Greyhound Bus Journey

On yet another sunny and hot day, I checked out of MOM for the last time and left my holdall in the storeroom inside one of the dry lockers.
I bought three CDs at Vinnie's, the charity shop named after St. Vincent, in case the rental car had a CD player. Unfortunately, it didn't like most modern cars.
I sat reading a book and had some lunch at the Waterfront.
Having retrieved my holdall, I walked to the bus stops just off Smith Street and caught the 15.30 Greyhound Australia bus to Broome. Only 8 of the 48 seats were taken with no-one sitting next to me.
It took four hours down the Stuart Highway, following the Ghan railtrack in places, to reach Katherine where an Irishman was one of the six to leave the bus. He was an example of those who had to work in out-of-the-way places to show commitment to the country, rather than working in a big city, when applying for a full work visa. Applicants had to work 88 days in each of the first and second years and 176 days in the third year, and even then, there was no guarantee that the application would be successful.
Katherine was one of the three places where the bus stopped for an hour at a roadhouse to give the two drivers a break as well as allowing the passengers to buy some food. I bought fish and chips for dinner.
The drivers each drove for 4 hours at a time and then had a rest in a cubicle at the rear of the bus where was also a toilet for number ones, not number twos.
From Katherine, we drove 513km along the Victoria Highway, part of the Savannah Way, a loose network of coast-to-coast highways from Cairns in Queensland to Broome in Western Australia.
In the early hours of the morning, we stopped for an hour at Kununurra in Western Australia which was 90 minutes behind Northern Territory. The place was a bit spooky with a drunk hanging around, and my tea was passed through a hatch at the roadhouse.
Prior to Kununurra, we had stopped at the State border for officials to check that no fruit, vegetables, nuts or honey was being taken across the border; this was quarantine control as at the airports.
A few more passengers got on at Kununurra.En savoir plus