-east suburbs groaned under the mounds of redundant household cast-offs as the council collection day drew near. Outside most homes the amount of wares disposed of was more than some African villages would see in a lifetime. Apart from old couches, computers, prams, wardrobes and mattresses, the growing number of bulky old CRT TV’s signify the enthusiasm with which Australians have embraced the wide-screen, digital television phenomenon. I would never have imagined, the day we brought home our very first colour TV, that one day they would end up as litter on the footpath, free for the taking. Any thief, worth his salt, could easily calculate which homes would be likely to have a new flat screen TV sitting in their living room, ripe for the picking.

Since leaving Sydney 4 months ago I have rekindled my passion for knitting and even though I still knit in a ham-fisted, fat-fingered, four year old fashion I have still managed to produced a veritable hoard of cardigans, bootees and bonnets. They are now all coming to good use since 30 April at 2:15am, when we were presented with our first grandchild. A son and heir to our son and heir. The dynasty continues with Charlie Ray and though I may be a tad biased, he is indeed perfection personified.

Our daughter-in-law’s parents were over here from Wales for the birth of their first grandchild too. When we all got together it was amazing to watch these six mature, well educated, intelligent adults all going completely ga-ga over this tiny bundle of joy.

The transformation in our elder son, the father of our grandson, is nothing short of miraculous. Overnight he has morphed from a self-interested, generation ‘x’er into a doting daddy. He fusses over Charlie and doesn’t even mind changing dirty nappies. He has become emotional and affectionate, even his daggy old parents are suddenly acknowledged as being human after all.

Tomorrow we will be departing Melbourne and leaving our 4 week old grandson in the loving care of his doting parents. It will be the hardest thing, to leave him, knowing it could be months before we see him again. I will miss breathing in his sweet, baby smell, and feeling is gentle breaths upon my skin as he slumbers peacefully, snuggled up against me, all soft and….. Oh damn, the tears are welling up already, excuse me while I run to fetch a tissue before I short circuit the keyboard.

High Hi from Nimbin, the counter-culture capital of Australia. Before the early 1970’s this was just a sleepy, little farming town. To the bemusement of the conservative local community it was catapulted into the psychedelic era as hoards converged on this peaceful, rural paradise when Australia’s universities held their combined Aquarius Arts Festival on the green slopes around the town. With cheap, fertile land abounding, Nimbin became a magnet for the disillusioned youth of Australia’s major cities looking to turn on, tune in and drop out. It quickly became an incubator for a communal society that aimed to get back to grass roots living.

In my early teens I dreamed of buying a Kombi or panel van, painting flowers on the side and heading to Nimbin. Unfortunately, at the time, I was too young to qualify for a driver’s licence let alone the resources necessary to purchase the vehicle. By the time I was old enough my life had taken a different direction. I chose instead to travel the world, get married, raise a family and have a career. Now 40 years later, as an aging Grey Nomad, I have finally found my way to Nimbin.

 Today the alternate population of Nimbin is older and a tad on the saggy side, their dread locks thinner, their beards greyer and their tattoos drooping. The hippies of the 1970’s have not aged gracefully. With a permanent population of 1,100, Nimbin has, on any given day, a transient population of at least double that, made up predominantly of foreign tourists and old yuppies in Birkenstocks trying to recapture their miss spent youth. Most of the inhabitants who are under 50 seem to be German back-packers. I presume majority of the second generation Nimbinites have grown up, moved back to the capital cities and become stockbrokers and corporate lawyers. Such is the law of nature that most young people want to do the complete opposite of their parents.

As we meandered along Cullen Street unmistakable fumes permeated the environment. It is possible to get high just by sitting, long enough, in any one of Nimbin many cafes. I suspect that when Thunderclap Newman penned the title to his anthem for a generation of baby boomers, “Something in the Air”, it may very well have been Nimbin he was writing about. Beware; when someone offers to sell you a pot plant; it may not an African Violet you depart with.

As the afternoon drew to a close we watched a couple of aging hippies attempting to play a game of chess while their heads were all but obscured by a haze of fragrant smoke. It’s very hard to know who wins such a game while stoned. Not that I would know, I’m taking a leaf from Bill Clinton and claiming to never have inhaled…but as we all now know, Bill’s grasp on reality left a lot to be desired.

We arrived back from the UK less than three weeks ago, flying into Darwin exactly one year to the day from when we departed Brisbane for our Big Trip around Oz. At first I thought I was having hot flushes but soon realised that it was just the effects of the +34C temperature and high humidity causing my discomfort. We were not surprised to discover the winter here to be hotter than Britain’s summer, but we hadn’t expected it to be still so humid.

As luck would have it, our dear friends Eva and Sam chose that week to visit Darwin and we shared many happy hours with them and in return they shared, with us, a great big Barramundi, skilfully caught by Sam and expertly barbequed by Eva. The homeless man, who occupied the picnic shelter at Mindil Beach, when it wasn’t overrun by hungry tourists, also benefited from the Gerber’s generosity and slept on a full stomach that night.

After retrieving our Landcruiser from storage and picking up our freshly repaired caravan in Darwin, we headed into Kakadu National Park for a week, enjoying the relatively low humidity and warm sunny days, bathing in crystal clear plunge pools above and below fast flowing waterfalls. Doing so we have ticked off another one of the things in the book my mate Al gave me; “1000 Things to See Before You Die.” We ticked off nearly a dozen in the UK & Ireland. However I did leave some for next time as I am afraid if I tick everything off there will remain only one option, and I’m not ready for that one just yet.

Having returned to the wide brown land of my birth, after our sojourn in Great Britain, the contrast between the two countries has become all the more obvious. For the past five days, since departing Katherine, we have travelled over 1,300km across dry, barren plains. In that time we have only passed two settlements, Elliott, home to less than 500 souls and Camooweal, home to a smidgen over 300. In that time we have camped at the odd Telstra Hilton and various other free camps along the way. If it weren’t for the hundreds of fellow nomads (in varying shades of grey), umpteen road trains that come barrelling down the highways at break-neck speeds, and a scattering of roadhouses, where they feel obliged to charge an arm and a leg and your first-born child for fuel, we wouldn’t have seen another living soul for days on end.

In the UK, the same distance took us from one end of England, through the other and into Scotland, passing half a dozen industrial cities, scores of towns and more than a handful of quaint villages. We saw surprisingly few dead kangaroos by the roadside in the UK, virtually none in fact. Once I thought I saw one, but it was probably just a badly mangled deer. We found almost no free camps. The British have a phobia about Gypsies and block access to any suitable would-be free campsites.

We are currently in the Isa (Mount Isa; once the mining capital of Australia), and staying at the Copper City Caravan Park, previously known as the River View Caravan Park, but today there is little evidence of the river, bar a dried up gully full of weeds. To get there, turn off the highway at Sulphide Street, left into West, then past the Mineral Lodge Motel. Did I mention this was the mining capital of Australia?

From here we will continue on our journey eastwards to Townsville on the east coast and then onto Hervey Bay, whale-watching capital of Queensland. We have booked an apartment and are looking forward meeting up with our dear friends from Sydney, Miriam and Ze’ev. It will be a welcome respite from our hectic schedule of aimlessly meandering around the country (tough job etc, etc.). We are in need of a little R&R and hope to do a spot of WW (whale watching) too. From there it’s just a hop, skip & a jump to Brisbane and we anticipate being back on home soil by September some time. Not that we actually have a spot of soil to return to; looks like we’re in for a bout of house hunting or perhaps we could simply couch surf at our son’s; wouldn’t he just love that?

We have recently arrived in the Kimberley area of North Western Australia, just at the tail end of the wet season. Due to the heavy rainfall that starts each October and will probably end around about the day after we depart from here, the entire region is lush and green and the creeks still swollen with the remains of the wet season rains.

Today we are in Derby, home to the iconic Boab trees that appear to have been planted upside down. They are currently heavy with their strange, bulbous, fury fruits dangling like Christmas baubles from spindly branches.

Currently thunder rumbles and storm clouds threaten to dump a torrent of rain upon my freshly washed laundry that I’ve only just hung out to dry. It looks like the clothes drier will get a work out later this evening unless we get a reprieve.

The plus side of travelling in the off season is that we are here ahead of the hordes of tourists who descend upon the region in droves every dry season. The down side is that it is not only still very hot but more humid than a Swedish Sauna. The upside is that there are plenty of good sites at every caravan park and they are on low season tariffs still. The down side is that the Gibb River Road, which we were intending to traverse as far as the Windjara National Park is still closed in sections because of the rains. Looks like we’ll be in Darwin weeks ahead of schedule at this rate.

They say necessity is the mother of invention and because of the heat and our habit of free camping with no power connection I have had to be inventive. I have devised a new portable evaporative cooler. I took a much-loved sarong that I bought during my first ever visit to the Woodford Festival held in the Queensland Sunshine Coast hinterland during the last week of December each year. I soaked the sarong in a basin of water, wrung it out then draped it over my hot naked body. (This is best done in private). Usually if there is just a whisper of a breeze it acts as an evaporative cooler, causing my body temperature to return from sizzling hot to something approaching normal. See my concept design here.

But my new invention needs some improvements. The single length of fabric is only suitable for use when reclining. To cover the entire body so that you can walk around and do things, I suggest stitching two lengths of fabric together or using a single bed doona cover. See my my revamped version here.

As it is almost impossible to see anything through the fabric I propose cutting a viewing panel in the fabric and to stop the ingress of flies and other pests, stitch a patch of gauze or fly wire over the viewing panel. See the detail here.

Insert a water bladder to keep the fabric hydrated, I found the water bucket on the head gave me a headache after an extended period.
See my prototype model here.

Then all you need do is jazz it up with some funky fabric. See my production model here.

.

I think I’ll call it the “Body Evaporative Reticulated Cooling Aid” or BERCA for short.

Do you think it will catch on?

As we travel around Australia we have learnt to deal with disappointment.

To date, we have had only a few determining factors that have dictated our route and timetable. But each in its own time has meant some events have been missed. The determining factor we have at the moment is the need to be in Darwin by the first week in May as we are flying from there to the UK.

After arriving in London we are renting a campervan for 4 weeks and travelling around the UK then we fly to Ireland to spend two weeks with Hubby’s brothers and their wives who are travelling from Israel to meet us there.

As such we have a schedule to adhere to and it has put us in Coral Bay this week. Unfortunately the whale sharks are only just arriving and the real tours that take people out to swim with them only start in ernest in two weeks time. It has been a long time dream of mine to swim with these magestic giants, the world’s largest fish species. Today I paid a kings randsom to take a trip out to the reef on the off chance of finding the few souls who have arrived already. However with only a handful accounted for in an section of ocean 5076 sq km, larger than some small European countries, I realised my chances were pretty slim. And once again I was left disappointed. Since departing Brisbane we have missed other momentous events such as:

The Longreach rodeo.

the Winton camel races.

the World famous
Tesselaar Tulip Festival.

the Phillip Island Grand Prix.

the annual, Lorne
Pier to pub swim.

Adelaide’s famous German festival,
the schutzenfest.

Port Lincoln’s
Tunarama.

Porongurup’s (yes that is how you spell it; it not Pornogroup mispelt)
wine summer festival.

And most recently Wagin’s
Woolorama.

One event we wish we had missed was the one that we faced at Shark Bay. We discovered our arrival has coincided with the most prolific black fly breeding season in years. For weeks millions of sticky black flies have been involved in a mass bonking orgy. I am convinced they have been tracking our progress on my website and have timed their efforts to ensure that each and every one of them produce their 500 odd offspring to hatch just as our caravan approached the peninsular.

Although it means viewing all the beautiful scenery through the honeycomb of our fly nets, we cannot set foot outside without wearing them over our heads, as the flies are hell bent on accessing every unprotected orifice. They fly behind the lenses of our glasses and stick to our eyeballs, they fly up our nostrils and into our ears and if we should make the fateful mistake of opening our mouths to speak, they take this as a personal invitation to attack our tonsils. Even with our fly nets firmly secured with the drawstring tighten just short of strangulation point they still manage penetrate the perimeter in an attempt to drive us completely mad. I am convinced that at the back of my neck one fly is holding up the edge of my net, allowing his comrades access.

When we return to our vehicle we have to whip ourselves in a frenzy of self-flagellation, as if part of the Shi’a Muslim religious ceremonies, Ashura to rid ourselves of as many of the millions of flies as possible that have hitched a ride on our backs, arms, legs etc. Still thousands make a hasty invasion of our car and we have to spray every surface with fly spray so that we can remove our nets once inside. These are no ordinary flies. They have superglue on the soles of their many feet and adhere to any surface they land on. They are not timid either, a simple wave of the hand does not phase them. We literally have to wipe them off our skin. Like a snow plough shifts snow so our hands scythe flies from every exposed surface.

We should have recognised the warning signs. As we approached the peninsular the discarded beer cans that ordinarily litter the sides of the roads in Outback Australia were gradually being replaced by spent tins of fly repellent.

Whilst camped at the beach at Fowlers Camp on Shark Bay we found sanctuary from the flies by submerging ourselves in the clear aqua water. Unfortunately the bay received its name for an obvious reason and Hubby was the first to spot a shark swimming close to us. It was only a small specimen, more the ideal size for a meal for us, than we for him. Whilst Hubby chose flight over fight, I preferred to take my chances with the sharks than have to suffer ONE MORE FLY.

Camped on the cusp of the Nullarbor Plains, the mercury in our caravan had surged to over 44C; our sweat beads had sweat beads. So what did I do? To exacerbate the heat, I baked a cake of course. Not just any cake either, but a Honey Cake.

I realise Honey Cake is traditional fare for Rosh Hashanah, (Jewish New Year) and it’s still a good eight, or so, months away but I need to conceal within it some contraband while crossing state lines.

“What contraband?” I hear you ask. Don’t worry, there is no hash in my honey cake. The contraband I speak of is, of all things, honey! In Australia it would appear that bees couldn’t fly across the imaginary border between states, there is no Bee Proof Fence. The only way they have of smuggling themselves across state lines is via hapless travellers such as we.

We’ve been caught out before. In September, at Mt Ebenezer near the border between the Northern Territory and S.A. (South Australia), we were informed that to prevent the spread of fruit fly we would be forced to dispose of all our fruit and vegetables before we cross. Having only just bought a few kilos of apples we pulled up at a convenient rest stop by the side of the road ate salad sandwiches and set a pot of apples on the stove to stew. The caravan smelt of apples and cinnamon for weeks afterwards but we did enjoy that compote on our rolled oats for breakfast well after passing into S.A.

As we drove through Victoria a few weeks later, it seemed that every other day we passed in or out of one fruit fly exclusion zones or another. After having thrown out bags of food the first couple of times we ultimately decided to conceal our contraband. There were onions in hollowed out loaves of bread, oranges squeezed into juice bottles, and I won’t even mention where we concealed the cucumbers.

So rather than break the law this time or, heaven forbid, waste good food we are endeavouring to consume or conceal our illicit contraband before we cross into Western Australia. That bottle of honey cost me a good $5 and it sat virtually untouched in my cupboard until now. In this current GFC (Global Financial Crisis), I’ll be buggered if I’m going to hand it over to some quarantine inspector for him to take home to his wife.

We will endeavour to smuggle into Western Australia, concealed inside a cake, not a file or illicit drugs, but that seemingly harmless honey.

If you wish to visit us in the near future ask the state police which correctional institution houses hardened smugglers such as we.

When you come could you please bring us a file concealed inside a cake. Here is the recipe for a very tasty honey cake.

Contraband Honey cake

Mix together in a large bowl;

 1 cup honey
 ½ cup oil
 1 cup sugar
 3 eggs
 ¾ cup coffee

Slowly blend into this mixture the following dry ingredients;

 1 cup plain flour
 1 cup SR flour
 1 teaspoon bi-carbonate soda
 1 teaspoon cinnamon
 1 teaspoon salt
 ¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Pour the very wet mixture into greased and paper lined tin 20cm x 30cm

Bake in a moderate oven for about 1 hour or until it tests dry when tested with a wooden skewer.

It has been over a hundred years since the region has seen so many consecutive days with temperatures of 40C (104F) and they had to wait till we arrived to turn up the heat. In Victoria and South Australia the apocalyptic heat has reeked havoc. Railway lines have buckled leaving hundreds of commuters stranded. Power lines and transformers have melted throwing entire suburbs into blackouts. Fires, fuelled by extreme heat and strong winds, have devoured hundreds of hectares of bushland leaving numerous families homeless and dozens of poor souls have expired from heat related causes.

Meanwhile we arrived in Whyalla, on the Eyre Peninsular, during the first day of the heat wave. As the temperature reached over 44C we abandoned our practice of free camping so as to be able to plug into power and run our air conditioner. Even with it running all night the temperature inside our caravan barely dropped below 30C.

The next day we motored on south hoping to out run the searing heat only to discover as we opened the car doors in Cowell, that it was like opening the door to a furnace. The hot winds parched our throats and singed our nasal hairs. After making our morning espresso in the caravan, while parked in a shady side street, we beat a hasty retreat to the air-conditioned comfort of our car to drink it. You didn’t think I would leave my espresso machine at home did you? Prior to departing we invested in a 2.4kW inverter so as to be able to run the most important things in life, the espresso machine, my laptop and umpteen battery chargers. It was the best investment we ever made.

After departing Cowell it was only a short drive to a beautiful stretch of beach along the coast towards Port Gibbon. As we attempted to find some respite from the heat by paddled our sweaty feet in the delicious turquoise waters at Flat Rock an insatiable urge overtook us and we were compelled to shed our clobber and dive into the alluring, cool blue waters. The steam rose from our bodies as if from hot ingots and the water around us virtually sizzled. This stretch of Australian coast line is notorious as a haven for sharks. Hubby nearly jumped out of his skin when he thought he’d spotted two white pointers. Lucky for him it was only I doing the backstroke. Fortuitously us we went undetected on this deserted stretch of the Spencer Gulf, lucky too that school resumed after the eight week summer break only the day before or we may have scarred the little children indelibly.

At Arno Bay that afternoon I threw a load of washing into the machine and I swear as I hung it on the rotary clothes hoist the first item was dry by the time the last item was pegged out. Upon returning to the caravan to shower, I opened the cold water tap and it was hotter than the hot water. Even the refrigerator couldn’t keep cold and that afternoon I was compelled to consume my G&T at room temperature.

The next day started out ominously. At 5am the thermometer had only dropped to 35.5C and the sun had not yet risen. It was all down hill from there. Along the way we witnessed a poor shingle-back lizard attempting to cross the road, he had to extradite each foot from the melting bitumen, as if he’d stepped in sticky chewing gum, slowing his already snail pace progress across the road. Lucky the traffic was light and we were patient enough to wait for him to reach the other side.

Arriving in Port Lincoln at midday the temperature was already over 43C. Unfortunately the contents of our wine cask was as hot as mulled wine after sitting in a closed caravan in the full sun all day. I know our friends, Ingrid and Richard, are gasping in horror at the mere thought of people drinking wine from casks but in our defence it is Barossa wine in the cask and we have consumed all the good bottled stuff we acquired at Kabminye. (At this point I wish to advise Ingrid and Richard to avert their eyes, as what I am about to write is pure sacrilege to wine connoisseurs around the world.) We were almost tempted to follow the lead of hotels in the Northern Territory and put our red wine (gasp, horror) in the fridge.

There is a cool change due very soon. How do I know this? I’ve just laundered the winter quilts and packed them away for the duration. I’ve been putting it off for weeks but now I’ve gone and done it, it’s bound to get very cold, very soon.  

Having been on vacation for over 135 days we desperately needed to have a holiday from our holiday and booked into a resort at Lakes Entrance on the south east coast of Victoria.

The sheer volume of available space here is just amazing. There’s room enough to swing a cat, perhaps even two, though you might like to wear leather gauntlets if you want to try this. The kitchen alone has more circulation space than our entire caravan, which is so small that I have to go outside if I want to change my mind.

The unit even has a bedroom. Can you imagine that, a whole room just to sleep in? And a bed, big enough for two, maybe even three, though they will need to be very broad-minded individuals.

In the spacious bathroom there’s even a shower recess, yes there is actually a space dedicated to taking a shower. Unlike the bathroom in our caravan that is only a tad larger than your average shoe box and where all forms of ablution can be performed simultaneously, this shower recess is not accessible while sitting on the loo.

Did I mention the bathtub? There’s actually a bathtub! Halleluiah! The day we checked in I took a bath for the first time in months. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m a smelly pig, I have had showers, albeit short ones, but not a real long soak in a bathtub with water so hot it puts a scarlet blush on my cheeks; all of them. Sheer luxury! The hot water system in the caravan, can only produce 9 litres of hot water at a time, unless someone (read: ME) forgets to turn it on, then all hell breaks loose. So if you think those four-minute shower restrictions that were imposed upon us during the drought in Brisbane were bad, you should try showering in nine litres of water. Just so you can picture what nine litres looks like, imagine your average household bucket, the type you’re allowed to use to water your pot plants with. That’s nine litres. For me, a four-minute shower is like a dream.

But best of all, as far as hubby is concerned, there’s a dishwasher in the kitchen. We do have a dishwasher in the caravan too but it’s the manual type and he doubles as the driver. And there’s a washing machine that I don’t need to put coins in, though it also functions as a drier and thus takes up to 4 hours to complete a cycle. It’s also on the small side, more than two pairs of socks and a hanky and it’s overloaded; not that beggars can be choosers, but it has taken me a whole week to complete all the washing we accumulated in the days leading up to our holiday. The machine seems to be running constantly. When they get the electricity bill they’ll suspect we’ve been operating a Chinese laundry from our apartment. I mean, who comes on holidays to do their washing?

The weather, unfortunately, has been less than kind to us. The day before we arrived the mercury hit 36 degrees C in Sale, a friendly country town that is very patriotic; many homes and businesses all have big signs advertising the fact. They all read “For Sale”. The first two days at Lakes Entrance the sun tried to shine for a few hours but the temperature struggled to rise out of the teens and it has yet to succeed.

But tomorrow all this luxury comes to an end when we return to dwell in our caravan and head towards the port of Melbourne to catch a ship that will ferry us, our car and our caravan overseas; to Tasmania.

100km of the 140km to Kingfisher, was through a corner of the Lawn Hill Station a piddling 11,000sq.km cattle ranch. The trip took over 5 hours not only because of the rugged terrain but also because every few kilometres we had to stop while the sacrificial lamb also functioned as designated gate opener and closer. There were more than 15 gates along the way and the code of the country is “leave the gates as you find them”.

While in Kingfisher Camp we celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary by hiring a tinny with outboard motor and spending the morning bird watching and crocodile spotting. After two nights in Kingfisher Camp we pushed onwards toward Hells Gate, which indeed was closed and from there on to the border of the Northern Territory.

I made a mental note to check the CNN and BBC web sites and ‘Google’ it next time I have Internet reception.

“Permanently closed?” I continue with my inquiry.

“Just till they can find a new manager.”

I guess even there it’s hard to get good help these days.

“Is that likely to happen any time soon” I wondered out loud.

“Not likely, no one wants to live there. It’s hot as…as…”

“Hell? ” I offer

“Well, yes, you could say that.” She agrees.

“Where would someone advertise such a job?”

“The local rag usually has such ads,” she advised me, “It’s not far from here.”

What kind of town is this, I wondered, that they have such direct dealings with the dark side and are so free to admit it?

“So do a lot of locals go there?” I ask, eager to learn their dark secrets.

“Sure, they pass through there all the time”. She admits.

“But none have stayed?” I marvelled.

“You really wouldn’t want to stay,” she continues, “you’ll see when you get there.”

“How do you know I’ll end up there?” I ask astonished that she presumes to know me that well after having only exchanged few sentences. Did she possess extra sensory perception?

“It is on the route you are taking from Doomadgee to Borroloola. Make sure you fill up with fuel at Doomadgee. Since they closed the roadhouse at Hell’s Gate there isn’t any fuel available there any more.”

“The roadhouse at Hell’s Gate is closed then?” I reiterate.

She looks at me as though I’m one sandwich short of a picnic.

“Bloody tourists!” I could almost hear her mutter as the door slammed shut behind us, keeping out the flies and the midday heat.

Sinners, repent ye no less.