Day 117, Friday, 24 July 2009

Distance travelled – 116.7 km
Avg speed – 22.4 kph
Max speed – 39.3 kph

Renner Springs to Newcastle Waters

Last night we discovered that the Renner Springs Roadhouse bakes its own bread each day so we timed our departure this morning to correspond with the first loaf coming out of the oven. The opportunity of a lunch on the side of the road, under a tree, in the middle of nowhere with fresh crusty unsliced bread, salmon, tomato and cheese was too much to pass up. Another lunch on the road without vita-weet biscuits – hooray. (As you may have guessed, Mark is not keen on Vita Weets! – D)

We camped at the Newcastle Waters Rest Area that is about 3 km from Newcastle Waters, which is located at the junction of the three major stock routes – the Murranji, Barkly and North South. Until the 1980s stock were still being walked overland across the Territory and Newcastle Waters acted as a rest stop and gathering point for the drovers on these routes. Today cattle are moved by road train with about 170 head per truck and its 3 trailers. At Banka Banka we saw a photo with 15 road trains, (it might have been 22, we cannot remember) queued up at the Kidman yards waiting to take on the cattle. One of the truck drivers told us that there will never be another large cattle drive as such a drive could spread disease through areas that are now free of cattle diseases such as brucellosis.

We set up our tent in the car park and put our bikes and trailers around it in case someone came in late at night and tried to park on top of us. The six tyres have very bright reflective ribbon around them so we hoped that all the reflected light would alert any late arrivals to our existence.

As we ate dinner we were approached by a lady asking us if we were from Batemans Bay. Apparently there is a couple riding to Darwin from Batemans Bay and she had been asked by a friend to look out for them. We had heard through the grey nomad ‘bush telegraph’ that there is a couple in front of us and someone thought they were in their 60s. Perhaps this is the Batemans Bay couple.

About 20 caravans and motor homes had arrived by sunset and a small community established itself with guitars being played and people talking around the campfires. For once no generators – it was very pleasant.

Zoom into the map and use the 'Satellite' layer to see our new location.

Unknown flower

Unknown flower

Lake Woods, on the horizon, south of Elliott

Unknown flower

If the locals recommend a "short cut" do not listen to them!

Lunch

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