Adventures of Phatty Boom Bah

06/08/2021

part 1

Well we finally escaped the (almost) event horizon that is the threshold of our house and made it to the back of beyond. We stayed the first night at Tammin Roadhouse, just a spot out the back with the trucks, but the food was good. Second night we spent at a beautiful wikicamp called Boondie rocks, near Coolgardie. Definitely worth a stay if you are near there, a great rock area and then quite a big dam filled by funnelling the water from the rock into the dam, and built when the goldfields relied on steam trains for transport. Most of the forest around there is regrowth as most of the trees were used as well. It poured with rain the whole night,(the dam was well and truly full and overflowing via its outlet) and looked like it was setting in the next day too so we stayed another night. Which was a good thing because where we were was sand, and the next site we had looked at was clay/gravel and we would have been thoroughly bogged if we’d stayed there. (Apparently caravans and RVs are getting bogged left, right and centre all over OZ due to a combination of rain, inexperience and the sheer numbers of us on the road) Only just managed not to get bogged on the road into a similar area to look at a regrowth forest near Coolgardie. BB** realised our peril and whipped Phatty into reverse and we made it out. It seems to be a bit of a tradition on our trips that we get bogged or close to it on the first or second night.
The Broad Arrow pub, not far past Kalgoorlie, was our next campsite - once again no amenities but they let you stay out the back. Fascinating old pub. The place was huge and really rocking in its day; large mine, population of about 8,000, hotels galore - and all that's left is this pub. Not even any ruins. BB managed to watch the Dockers win there, along with a fair few other happy punters, and then the Eagles take it out in the Menzies pub next day. While we were at the Broad Arrow word went round that there had been a big drug bust at the Ora Banda pub just up the road, and pretty much every cop in Kalgoorlie was there and therefore probably not going to bust anyone for DD at the Broad Arrow. So drink up!
From there we went to Menzies and then Lake Ballard. I grew up amongst lots of salt lakes, and they’re usually quite good to walk on, but not when they’re knee deep in mud! It was hilarious watching people walk out onto the lake all set for a long haul past the many statues (for some reason I had always thought the statues were huge and was a bit surprised to fine they are life-sized - but there is a lot of them) and then start to flounder, and quite often change their minds, turn around and come back. One family had two teenage girls with them who set off each wearing what I think were the cleanest, whitest sneakers I have ever seen. Not white for long that’s for sure. And when they came back, all madly scrubbing mud off their shoes, one of their party pulled out a really fancy set of bagpipes and started playing. Never a dull moment travelling. We decided we would wrap our feet in plastic bags to preserve our shoes, which looked very odd but worked reasonably well. We didn’t do the whole walk though. After a while we had collected a couple of kilos of mud on our plastic coated feet and it was just too arduous - first of all walking like you’d shat yourself so you didn’t slip over and then hauling your feet out step by step. Pretty funny watching each other though.
Next night was at Gwalia, a well preserved old mining town full of tin shantys. The mine is still working after being closed for a while, but very few people live there anymore. We had a cappuccino and a delicious piece of lemon meringue pie on the verandah of the very fancy house - especially for it’s time and especially compared to the abject poverty the miners lived in - that Herbert Hoover lived in when he managed the mine for a short time before coming somewhat up in the world to be the President of the USA.
Laverton was our next stop - possibly - might have lost track by now. Nice campsite and people. Met a group who had just done the Gunbarrel Highway and limped in with many and various amounts of damage to their vehicles. Remarkable how many crazy people - otherwise normal but doing crazy things - are out there in the outback bumping and bouncing along our wild outback roads with their ten inch high corrugations, sneaky washouts and potholes cleverly camouflaged by bulldust. The campsite had a really great fire pit which was very much needed as, like just about everywhere in southern Oz apparently, it was freezing! We met a bloke there who, like many of the campers was there to prospect for gold. Said he always had a fire if it was cold, wherever he was. And that he always had baked potatoes in the fire for dinner. So wherever he went he would wrap up enough spuds in foil to for everyone to have one every night - sometimes he would be wrapping 70 odd potatoes at a time!
And then we were finally on the Great Central Road. A wide, pretty straight road, and in good condition generally. Surrounded by MMMBN. Which stands for Miles and miles and miles of bloody nothing! I feel bad saying that, and it isn’t true as there’s all sorts of things once you get off the road - but it keeps coming into my mind as we travel these vast expanses of scrub through central Australia. We hadn’t gone far when we came across a couple of young aboriginal women with a few kids who had a flat tyre. A very flat tyre. BB tried his new you-beaut pump on it but that tyre was flat. Never going to blow up, ever again. So was their spare. Unfortunately it was a tubed tyre so he couldn’t fix the puncture either as our kit is for untubed tyres. Anyway they said their friends knew they were in trouble, and we also went into one of the nearby Aboriginal communities to make sure someone else knew to come and help them. We found an older woman who seemed like a bit of a matriarch - and she immediately said that they shouldn’t be out there without spare tyres and all the safety gear, and they knew that. Which was trueI’m sure but I suspect the girls just wanted a day out shopping in Laverton and took a bit of a gamble. So we were a bit worried we had got them into trouble. Anyway, good lesson, just like we all learnt - well me anyway - the hard way.
We got a bit lost trying to get out of Cosmo Newbury which was the community we went to to help the girls, ended up at the rubbish tip, and saw our very first genuine Junkyard Dog. He was running along in front of us, heading very determinedly for the tip, looking back at us as though we might get there first and steal his snack, and was straight into a bag of garbage when he got there, tearing it up for his very own junk food fix. (Actually he was a bit too sleek and well fed and well cared for to be a real junkyard dog, but we called him that anyway)
We continued on and eventually found a wikicamp to camp in that night, a bit far from the road but really nice and with a fire pit. The sun was heading down and I had brought along a bottle of bubbly to celebrate our finally being on the Great Central Road, and it was chilling nicely in the fridge. We go to get in and set up - and we can’t open the door to the back of Phatty!!! Middle of bloody nowhere. Never happened before. Everything we need - warmth, food, DRINK - all in the back of Phatty. Can’t get in.
Well, as you know I travel with my very own personal MacGuyver, AKA BB, so I wasn’t really too concerned. At first. But the sun kept going down, it was getting darker and darker, colder and colder, and BB still wasn’t any closer to getting in. Which meant we would have had to go back to the road, drive in the dark and somehow find somewhere to stay on that long, lonely road. All the official places close at about 3pm for camping. Anyway, after much jimmying, manipulating and blueing of the air he somehow managed to get his whole hand into the bottom part of the door, and jiggled stuff about until he fixed it. Hooray and thank God for that! Of course, as it turned out it was my fault as I had separated the fly screen part of the door from the other part and not put them back together correctly. But - all good, just in time for a beautiful sunset and some nice cold bubbles. Cranked up some classic Neil Young and had a great night.
Next campsite was Warburton. Where we, along with all the other campers, were locked inside a compound surrounded by a very high fence topped with barbed wire. I kid you not! The problem was apparently theft, but it was all fine while we were there. It seemed somehow kind of ironic that we were locked up while the owners of the land roamed free outside.
We went on to to just before Docker River. Saw one camel and a few horses but that was it. Found a lovely campsite overlooking a range of hills. It was very picturesque, and we set up so we would see the sunset reflected on the hills. The sunsets are so beautiful, and have a sort of second wind up here, so if you watch long enough they develop and get better and better as you watch. Then we sit outside and compete with each other for how many shooting stars we can see. Eight the other night.
Anyway, I am wandering around, looking for a good place to sit for the best view - as I am want to do - when I hear a loud bang and then a thud. I turn around and see my 65 year old, 6 foot tall husband rolling across the ground like some sort of stunt man in a movie! He fell off the deathtrap stairs that Phatty has while bringing his bike out, somehow managed to roll as he landed and was pretty much unhurt. He then went off and collected firewood, which he cut up into smaller, round logs and stacked by the fire. All the while scoffing at my protestations that he should rest a bit and recover from the shock of falling a metre and a half to the ground.
So it gets quite dark, and I may have had a wine or two, and I am still quietly chuckling about my husband the unexpected stuntman, when I suddenly find myself on the ground. No chance of mitigating my fall - I have gone from being vertical to horizontal so fast it takes me a while to figure out what happened. (Can’t imagine what it must have felt like coming off a horse Liz!!) And I have somehow landed on my side, with my fist directly under my ribs. And while the rest of my body is stunned and still trying to work out what the hell just happened, my ribs are really sore. Bu**er! I refuse to believe it is anything serious at this stage, unable face the thought of the rest of my holiday with a busted rib. All the fault, of course, of BB’s bloody pile of logs! One of which, I finally figure out, is what took me out.
So we continue on to Uluru from there, but I will finish here for the time being, and continue this saga soon.
Love to all, Adele

** (Brycey Baby - which is what I call him because, as you may recall if you have read any of these sagas before, for some reason he objected to being called Brycey Fartblaster. I would call him MBM - My Beautiful Man, which is true, but it’s already hard enough to find a hat big enough for his head - seriously)

11/07/2021

Camped outside Kalgoorlie then a vist to Lake Ballard

23/09/2019

25/12/2018

A nice visit at Grant Burge cellar door on Xmas eve on our way through the Barossa.

25/10/2018

On the beach at Mission Beach. Loving FNQ.

11/09/2018

Normanton’s purple pub

21/08/2018

Oodnandatta to Gregory .... as told by Adele

Well, we followed the old Ghan railway alongside the Oodnadatta track, lots of old tracks and bridges and at one place, Coward Springs, a little hot tub bubbling with spring water which turned into a mini wetlands complete with brolgas, right in the middle of the driest place you could imagine. And now, as we head north and east, we are following the new Ghan for a while as well.
As you probably know, I am always teasing BB about losing stuff - his hands are almost constantly doing the TSW&W dance across his person. (Testicles, Spectacles; Wallet and Watch/Keys/Phone. Though he doesn’t seem to have much problem with finding the first one.) Well, this time, much as it pains me to admit it, I lost something. My handbag in fact, with purse, cards, glasses etc in it. And, not doing things by halves, I didn’t just leave it at the petrol station or the store, oh no, I left it 100 bloody kilometres away! So while I was seeing the Doctor in Alice Springs as my eye was playing up - all good - BB had to drive an extra 200 ks to Ross River and back to retrieve it. He was not amused. I have not dared to laugh at his misplacing things since. 😂
Fast forward to a week later and we are in Cloncurry - which is coincidentally crammed full of caravans and campers coming from the Mt Isa rodeo. I go to get into Phatty and suddenly think ‘where is my handbag?’ I run back into the shop we were in, full of recrimination and self chastisement - haven’t left my bag anywhere for as long as I can remember. What the hell is going on? I race into the shop and tell the lady there I think I have left my handbag there. (We had been in the shop looking at hats for BB and this lady had been a great help and taught us more about hats in ten minutes than we had ever known. We now understand why BB has about four very expensive hats sitting on our hatrack, unworn. Apparently they can shrink!) Anyway I am hustling in to where I think I have left my bag and this lady says ‘Did you say you are looking for your handbag?’ ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Well…. it’s hanging on your arm,’ she says. 🙄😝 Well, every woman in the shop cracks up and says something along the lines of ‘Thank God somebody else does stuff like that!’ I explain my 100 ks experience so they don’t think I’m completely insane, and go on my way.
After Uluru and Kata Tjuta we went on to Kings Canyon. I had come down with some dreaded lurgy by then, and BB was not into another long trek after the ten ks we did at Uluru, but we had some short walks which were lovely. We continued on to Alice Springs, and then instead of doing the West McDonalds decided to do the east instead. They were quite spectacular, and not at all crowded like the west. We stayed at a beautiful campsite there and walked through a canyon which reminded me of Karijini - though not as beautiful. (Not many places are) From there we went to Ross River, a station there which I would like to revisit someday as it had a great feel and lots of interesting stuff around. I will endeavour not to leave my handbag there next time though. Onward and northward to the Devil’s Marbles, which I had always wanted to see. They were quite different to what I had expected, scattered over a large area and not all in one place as I had thought, but did not disappoint. Fascinating history both geographically (there were rocks which looked like a giant had come along with a chainsaw and just sliced them in half) and a meeting place for aboriginal tribes. A really nice feel to the place. Off through Tennant Creek from there and then turned right onto the Barkly highway. We stayed at the Barkly Roadhouse which had a bar, and it was good to see local aboriginal people sharing the bar with all us whiteys and having a chat. I also enjoyed listening to them talking in their language, but they talk very fast and I sometimes couldn’t keep up with them when they spoke english.
And now here we are in Queensland, ay? Listening to the CB radio is sometimes hilarious - one bloke went on for ages about the fact that his wife using the dryer for the washing. ‘Why couldn’t she hang it out on the line, ay? Not like it’s gunna rain, ay?' (Funny thing, Canadians often say ‘ay’ after sentences too.)
Unfortunately we got into Mt Isa too late to catch their 60th year anniversary rodeo. We called my friend Deb, (who was in Flores and was understandably feeling a bit nervous), and she offered to put us in touch with some friends and replies there. (thanks Deb) But we had planned to go to Lawn Hill, so continued on. The country around Mt Isa was really pretty. I had always imagined it to be flat, but it is quite high up and in the middle of a range of rugged, salmon coloured hills, a bit like the Pilbara area, but rockier. (In fact I think the trip north from Port Augusta is quite similar in types of country and plants and animals to the trip north in WA.) We free camped - we mostly free camp - at a man-made lake about fifty ks out of Mt Isa, which was a beautiful campsite. And we are back in the land of budgerigars. I continue to be amazed at their aerial ballet, which appears to be choreographed such is the precision of their flight, hundreds of them sweeping across the sky, joining together and then peeling apart in perfect halves to swoop off somewhere else. And they are such teases. Ratbaggery budgie bastards, posing in perfect budgerigar-squadron unison, green bellies flashing in the sun right next to Phatty, flying past three times - until I get my camera out - and then pffft….gone!
On we go, through Cloncurry, and on to my grove. Seriously! Adel’s Grove. By this time BB had my dreaded lurgy, which I must have mutated as he got it much worse that me, so we stayed there three nights. It is a wonderful sylvan grove of ghost gums, bloodwoods and Livinstonia palms, right next to the Lawn Hill Creek which is turquoise-green and full of purple-blue water lilies (Adele’s Grove indeed) and there are fresh water crocs sunbathing on the sides. (It is hilarious as this looks like a river, is full of water - spring fed - and is called a creek, and yet we have crossed so many creeks that are called rivers and have no water in them at all.)
From there we went to Lawn Hill itself - Boodjamulla - which is one of the most exquisite places I have ever been to. We canoed both the lower and upper gorges, 6 ks in all and you have to portage from the lower to the upper past the waterfall. It is a long, sienna-red-rocked gorge, steep sided and filled with waterlily encrusted turquoise-green water. Lush greenery lavishly garnishes the edges, red dragonflies hover and dart, there are lots of fish, many eagles and other birds and we saw a couple of turtles amidst the long lily stems. One woman saw an eagle swoop right down in front of her and catch a fish. The highlight was a wonderful swim at the waterfall, the water was refreshing but not cold and due to it's colour, was like swimming in some lovely freshwater sea.
Invigorated by this wonderful place, we went back to Gregory Downs, which we had gone through on the way to Adel’s Grove, and managed to camp at the right place this time. We had been told to camp on the Gregory River bed but had forgotten on the way through. The river bed was quite wide and there was still some water flowing. It, too, was a lovely, clear, blueish green and flowing quite fast, and you could get in at one point and float down as far as you wanted and then walk back and do it again. It would have helped to have an old inflated tyre inner tube or something that floated, but we didn’t, so I just floated down myself, which was fantastic. There was some trepidation that there might be a large and jagged rock lurking somewhere along the way, threatening my nefarious bits, but the rocks were well rounded and all was well.
Whilst at Adel’s Grove we found out that there was going to be a rodeo at Gregory Downs that weekend. It was called the Gulf Country Frontier Days Festival, and was organised by the indigenous people of the area. Indeed when we got to the river, which was in walking distance of the event, there were loads of indigenous people camping there. We had often discussed seeing a rodeo, and had heard that the smaller ones were better sometimes, so off we went.
It was really good. Front seats at everything, which you would normally never get. Early afternoon was the rodeo events - bull and bronco riding. I have to say, I’m glad I finally went, but it will probably be my first and last rodeo. It was hair raising to watch these young fellas, mostly aboriginal, get on large bulls, hang on for dear life for as long as they could, and then be tossed off like bits of flotsam. The bulls - thoroughly and justifiably pi**ed off because someone had tied up their back end right near their balls in order to cause said pi**ed offedness - would almost always turn around and go them when they were on the ground. All you could see was this Godawful mess of legs and arms and hooves and horns for a moment until the clowns - probably the true heroes of the day - managed to extract the fallen rider and lure the bull to attacking them instead! Once all this was accomplished, the humans would leave the field and the bull would buck his legs a bit more and then stand there looking around as if to say 'where the hell am I, who the hell are all these people and where are those other blokes whose butts I’d like to keep kicking?’ Then they would send in a judas bull (my term) in to keep him company, settle him down and show him the way out. Some of the contestants looked decidedly uncomfortable as they hightailed it over the fence after they had picked themselves up off the ground. The bucking bronco riding did not look quite so dangerous, but they still fall right next to and often under kicking hooves.
Interesting, as I was thinking as I watched all this that those matadors in Spain were a bunch of pu***es compared to these riders, and then a woman who was sitting next to me made almost exactly that comment. They had just been to Spain, and while some matadors do get killed, at least here we don’t stab or kill or injure the bulls, and they live to fight another day.
One of the events there was ceremonial dancing, and they had dancers from NZ, Torres straights, Canada and the US. They had a really special ceremonial dance ground set up with fires and trees and a giant tent with a teepee as a centrepiece, all lit up with tiny light chains. Unfortunately we missed all of that dancing, but what we did see, in that space, was a great dance by two native Cree indians from - you guessed it - Canada! Edmonton in fact. We would never have got so close though, if we had seen it in Canada. As BB said, how ironic that here we were, about as outback Australia as you can get, and we are expecting aboriginal dancers and get Canadian ones instead.
While it was all good, the most amazing thing about it all was the entertainment. We saw Archie Roach, again front row seats (It cost us $15 for me and $40 for Bryce for all of this) and the other bands were unknown to us but really, really good. Yothu Yindi was on the next night, but we didn’t end up staying, and they are not the original anymore anyway. But the line up for the whole weekend was just amazing. All we could think of was we wished we could teleport all our friends and rellies here for the weekend!
Well, once again I have rambled on long enough, and it is time to say good-bye. Hope everyone is well and enjoying your life or, as I see from Facebook, your travels! It seems many of you are travelling yourselves, all over the world.
Love Adele

21/08/2018

Nice paddle up Lawn Hill Creek

11/08/2018

Check out the model A Ford that camped next to us.

10/08/2018

Stopped at the Devils Marbles before turning left towards Queensland.