The old dog with the historic limp crept across the van park in the early morning. She sought a like soul to be around as she had done the day before upon greeting us. Today she found a mid to late fifties backpacker in her Jucy Van, who had slid into the park late night, used the facilities, then moved out to the service station picnic tables before opening, so she didn’t have to pay. As they sat together, content in the early morning sun, it was difficult to figure who had washed their hair most recently. Peter’s dollar was on the dog, as it surely would have been caught in the last rain event in September 2019.
Underway reasonably early we punched south toward Elliott. Here Sue’s sister was working, however had a 10am appointment, so we had to be there in time to say hello, give her some Dunmarra vanilla slice, have coffee and let her go. Mission accomplished we fuelled a couple of hundred ks south at the Three Ways before flicking left onto the Barkly Highway. Notorious for its headwinds, today it was merciful. We skipped along without drama until Mr and Mrs Boxhead in their Hyundai Excel overtook us then decided within 200m to go to the wrong side of the road, head on towards a triple road train. We hammered the brakes; the truckie did his best to get his 60m long, 100-ton beast left whilst the Boxhead family ventured at their own pace back to the left and continued on oblivious to just how close they came to going home in a ‘box’.
The road was straight and straight with no other decerning features. Occasionally, we would capture a glimpse of two blades of grass having a punch up over a droplet of water, but other than that, nothing. We did note however, that the amazing distribution of bright purple rubbish bins we had seen across the Northern Territory continued. They were at every stop. Lines of them. Most lined with bags; awesome.
This realisation led to a discussion comparing states we had visited. NSW didn’t come into it as we scooted through early on with COVID chasing us. SA had great rest stops, a decent amount of dump points and an adequate number of roadside bins. WA, unbelievable rest stops. It had heaps of them, most complete with dump points and toilets, but try and find a rubbish bin. Consequently the black and gold state looks like a bush camp with rubbish strewn the length of any roadside. NT appeared to be the poor cousin with just the lovely purple bins in the budget.
We stopped at a Wikicamps recommended camp spot then continued on. It got four stars for a camp that was literally in the middle of a paddock. No trees, no anything. With the sun still belting down, it was stinking hot. We knew the flies would carry us away. We continued east.
At about that much past 4pm we pulled into a great roadside camp with a few trees and interesting bits. We had a yarn to the couple from Ballina who asked about our van as they had been eyeing one off for a while. We convinced them to buy.
Our afternoon conversation centred around the number of vans on the road, the brands and their good and bad attributes. When Peter asked the group if they had seen the fully camouflaged van behind the big Toyota coming toward them, G pounced and said “No”. We laughed a great long belly laugh as we all realised the paint job on the behemoth had done its job. It was indeed a huge van painted in bush camouflage colours. It looked hideous to those of us who could see it.
