A nice little town about 250 klms east of the border with Western Australia and our last stopover in the Northern Territory. It is also just a few kilometres from a concrete boat ramp on the mighty Victoria River. We arrived here on Tuesday afternoon and began making plans for a fishing(?) trip the next day. Unfortunately, the water temperature has dropped considerably and consequently the Barramundi have gone into their little houses to hibernate - the water temp is now only 24 degrees!! We did catch one Barra but it was only just that much bigger than the lure we were using so he had to go back.
The landscapes around this area are pretty spectacular - huge escarpments, low lying flood plains and then the Victoria River which is the longest river in the Northern Territory and, in some places, three kilometres wide.
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| Victoria River and Escarpment |
Team Turtle must be slowing down as the only 'near disaster' we had was when we were casting lures into the banks of a tributary and we forgot to keep an eye on the sounder - yep, we nearly ran aground but this time onto a rockbar. Crunch, crunch and another crunch before The Deckie was able to lift the motors and prevent any further damage. We balanced precariously for a few minutes on this rockbar before the incoming tide swept us to safety. The Deckie believes it was a bit of karma, as The Captain had only moments beforehand been teasing a dozing crocodile with his lures!!!
Today (Thursday) was a bit of a rest day and so we took our time and did a little bit of local sightseeing. First off was up to a lookout on a nearby escarpment which overlooked the town and part of the river.
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| From the Top! |
Then it was onto another section of the river where the Department of Defence has built a "you beaut" bridge so that they can access their newly acquired property on the other side. The general public are not allowed to drive onto the bridge but can walk across it. There is some little men with big guns waiting behind the gate on the other side just in case you want to test them out! Apparently the land is supposed to be a firing range but rumour has it that it is going to be a very large Army Base with an airfield that will take some of the biggest planes in the world!
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| The Bridge to Where? |
Our next stop was the "Gregory Tree" - a very large Boab Tree that was part of the base camp of explorer Augustus Gregory. Gregory and his team were camped here for the best parts of 1856 and 1857 whilst they explored the northern parts of what is now the Northern Territory and Queensland. Obviously they were the vandals of their time as they used the tree to carve their initials and dates in the trunk. It was fortunate that they did otherwise there would have been very little in the area to remember that they were even there. The redevelopment of this memorial is joint venture with the local aborigines and NT Government so it has had a reasonable amount of financial support put into it - nice boardwalk, new fences, great signage and riverbank stabilisation work.
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| The Gregory Tree |
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| That close to the River |
Our last stop was back to the river where we found a nice little camp spot and rest area plus great views of the water. It was called 'Policeman Point Lookout' but we are not real sure whether the Policemen were looking for something in particular or just using the spot to take a break. We would go for taking the break as it was beautiful.
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| The Bend in the River |
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| Looking Downstream |
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