Duncan Road to the Norther Territory

We left Halls Creek leaving the Gt Northern Hwy behind, to take the Duncan Rd which goes up the eastern side of Lake Argyle. The first camp was only about 35k out from Halls Creek and a beautiful spot it was. Called Palm Springs, it was right on the side of the road, but next to a beautiful spring fed river with the spring just 30 metres up from where we parked. Stayed one night, then pushed on to the next camp, just 2 kilometres up the the rd, called Sawpit Gorge. Here we stayed 2 nights as we had to catch up with some washing. The river water was beautiful and clean and ideal for a big pile of washing. We headed off up the Duncan again, up through big station country. At one stage we ran into one of the stations mustering and the mob of cattle had to be 3 to 5000 strong and stretched for at least 3 kilometres where a helicopter was pushing up the back of the mob.

We carried on to our next camp on the Negri river. We stayed here one night and in the morning were approached by the station manager who as it turns out just wanted a chat. Well 2 or so hours later we were a full bottle on how the station was run and with lots of brilliant stories and the numbers of cattle they run on the station. His father ran the station for 25 years then he took over from his father and has run it for the past 12 years. His father got the cattle numbers up to 44,000 breeders before the droughts of the 90s reduced that number to just 11,000. He has slowly built it back up to 24,000 breeders where he says they can handle most seasons at that number. This year most of the cattle he will sell will be in fat and forward condition for the market instead of store cattle. So when he sends the 8 or 9 thousand head off this year to the market he reckons he’ll make a bob or two. The farmers out there will understand what I’m saying and I’ll let you do the arithmetic.

From there we went to where the Duncan meets the main highway, the Victorian highway, in the Northern Territory. Once we hit the highway we only had 30ks to our next camp so decided not to air up until we got there. Big mistake , 10 or so k in we got a blowout, a very interesting few seconds before we had it under control and pulled safely up on the side of the road. We fitted another tyre and went on to our camp and left the sorting out of the problem for the next day.

As we had not come through any check points into the Northern Territory, because we came through the back roads, we had to apply for a permit due to COVID-19, which as it turned out wasn’t a problem as we were coming from WA. The next problem was the border wasn’t open for travellers to get into WA from the Northern Territory so for next 700k to Katherine every free camp and caravan park was full waiting for the border to open which was happening in3 or 4 days time. We managed to find a spot in the overflow of the overflow which was a boat ramp on the Victoria river at Big Horse Creek. Turned out to be a beautiful place, we had internet, watched the crocs from the ramp in the afternoon cruising up the river and had some interesting people staying next to us with interesting stories. In 3 days we left for Katherine but that’s another story.もっと詳しく