Sunday, 27 May 2012

THE SAVANNAH WAY


We ended up doing the Savannah Way! We got to the turnoff & just couldn't resist it. We knew that if it got too bad on the first section, we could head back down to the highway via another way & we've had no problems; it's not as bad as we were told & we've had the best times. We've finally got away from the mozzies & it's cooled down enough that we can sit outside of an evening and cook dinner over an open fire. What more could you want than to be out in the bush sitting beside an open fire with a good glass of red?
And the stars are amazing!
This is what we've been waiting for; there's only so much highway you can drive, it's so much more interesting doing the dirt roads & river & creek crossings. None of the rivers have been very deep but a couple of them are really wide. The Gregory River would be getting on for a kilometre wide when it's full, but there's a concrete causeway to drive over. There aren't many rest areas & not many places to stop along the way so this is how we had coffee! On the road. There's not much traffic either!
The whole of the Savannah Way is very remote. There are just a few towns along the way; Borroloola is very small, Wollogorang used to be at the N.T./Qld border but it's closed now. Hells Gate Roadhouse (good name hey?) is next. It has an interesting history; back in the 1800's there was no law west of there so very few people were game to travel past there. It's just a cattle station, roadhouse & some dongers now.
The next town was Doomadjee which is a quite large aboriginal
settlement. We saw a heap of the local kids behind a really high wire fence & when we waved they started to throw rocks at us! Tonight we're in Burketown; the first part of the road into here wasn't too good! Burketown is the 'Barramundi Capital of Australia'. It's on the Albert River & it's only about 25k's from the Gulf of Carpentaria but there's no road up to the water worse luck. We had to come up here to get fuel so we decided to stay for the night. We'll have a bit of a look around the town in the morning before we head down to Lawn Hill National Park. We've been wanting to get to Lawn Hill for years so we're really looking forward to it.


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