Day 29 – Friday 15 July 2016 – Katherine – Adelaide River

Last night I had a really crappy sleep.  The dogs were fussy, I couldn’t get comfortable, it just wasn’t a good night’s sleep.  We had a pretty late-ish start leaving Katherine at around 9.30am.  We had woken to very overcast skies, but as the morning went on it cleared.  Shane snapped this photo as we drove over the Katherine River but as I processed the photos I noticed the graffiti.  Really?  Frogs Bum?  And while we are on the subject of graffiti it amazes both of us that there is so much of it around, even at the Devils Marbles.  I mean come on people – Aboriginal Rock Painting is one thing – but if you think in another couple of hundred years “Frogs Bum” is going to be something people will pay money to see then……… well………  People are stupid.

A little way down the road and Kitty has not stopped scratching her ear so we pull over to the side of the road so I can take a look.  It’s bad – it has virtually blown up over night and with her scratching it – it’s a mess.  So emergency ear treatment on the side of the road it is.  We set off again and obviously the application of ointments has eased it and she finally settled.

This part of the trip has seen more overtaking lanes and more double highway than we’ve seen all the way from Port Augusta.  We also saw our 3^rd, 4^th & 5^th police cars (not including those we’ve seen in towns) for the whole trip so far.  There are significantly more hills and winding road here as well which meant there were a few overtaking lanes where I needed to slow well down to allow all those impatient motorists behind me to pass.  And the traffic on this leg of the journey was significantly more than we have encountered so far, especially the non-caravan traffic which now completely outnumbered the vans.

There was also the now familiar site of a vehicle dumped at the side of the road, wheels and who knows what else missing.  I'm thinking it's fair to say this wasn't a break down or an accident and some poor bugger will be filling out a claim form for their car insurance in the next day or so.

We are also back into rocky country now, not that dissimilar to the MacDonnell Ranges hills around Alice, but we also noticed that a lot of the rocks were blacker in colour than red or brown.  What has also taken our eye are the massive ant hills here.  Still thousands of the smaller ones, but now massive big apartment buildings for termites!  Some we saw were over 3 metres tall and about 4-5 metres in circumference.  That coupled with the ever increasing number of palm trees amongst the bush scrub remind you that you ain’t in Kansas no more!

There have been a lot of blackened areas of bush all the way up the Stuart Highway along with numerous signs encouraging people to take care with campfires etc (my particular favourite being the one stating “We Like our Lizards with Frills – not grilled”).  I don’t know if there is controlled burning done at all, but it’s hard to go more than a few kilometres without seeing evidence of fires on one side of the highway or the other.  Some small, and some that stretch extensively for miles.

Shane remarked that it’s funny how whenever you see a sign or a billboard you tend to read it as aside from the bush, there isn’t much from town to town (and that can sometimes be hundreds of kilometres) before there is anything to look at.  One of the billboards we saw was for Pine Creek advertising Mayse’s Homemade Pies & Cakes.  We thought, what the heck, let’s check it out.  We will definitely drop in to Pine Creek on the way back as it was a really pretty little town and Mayse’s Homemade Sausage Rolls and Roast Pork Rolls with Gravy (AND CRACKLING) certainly went down well for an early lunch.

We came to an intersection which offered the main road or the scenic route to Adelaide River.  Of course – tourists – take the scenic route.  Frankly if you are ever faced with the same option – stick with the highway.  The scenic route was tedious to drive, terrible drop offs on the verges, a very narrow road and some really grumpy locals who obviously aren’t thrilled to share their road with 4wd’s towing caravans (and there were a number of those on the road in addition to ours).  Our speed dropped from 90km/hr to about 50km/hr to accommodate the road conditions and frankly the scenery didn’t look any different from that on the highway except for a few rivers and creeks that really weren’t all that inspiring except for one, Burrell Creek which while pretty and offering a few photo opportunities, still wasn't worth the additional time and stress of the drive. 

We finally exited Hell Road at Adelaide River and the very unfortunately named Adelaide River Show Society (ARSS) where we decided to make camp for the night since there wasn’t a site available in Darwin until tomorrow.