Roper Bar and one very muddy car

Overnight we had some light rain at Butterfly Spring.  It was mildly annoying packing up a damp tent, but I was very happy to be getting away from the incessant annoyance of the mosquitoes and other insects.  We duly loaded up the car and trailer and headed on down the red dirt road towards Roper Bar.  As we were travelling along we passed Limmen Bight River and noticed that far from having a little light rain over night, they had had ALOT of rain.  So much that it had turned the road to an absolute quagmire.  Many of the caravaners and boaters were stranded and unable to traverse the road.  We gave it a try.  The red dirt is amazing stuff when it gets wet.  Of course during the wet season this area would be completely unpassable and would regularly get isolated for months at a time. That's because when this red dust turns to mud it becomes incredibly sticky.  It just builds up and up on the wheels and in the wheel arches and eventually effectively prevents the wheels from turning at all. Before that there is absolutely no traction and driving suddenly become extremely hair raising.

At many sections along the road we were progressing sideways down the road, praying that no one was heading in the opposite direction.  It took all of Steve's skills as a driver and good luck to stay on the road and not end up in a watery ditch by the side.  Obviously Steve and I grasped the severity of the situation and were a little tense during the whole trip, worried about what we would do if we became stranded.  Meanwhile, the children in the back were pretty much oblivious.  To them it was just another bumpy road.  Sarah looked up from her book at one point as we were sliding sideways down the road with our trailer threatening to overtake us, when she said "Dad, what are you doing?"  She said it in a tone of voice that suggested that she thought dad was just mucking around and having some thrills.  In actual fact I think Steve was gripping the steering wheel with white knuckled hands and quietly shitting himself.  He replied to Sarah's enquiry through gritted teeth, "trying to keep the car on the road".

We stopped at Roper Bar having survived the worst of the road and indulged in a hamburger, refuelled the car, and Steve took to the mud in the wheel arches with a shovel.  We left great clumps of red mud behind as we continued our journey to Mataranka.  The car still looked like it had been through a mud tornado, covered from top to bottom in red mud.  It was funny at the intersection of the Stuart Highway we saw another young family who we had made friends with at Lawn Hill.  They had chosen a different, more sedate route to travel to Mataranka.  They took one look at us and recognised the car and assessed the muddy state that we were in and their mouths were agog.  Amazing what a transformation can happen in just a few short days in the outback.

We arrived in Mataranka and set up camp at 12 mile in the National Park.  The kindly ranger allowed us to use the fire hoses to wash our car, so we were able to return it to some semblance of respectability.  We found a good spot in camp next to another family who had 2 boys, Sarah and Evan's age.  We would later meet up with this family again in Darwin.