And back to the trip, next stop Darwin-Personal dramas part 1

Putting on a brave face

 It's been a while since I have written about our Australian Odyssey.  Maybe that is because this is  where things turn a little unpleasant for a while.  Two major really horrible things happened to me in Darwin that had nothing to do with Darwin as a place, it just transpired that we happened to be in Darwin while they took place.  This meant that we were holed up in Darwin for quite a long while, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, as we really liked Darwin.  It's layout was reminiscent of Canberra, where Steve and I both were born and grew up. Even down to their hospital, which was almost a carbon of Woden Valley Hospital.

My Diary entry for 25/5/07 is thus:

Booked in  for a doctor's appointment on Tuesday at 9am.  I am not a happy chicky, with a bit of an intestinal tummy bug that had me cramping in pain tonight.  My stools are loose.
( I think I knew the writing was on the wall about losing the baby, but judging from that sentence, I just wasn't ready to face it yet).
Booked in at Lee Point Resort for a week.  May stay longer depending on my medical treatment.
Very hot and humid - stifling, in fact.
Bring on the dry season - where is it?
Mosquitoes and sandflies are giving me a hammering too.
We have got a good pool here - the kids love it.
There is a huge shopping centre here at Casuarina. There are masses of shops - about a dozen just doing mobile phones!

The following day I recorded that I had started to just drink clear fluids in an effort to try and let the bug run its course.  Unfortunately by the day after that I had started to bleed -oh dear.
By the 28th I recorded that the bleeding had increased, though there was no pain.
We went to the World War II tunnels, I found it interesting but claustrophobic.  By the end I had a distinct pain in the left hand side of my abdomen.

The 29th was Tuesday and the day of my doctor's appointment. I noted that I was still bleeding and it was heavier.
The doctor sent me off for blood tests to check pregnancy hormone levels.  I distinctly remember the unease with which the doctor met my proclamation that I thought I was miscarrying.  I was in tears and barely holding it together, she looked at me as if I was a leper.  I don't think that doctors get very good training in dealing with these highly emotional situations.  They resort to professional practicalities of ordering tests and vague advice about fluids and rest.  But the whole thing makes them extremely uncomfortable, where as probably the most useful skill they could employ at a time like this would be compassion and empathy.  I would hate to see the reaction of the doctor who has to deliver the news that I am going to die.  That must be extremely difficult.
I remember sitting in the doctor's office feeling alone and isolated, like I was an oddity at a freak show, admitting that I was miscarrying.  She looked at me like I was strange and she looked very uncomfortable.  I would have thought a fellow female would have been more empathetic, but to her it was routine, follow the book, order the tests and move the patient on out.

So this was it, there was no stopping it.  There was a sense that the cat was out of the bag and now I just had to follow it through to its grizzly end.  Steve managed to book me a cabin at the resort which gave me a break from the humidity.  I was able to lay in a comfortable bed in air conditioning and rest.
Unfortunately I started to experience pretty constant period pains all day and night.  My bowels, however seemed to have returned to normal.  I remember weeping the night away, knowing that I was losing my baby and there was absolutely nothing that I could do to stop it.  While in the cabin I was watching TV and the ABC had a show on called the Choir of Hard Knocks.  It was about some teenagers from difficult backgrounds who were formed into a choir and eventually performed.  The song that they were learning was Hallelujah.  They sang it over and over and it made me cry over and over.  Now that song has very strong and sad memories for me, it always brings a tear to my eye.

On the 30th I had another  blood test to check if pregnancy hormones were rising or falling compared to yesterday's levels. The levels were falling!  I had an ultrasound which showed that there was nothing there.  Or as the medical profession callously call it, there was no product there.  Product.  Hmmm to me it was a baby, not product.  Again, they just seem completely incapable of being even slightly empathetic at this very emotionally painful time.

I wrote in my diary: I am still bleeding like mad. (No solids yet). It is all very conclusive that our baby has miscarried.

On the 31st I wrote: A big chunk was expelled this morning.  Bleeding is till heavy. I am wondering why that chunk did show up on the ultrasound.  Maybe it had already left the uterus. or maybe the ultrasounds aren't so good after all. Period pains have eased, hopefully bleeding will too!
....Bought mobile phone with Optus today and some books to read.
Went to fish feeding @ Aquascene.  Harry loved dumping loads of bread into the water. Wild fish came in @ high tide expecting to be fed.
Went to see Mindil Markets - very busy! Ate dinner there, lots of food stalls. Some interesting music to listen to, but all in all just another market. Quite tired by the time I got home. 
Another chunk expelled. Interesting I couldn't make out a baby shape. Still bleeding heaps.

Whilst all this drama was going on there was more drama of a different nature happening in the background.  But that is a topic for the next blog......
Meanwhile, Evan's diary entry was as follows:
Darwin
At Darwin we're staying at Lee point reserve and everybody else is staying there too.
The pool is nice.
And the Darwin library is good because you can become temperairy (sic) members and borrow books while you are staying. And they have playstaitoin (sic) games that you can play.
Oil Tunnels
At the oil tunnels you got a bit of the idea of how they were built and what they're used for.
And then you get a look in the tunnels.
The tunnels are dark, damp and the floor is covered with a thin layer of water.
I liked the oil tunnels.
Fish Feeding
At the Darwin fish feeding they let you have lots of bread from the bucket and throw them in the water so that the fish could eat it.
The lady at the front told [us] which fish were which.
And there was a photo taking platform.
Fish feeding was great!

Litchfield National Park

After a last lingering swim at Douglas Daly Hot Spring we peeled ourselves away and travelled to Litchfield.  I don't remember Robin falls, but it is on the way to Litchfield and we have a picture of Harry and Steve there, so I am guessing we stopped there, maybe only Harry and Steve walked up to the falls.

Robin Falls

In Litchfield we set up camp at Florence Falls.  The weather was not as hot here as at Douglas Daly.

On the 23rd of May we looked at Florence Falls from the lookout. We walked the long way to the lower plunge pool through dry Savannah and monsoon rain forests.
We drove to Tolmer Falls and Wangi (pronounced Wong guy).
Litchfield is a very picturesque park, but heaps of tourists too.
We saw a slide show about the park tonite.

Florence Falls, upper and lower

24/5/07

Went on a tour of the magnetic termite mounds and learnt lots of interesting things from the ranger.
Spent the afternoon lounging around the top swimming area above Florence Falls. Steve walked to Buley.  I would have gone too, but I had to supervise the kids playing in the water.

It's not written in the diary, but my tummy started to play up while I was camped here.  Glad that there was a toilet close by as I felt that I had a tummy bug.

Evan wrote about Litchfield too...
I didn't like Litchfield, it had too much that was closed. 
But I suppose the things that were open were all right, like the water holes.  But people were saying you have just got to go there.
But you just got to not go there.
The opposite.

There was a lot of areas in Litchfield that were still closed after the floods.  This made it a little disappointing, particularly as so many people raved about how good the park was.  Many people told us that Litchfield was the pick over it and Kakadu.  As we were to later find out, we far preferred Kakadu to Litchfield.

Wangi Falls

Douglas Daly Hot Springs

We left Edith Falls and continued onto Douglas Daly Hot Springs to set up camp again.

While in Edith Falls I did a pregnancy test that I had bought in Katherine to confirm what I already suspected.  Yes I was indeed pregnant! I was slightly excited, but also a bit concerned as it wasn't feeling like the others.  I had a funny feeling in my guts, with the others I didn't particularly have any form of feeling. Unfortunately the feeling was going to get worse, as somewhere along the way I picked up a tummy bug.  I suspect that it may have been from Douglas Daly as we floated and floated in there all day, blissfully happy in the warm temperatures, but also sharing the pool with many others.
In my diary I wrote that [it was an] amazing place. Two streams of water converge into a swimming pool. One stream is hot - 60 degrees Celsius, almost too hot to stand.  The other is a river and cold.  The hot and cold mix together, the pool alternates swirls of hot and cold water.  It is like a hot bath that never goes cold.  The trick is to find the best spot in the pool that suits the temperature that you like your bath to be.
The following day I wrote: [we] checked out downstream but it is not as nice as where we are camped.  Spent most of the day soaking in the pool- it is very addictive and very hard to coax yourself out.

Evan's diary entry is pretty cool:

Douglas Daly (Hot Springs)

Today we're at Douglas Daly Springs. At Douglas Springs we went in where the Douglas River joins onto the spring and it was the best spot in the Northern Territory, full stop. I couldn't get out until I was hungry. 
We went there every time we had a chance.
You just gotta check it out.

I responded to this diary entry by writing: If we didn't get hungry we would probably still be there!

Edith Falls

After collecting our mail from Katherine post office and doing a spot of shopping, we drove onto Edith Falls and set up camp on a beautiful green grassy lawn. The camper trailers and motorhomes were restricted to the gravel car park area.  But as we had a tent we were able to park our car close by and set our tent up on the grass. Very lovely.
It was so hot that we went for a swim in our clothes at about 5.50pm after we had finished setting up camp.

The following day we walked to the top of the falls and explored the rocks.  We had a swim.  Then after lunch we had another swim in the bottom pool.
That night the kids all got together with shovels and the like for a cane toad muster.  Many of the kids were from Darwin, so were used to this sort of thing.  They roamed the camping area looking for loitering cane toads and bopped them on the head.  Our kids found the sanctioned gratuitous violence against a living creature quite fun, though they were somewhat more conservative in their approach compared to the other kids.

Evan's diary entry is as follows:

Edith Falls

First at Edith Falls we looked at the lower swimming hole, but it was just so beautiful we couldn't stop ourselves, so we went in with our clothes on.
Edith Falls was a good place to swim.

Mataranka

I really need to continue blogging the round Australia trip.  The last time I added a diary entry from the trip was in December. At that time we had made it as far as Mataranka and set about washing the mud from our car after the hell raising drive through Limmen Bight National Park.

The diary entry from 15/5/07 records:
....Bought heaps of cleaning solutions for both car and clothes.  Our clothes have stains that just wont come out.
Kids had a ball washing the filthy car with the NP hose.  It has been transformed - unfortunately, they also managed to saturate the carpet....

Mataranka is located at a hot spring and the main attraction are the beautiful thermal pools. They are a cozy 34 degrees Celsius and a major draw card for tourists. Mataranka was also the fabled land from the Story We of the Never Never by Miles Franklin.  At the homestead resort they play the movie of We of the Never Never on a continuous loop.  We sat down at one point to watch it.  I hadn't seen it for about 20 years, so it was interesting to reacquaint myself with this Aussie classic. As I like to compare book with film, I also purchased the book while I was there and proceeded to read it during my trip. The most notable difference between the book and the film was the depiction of the main (female) character.  In the movie she is depicted as a silly female, whereas the book depicts her as a much stronger character who endured the hardships well and was resourceful and clever.

We stayed in Mataranka for 3 days and visted the thermal pools and had a swim in each of them. Bitter Springs was a thermal pool with natural banks.  We were able to float down it in the current.  The main thermal pool at the homestead had constructed sides and steps to facilitate the large numbers of tourists enjoying its pleasures.

We left on the eighteenth and headed to Edith falls, via Katherine.

Evan has three diary entries for Mataranka.

Mataranka Thermal Pool

The down stream you went the shallower it gets.
I didn't think it was hot, but it wasn't cold either, it was just a bit warmer than the outside temperature.

I commented: It was a lovely temperature, I could have stayed in all day.

Mataranka Bitter Springs

Today we're at Bitter Springs.  It is quite deep and the normal heat.
I liked it when we went all the way following the current to the bridge and climbed up the ladder and walked back to the car.

I commented: The current flowed quite fast in the deep parts.  I was worried that I wouldn't be ale to get out in time once we reached the bridge!

Mataranka Cane Toad Hunting

Tonight I have gone cane toad hunting. I didn't really know what was going to happen to the cane toads until morning.
But........they weren't there. Do you know where they went?

I commented: Maybe they weren't dead after all - just stunned.

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.

Lost Cities

We only spent the one night at Borroloola before we packed up camp and headed to Cape Crawford.  We stopped along the way at a nature reserve to go on a walk and have a look at these fabled lost cities.  They were huge sandstone formations that looked very impressive.  They totally dwarfed us as we walked through them.  They were formed by sediment build up and compaction when the area was a sea many millions of years ago.

We fuelled up the car at Cape Crawford, Heartbreak Hotel.  Another roadhouse that was the stuff of legend, but still there was no alcohol to be had here either.

We got back on the Savannah Way and bounced our way through Limmen National Park (proposed) to Butterfly Springs.  It has a lovely waterfall, but loads and loads of mosquitoes.  It's a freeby, though, so we decided to camp 2 nights here.

Sunday saw us celebrate mothers' day with masses of mosquitoes that were, quite frankly, driving us crazy.  Such a shame for such a beautiful spot.  The car got a flat tyre here too.  We are quite aways from civilisation and being able to get it fixed quite yet.

We visited the Southern Lost City, another amazing place. We tried to get into the western Lost City but the road was too rough.  We needed to have started earlier in the day to make it all the way as the going was so slow.

Evan's Diary Entry:

Lost City

Today we're at the lost city.

When we were at the lost city I went ahead and got a big idea for my story as well as lots of little ideas for my story.

When I finished the bush walk I waited about 2 minutes before mum came back.

Then we waited 10 more minutes before Sarah came back.

The another 5 minutes for dad and Harry.

The southern lost city was quiet and it was very lost too.

Culture shock, Devil's Gate and the missing Aussie aerial

The time came to leave Lawn Hill, so we packed up our Adel's Grove campsite and got onto the Savannah Way. We stopped at Doomadgee, an Aboriginal settlement, for lunch and supplies.  Driving into there we felt very white, because the whole population was decidedly black.  Well, almost.  On closer inspection we discovered to our surprise that a few key positions in the town were occupied by whites.  The bakery and the school to name two.
Speaking of the bakery, in order to get brown bread there we had to order with a week's notice and pay extra.  White bread was, however, available in abundance.  Also in the supermarket the size of the sugar bags were unbelievable.  Much, much larger than I have ever seen before.  I think that right there are two reasons why indigenous people in this country have higher rates of diabetes than the rest of the population.  Add to that the difficulty of getting fresh food in those remote communities and the prevalence of soft drinks (which would be very popular in such a hot dry climate).

It was while we were inside the supermarket shopping that (we think) our Australia aerial went missing.  When we bought our Pajero it had an aerial shaped like Australia.  It was an excellent likeness, not just some random approximation.   It had many of the actual features of the coastline, it was quite impressive, especially considering it was handmade out of a coat hanger. Well someone decided that they liked the look of it, so it got swiped while we were visiting Doomadgee.  It took us a little while before we noticed, and we had travelled some distance down the Savannah Way before the discovery was made.

Along the way we had to stop at Devil's Gate Roadhouse, for the experience. Unfortunately, all it has left is its reputation.  New grog restrictions in the Northern Territory put the onus on the publicans to make sure that they only sell 2 cases of beer per car.  Given that their major source of revenue was selling car loads of cases of beer, this new regulation has put a serious dent in their profits and left them to administer the regulation.  Most publicans have hence decided not to sell any alcohol at all and forgo their liquor licences. So the old Devil's Gate was a very quiet and subdued affair and not a drop of alcohol to be had.

As I wrote in my diary on 10/5/2007:

2/3 of their business was selling beer to Aboriginals.  They would come in car loads on Thursdays with their pay cheques and buy 5 cases of beer each.
I think that the publicans have decided it is not worth the headache of administering it when a huge slice of their profits have been taken away from them.
We are having a very dry season - no beer - poor Steve.

We camped the night at Calvert River Crossing, near where Leichhardt the explorer would have camped. It was an okay spot, as it was free.  It rained that night, just enough to damp down the dust.

On the 11th we moved onto Borroloola, another Aboriginal settlement. Once again it was a bit of a culture shock entering a town and feeling terribly white. There were heaps of Aboriginals just hanging around or driving around in cars. It didn't feel like a particularly happy town.  Once again, all the businesses in Borroloola were run (staffed) by whites.
We camped the night at the local caravan park.

Lawn Hill National Park

What a wonderful find this was.  This was one place that we had been told about before we left home and it lived up to all expectations.  Lawn Hill was beautiful and so were the camp grounds at Adele's Grove.

Evan's diary entry:

Today we're at Lawn Hill.
While we were in Lawn Hill we went canoeing, swimming in the cascades and park and camping ground gorge.

Sarah made a bow but it broke.

I made one too.  It lasted. Every target I hit on the spot.

It's a good bow.

My Diary Entry:

We went for a walk in the Lover Gorge at Lawn Hill National Park and visited Dog Dreaming.  It was an Aboriginal cave with paintings.  They were no where near as impressive as the ones at Carnarvon Gorge.

We had lunch and then progressed down to the cascades for a well deserved swim.  It is very hot.  The water was beautifully warm.

The children made bows and arrows based on their imaginations being piqued from reading Eragon.  The trees at the camp ground at Adele's Grove were well suited to making bows.  They pretended to go hunting with them and practise their archery skills.
Evan and Harry looked very funny with their "armour" on: a few layers of t-shirts, undies on their heads and socks on their hands - Classic!

9/5/07

Today we spent 1 1/4 hours paddling up Lawn Hill Gorge. The spectacular red cliffs on either side were beautiful.

To start, Steve, Evan and Harry went in the three man canoe.  They looked surprisingly like  the Berenstain bear father and his 2 cubs as they rowed out from shore.  Sarah and I shared the second canoe.  I started out in the front and could not for the life of me control the thing.  We stopped and swapped places - it made a HUGE difference.  There must be some physics based rule as to why it is best to have the weight in the back of the canoe, not the front.

We paddled up to the falls and got out and had a swim in the beautiful warm water.  On the way back Sarah, Evan and I paddled back in the big canoe and Steve and Harry took the small one.

It was a lot of fun.



Mt Isa

Well what can you say about Mt Isa?  What a disappointment for us.  Our family trip had been humming along beautifully up to this point. Then we pulled into the much fabled Mt Isa and found very little to recommend it.  It was busy, smelly, expensive, and as we were to later find out, a hot bed of crime.

I'll relate Evan's diary entry first as it quite succinctly sums up the place:

At Mount Isa we went to Sunset Top Tourist Park.  It was expensive.

We went to the library and found lots of crochet books to photocopy. But when we left we had our mobile phone stolen.  We also had Sarah's MP3 player, $91 and some other things stolen.

We left Mt Isa quickly.


My diary for Mt Isa:

3/5/07
We packed up camp and arrived in Mt Isa. We are not overly impressed with the town.  The Information Centre ladies took one look at me and announced that absolutely no way can we bush camp in Mt Isa, we must stay at a caravan park.

We booked in at Sunset Caravan Park.  It has a pool which is good, because it is quite hot.  Once again tent campers are shoved down the back on dodgy ground with no tap and the furtherest away from the camp kitchen and pool.  Ironically it is the campers who are the ones who use the camp kitchen facilities, but they are always the ones sited the furtherest away.  Well, at least we had shade for most of the day.

We went shopping for Steve's birthday....

4/5/07

Steve's 41st Birthday

We had bacon and eggs for brekkie and cooked a cake for Steve in the camp kitchen gas oven.  Well tried to anyway, but managed to burn it instead.

The park has an air conditioned room with a TV.  We watched Eragon, Evan bought the DVD yesterday.  Both Sarah and Evan have been reading Eragon as we have been travelling.

We collected the mail and then went to the library. Just as it was starting to sound like a ho hum day, reading mail, writing emails, photocopying some crochet books; drama unfolded when we discovered that Sarah's little handbag had been stolen!  Sarah had recently had a birthday and she was loaded up with birthday money from her newly opened mail.  She had $91 and an MP3 player in her bag that was stolen.  We searched the library to no avail.

Later that afternoon, I discovered that my mobile phone was missing.  We realised that this too must have been stolen while were at the library.  We tried calling it but it was out of credit.  The buggers had used up all $30 of credit on it.

We reported the thefts to the police but they held very little hope that we would ever find our goods again.  I'm pretty sure that once we walked out of the door they filed our complaint under B for bin.

We decided that Mt Isa was not the place for us so we decided to pack up and move on fairly quickly once we had replenished our camping supplies.

It seems that we were so underwhelmed with Mt Isa that we don't even seem to have any photos of our time there.  Maybe it's a good thing, because if we had have gotten our camera out it too might have been stolen.

On Sunday the 6th we packed up and left Mt Isa for Riversleigh fossils.  We had a short walk through some fossils, there was not much to see really.  It showcased giant crocodiles and thunderbirds that lived around 20 million years ago - the period of mega fauna after the dinosaurs had died out.

We continued on our journey and will continue in the next blog about what happened when we got to Adele's Grove at Lawn Hill.

Boulia and the min min lights

On the second of May we packed up our camp at the Diamantina River and set off for Boulia.  We visited the wonderful Min Min Encounter centre at Boulia and found out the fascinating story of the Min Min lights.  We continued on toward Mt Isa and found ourselves a beautiful camping spot on the way.  We pulled off the road about 130km south of Mt Isa at a 'magical oasis' that was absolutely beautiful and picturesque.  This was made more so by the fact that we had the place to ourselves and it was a full moon that night.  We camped in what was essentially a cow paddock with a big dam.  There were rocking slopes to explore and a lovely grassy patch by the water in which to pitch our tent.

This is Evan's diary entry for Boulia:

Today we went to Boulia at the Min Min Encounter. When we went in it was really cold, dark, freaky and cool.

The min min encounter was about the min min light. Some people think the lights are real and some just think it is in their imagination.

I don't know what to believe.

Do you?

Lark Quarry

Lark Quarry is the location of a stampede of dinosaur footprints which are the subject of some conjecture as to how they were caused.

Both Evan and I have diary entries for our visit to Lark Quarry.  I'll start with mine:

1/5/07

We packed up camp at Winton with the plan to head to Lark Quarry. On the way we drove through Bladensburg National Park and visited an old homestead.

At Lark Quarry we planned to look at the dinosaur footprints.  They were enclosed in a big air conditioned building and we had to line up for ages to get into see them.  They spent so long before hand building us up to see them that by the time we got in it was a slight anticlimax. "By the time Harry got inside he was bored silly and not interested in the foot prints at all."

We left Lark Quarry after lunch and went looking for Old Cork Station on our way to Middleton. However, we took a wrong turn and ended up in the Diamantina National Park.  It was a fortuitous turn as we found a lovely campsite right on the banks of the Diamantina River at a place called Hunter's Gorge. I have a very strong memory (though I didn't write it in my diary) of the flies being unbelievably bad.  They were the kind that crawled all over your face and tried to get into every moist area, like in your eyes and up your nose.

We couldn't help ourselves while we were staying there singing the old Redgum song The Diamintina Drover, lyrics are below:

The faces in the photograph have faded
And I can't believe he looks so much like me
For it's been ten years today
Since I left for Old Cork Station
Sayin' I won't be back till the drovin's done

For the rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina
And a drover finds it hard to change his mind
For the years have surely gone
Like the drays from Old Cork Station
And I won't be back till the drovin's done

Well it seems like the sun comes up each mornin'
Sets me up and takes it all away
For the dreaming by the light
Of the camp fire at night
Ends with the burning by the day

For the rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina
And a drover finds it hard to change his mind
For the years have surely gone
Like the drays from Old Cork Station
And I won't be back till the drovin's done

Sometimes I think I'll settle back in Sydney
But it's been so long it's hard to change my mind
For the cattle trail goes on and on
And the fences roll forever
And I won't be back till the drovin's done

For the rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina
And a drover finds it hard to change his mind
For the years have surely gone
Like the drays from Old Cork Station
And I won't be back till the drovin's done

For the rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina
And a drover finds it hard to change his mind
For the years have surely gone
Like the drays from Old Cork Station
And I won't be back when the drovin's done

Read more: Redgum - Diamantina Drover Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Evan's Diary Entry:

Today at Lark Quarry we saw real dinosaur foot prints.

They told us that the dinosaurs came down to the river bank to have a drink. Then a big dinosaur came to eat them. Then they stampeded back to the forest (leaving the footprints).

After the tour, we went on the spinifex walk, and when the walk finished we had lunch.

We all thought their theory stunk, because they could have all rushed in and then ran all the way out, and then the big dinosaur ran in had a drink and left. And there sort of ? because there were no little footprints in his big footprints.

(Recently, a new theory has been put forward that suggests it was a dinosaur stampede at all.)

I thought Lark Quarry was very hot.