It was really chilly overnight to
the point that we were wearing long pants and jackets for warmth and didn’t
want to drag ourselves out of bed too early this morning. We eventually climbed out of our warm beds,
had breakfast and packed up to say goodbye to Bruce and Jenni and got back on
the road. We are currently in a section
of the Northern Territory where there is very little to see and the scenery
doesn’t change. Outside our windows is
just the dry red earth and rocks, still thousands of termite hills and dry
grasses with surrounding small trees in places.
We drove… and drove… and drove.
The kids watched a movie… then another… and another, until well after
300kms of driving we finally hit the Stuart Highway at the Three Ways Roadhouse. We pulled in and got fuel and had some lunch
here and on doing so, ran into Bruce and Jenni who were about to continue their
journey north. We, on the other hand,
had a choice due to Josh having no beer.
It was either go south for about 12kms to Tennant Creek for beer or wait
until we reach Katherine which is around 550kms north. Once again – Josh is the driver and I’m sure
you can guess what he chose. So – as we
were driving through our next destination (yes, Tennant Creek) it easily came
to our attention that this was a major aboriginal town. There seemed to be a lot more people in
general from when we were last here about 6 years ago. We found a butcher first and they had a
fantastic range of meat, made their own cold meats and even baked their own
fresh bread – winner! Next, I went into
the Food Barn and loaded up on groceries seeing as though it was going to be
quite a while before we were to next see something similar and Josh, in the
meantime, went to join the locals in line at the bottle shop that opened at
2pm. We finally made a move to begin our
journey right up the guts of the Northern Territory. We were tossing around some ideas on where to
stay and decided on ‘Banka Banka’ which was only about 100kms north from
Tennant Creek , but after the long drive cross country this morning, that
seemed like plenty. We were greatly
surprised when we pulled into Banka Banka Station, it was a big grassy oval not
far back off the road and there was still plenty of room to move. This used to be a cattle station during WWII
and it still has the original mudbrick homestead here on the site, but now they
run a kiosk and licensed bar from the old home.
There were plenty of people who had stopped here for the night. In fact, I would say there were at least 30
caravans / travellers who had stopped.
We paid $25 for the night which was cheap compared to some places we’ve
been staying. Admittedly it was not a
powered site, but it was grassy and we could connect our water so pretty darn
good. The kids even got a free ice-block
each upon arrival. We settled in and
decided to do a load of washing as again it was cheap at only $2 per load, half
the price of everywhere else. After an
early dinner tonight, there was a campfire being held down behind the bar and
fortunately we had a country music entertainer in the house. It was a freezing cold night and there were
so many people at the campfire that we weren’t in the front row nearest to the
fire. However, I rugged the kids up with
warm clothes, coats, slippers and a blanket over the top and they weren’t
feeling it too much. People started to
dwindle about half way through the “show” but we stayed strong and sat til the
end really enjoying our entertainment and the chat with others at the end. It wasn’t a late finish but by the end I
think people were glad to be retreating out of the chilling wind and back to
their beds. The prettiest part of tonight was the full moon dangling in the outback sky... check out our pics!
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