Katherine – Bitter Springs – Daly Waters (281kms)

As we drove south, we could not help but notice the termite mounds dressed in various costumes, and we wondered what kind of fools would waste their time on that. We decide to dub them Toasties (rhymes with Frosty/Frosties), the only song we could get to scan as we sand our Toasties song. Anyway, we invented the Toasties Termite (mound) Klan (no relationship to …), and enjoyed musing – as you do on a long road trip – on our new “invention”.

Arrived at Bitter Springs, which was anything but a bitter experience, the creek was warm and slightly sulphorous. Bruce managed to capture me in mid-flight as I fell out of a tree – great photo! Bruce and I floated down the creek, taking photographs – well I did – and testing out my Samsung Galaxy (yes, it is waterproof). We floated by ghostly paperbark trees, iridescent green weed, and a water monitor (a large goanna-like creature).

We headed south from Mataranka towards Daly Waters, and noticed “Fran” was offering her pies at Larrimah.  Pulled up, and leapt out of the car, to be confronted with a huge array of signs offering – well everything – with just one small sign saying “closed”. Fran and her pies are off our Xmas card list.

Arrived in Daly Waters where we had booked into a cabin.  We met Di & Mick Floyd, who I had met at the Eyre Bird Observatory last year, when I was travelling with Peter.  They are working at Kalala Station – well, Di is teaching – and Mick is “making himself useful”. Kalala is 1M acres, and I quickly computed about 1500 sq. miles (4000 sq.kms), so about 30×50 miles (50×80 km), and by no means the largest cattle station in the NT. We were amazed when we saw the hangar with around 2 planes and 4+ small helicopters for droving. Kalala recently changed hands for AUD58M! We joined Di and Mick for dinner at the Daly Waters pub, and had an excellent feed of fresh caught barramundi.  We also watched the rodeo including bucking broncos in the evening – scary stuff, and the round-up event in the afternoon! Kalala provided over 1400 cattle for this event.

Yeah, quite a day!

Postscript: And, yes, as we turned off for Daly Water we (I) joined the Toastie Termite Klan, and dressed a termite moundin an old iGoogle t-shirt. However, we did remove the t-shirt afterwards, and no termite mounds were damaged in the making of “this film”.

Embarrassing: I referred to Jo earlier when I meant Di .. sorry Di.