Roper Bar to Katherine

Had a great night’s sleep, and when we awoke at 9am, we packed up and Theo noticed that the cross arms of the lifting mechanism of the roof at the front of the caravan have broken its mount and come loose. He has attempted to reattach them a couple of times, but this time one arm has sheared the bolt which meant that the roof was not closing as it should and had moved slightly sideways. This has been exacerbated by the corrugations and we believe the lack of engineering, which is a bit poor, as this is an off-road caravan.

We drove for about an hour over the last of the dust and corrugations, leaving the National Park, and then headed to Roper Bar. Roper Bar has fuel, which was the main reason for our detour. It has a camping ground and an airport and not much else and is surrounded by aboriginal communities.

The petrol bowser had a padlock on it and was $2.80 per lt. The Tall Guy (Aussie) running the store was very nice, but there was virtually nothing on the shelves in the store. He said he has been there 5 years and it was run down, and he is trying to build it up. Hmmm. Looked pretty run down to us still. We brought a frozen loaf of bread, then headed to the camping ground where Tall Guy told us we could get some water.

The water is from the Roper River but is fine for washing and showering. When we told him we were heading to Gove, Tall Guy said that he has a good mate who lives at Gove, Vincent Nathan, and if we need anything to ask him.

Roper River is the second largest river in Australia and there is a natural rock causeway that breaches the Roper allowing access to eastern Arnhem Land. The Roper River had a great deal of water traffic in the 1870’s as cattle stations sprang up across the Gulf Country. A police station was constructed in 1937, and the site now lies in ruins. We stopped and wandered through the ruins trying to imagine the harsh life back then.

Explorer Ludwig Leichhardt crossed the Roper River here in 1845, and the crossing was originally called ‘Leichhardts’ and later became known as Roper Bar. In 1871 a supply depot was established to provide supplies and materials during construction of the Overland Telegraph Line (OTL) between Adelaide and Darwin. There is a history of frontier policing, river flooding, and attacks on aboriginals when relations soured with both whites and unknown number of aboriginals being speared. Hard to imagine the harsh history today, looking at the beautiful river fringed with pandanus and fast flowing water flowing over the concrete causeway.

As tempting as it was, we paddled a short distance on the concrete causeway to cool off, keeping an eye out for crocs. The road on the other side of the causeway led to some restricted aboriginal communities.

There was a nice campsite high up but right on the river, and although it looked tempting, it was still early, and we need to keep moving towards Katherine.
We continued along the Savannah Way on the dirt and corrugations, which then became bitumen as we got closer to ‘civilization’ of Mataranka and Katherine. About 3pm, we found a nice camp for the night off the highway at the Mount Price rest stop.

It is well off the road and has a picnic shelter, bins and a water tank. As we were fully charged and had filled our water tanks at Roper Bar, I did a couple of loads of washing and gave the floor and shower a good wash while Theo did some caravan repairs.

Theo pumped up 6 of the 8 tyres (he had lowered the tyre pressure to 25 on the car and 30 on the van a week ago before we hit the dirt and corrugations), and then the ‘Kings’ portable air compressor overheated and shat itself. Luckily the caravan has a built-in compressor used for suspension, levelling and roof lifting, and he completed reinflating the final two tyres using the van’s compressor.

Looks like we will have to replace the compressor when we arrive in Katherine, as well as re-stocking the pantry and fridge. Our stocks are getting low, as the last major town we shopped in was Mareeba over a month ago.Read more