Day 17 - Borroloola to Lorella Springs
Unwittingly, we had a good tour of Borroloola this morning! I was a little
slow to get going this morning so it was after 10am before we left the caravan
park. A quick stop at the dump point (located at the airport - our second one!)
then we headed into town. We had planned to visit the supermarket, the tourist
information centre, the BP for fuel (because apparently there are 3 fuel
stations in Borroloola), and the pub for beer. After severe rationing the last
few days, we are officially out of beer!
Well, the supermarket was fine. Better stocked that I expected, and they
sold everything from TVs to cat food. I got most of what we wanted. We
continued driving through town but found ourselves in the Aboriginal end with
signs saying no through roads. A quick google of tourist information found it
was located in the government office building (aka Centrelink) but of course
that was closed today being a public holiday. Google also told me the BP is
actually the Gull service station so we drove back through town to there, only
to discover they were out of diesel! A chat with them suggested we drive to
Lorella via Cape Crawford and get fuel there but that would have added 100km to
the journey so she then said one of the other servos would be open at 2pm, and
the other would take payment at the pump. Oh, and she said the pub was closed
for the public holiday! So we drove back into town and by then the other servo
was open and also a supermarket attached to it so I got the other things we
needed and we filled up with diesel. So apart from beer, and after three drives
through town we were ready to leave - except that was nearly 11:30am by this
stage.
We headed out of town on the bitumen, which we enjoyed greatly after
yesterday's corrugations. 30km out of town we turned right onto a gravel road,
the alternate Savannah Way to Roper Bar. The road soon turned very rocky which
slowed us right down. We plodded along until we were hungry and pulled over,
although Greg suggested I choose a spot where we could chop some firewood, to
fill the wood bag for tonight's campfire. We did this and quickly topped up
with what Greg believes to be some kind of box.
The road seemed to be going forever and the going was still hard yakka.
After a while, we came across a grader sign and the road did get better after
this. By now, the afternoon was getting late and I was regretting my
dilly-dallying this morning. Eventually we turned off towards Lorella Springs,
and 29km down their "driveway", arrived just before 5:30pm.
Lorella Springs is a million hectare station with natural hot mineral
springs, gorges, swimming holes, lagoons - oh, and presumably cattle! They
opened up a campground as a side business and it is picturesquely set up around
the springs, with a quaint country bar (with bar stools made of jerry cans on
wheel rims). We got quickly set up and headed over to the bar for that longed
for beer, and got chatting to some of the young people working here, including
the Dutch girl who answered an ad on Gumtree, a motorcyclist who stopped here
on his travels to help out and the Kiwi helicopter pilot. They were offering
steaks for dinner so we took them up on that and enjoyed it very much. Country
folk are trusting souls - I filled in a form on "check in" and was
told that everything we wanted after that would go on a tab (tallied on the
back of the form). I suppose if you left withour paying they would beat you to
the front gate anyway. But Greg also suggested, "what if you never
leave?". So far, we haven't paid for anything but nor do we know how much
anything is! Back to the van for a campfire to warm up as the night has cooled
off significantly and soon to bed.
posted by Tracey @ 8:20 pm
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