Here We Go Again - Chapter 51 - Mary Kathleen to Barkley Road House

Sunrise brings success. Everything electric is still going strong and there are no alarms sounding. A check of the gauges shows we used less than 40% of the available power during the night. A great outcome.

Everything this morning is centred around getting into Mt Isa early, get the part, change it over and get on our way. Having said that, there are the “normal” morning activities. Stick collection is high on the list as well as taking the last photographs of the camp site. 

Packing up the site is an easy and normal occurrence but we need to say our final goodbyes to Forbsy, Kevin and Colleen. The past few days have been great having them near, if not for their insights into “free camping”. We have seen two versions much different to what we term free camping, both with the journey in mind rather than the destination.

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We are ready to go and everyone is stirring now. We say our more than heartfelt goodbyes and we head off aiming to be in Mt Isa at the opening of the businesses we need to acquire the new part. From the earlier trips we know there is road works which may slow our progress but we seem to be making good time.

We park just out of the business section of town and walk to ARB who are Redarc suppliers but they are of no help. A couple of doors down is TJM, also a Redarc distributor. 

Here they have the part and again we are told it is a very odd occurence of this type of part failing, yet it has and they have a significant stock of an item that supposedly does not fail regularly. It seems an easy fit, two screws out, refit the terminals and two screws back in – piece of cake.

Happy we have acquired the part we head across the road and treat ourselves to a Maccas breakfast. Here we order table service as we want to sit and relax yet are called to the counter to collect our food. Bemused I ask the waitress “what is the number for”, if you are not going to deliver our meals. She ignores me and goes on to the next order. Not very McDonalds like at all.

The next in the plan is to meet Silver Leader and Rose at the local dump point and filling area. This is on our way out of town. There is a short line of people doing the same thing. As we fill up we notice there is a similar set of facilities on the other side of the car park we could have used. It doesn’t slow us up at all.

Having now congregated with them he can hit the road for Barkley Homestead with the wind behind us. The trip should be one of the least in fuel consumption of the trip so far if the smoke stack from the MIM refinery is anything to go by.

We get to Camoweal and where we might have topped up, we simply lunch in the car park. The line to the fuel bowsers is extensive. So extensive it impedes a road train heading towards Mt Isa. Why someone is not directing traffic into the car parking area we are lunching, to keep the road clear, there is more than enough access to fuel from here, is beyond me. But then again you cant put smart heads on overworked shoulders can you?

The queue ebbs and flows as vehicles fill up and leave, many returning via the road back to the extensive car park we are now enjoying our repast. This is carnage waiting to happen.

Camoweal is the last stop before the Northern Territory and we will need to show our credentials to get into that state. It reminds me of the Hunt for Red October (1990 Paramount) where Connery and Neil are discussing “moving from state to state – no papers”. What would Tom Clancy think of the present situation in Australia, what fun could he have with a “free” country that requires travellers to submit requests to travel between its states. We are not the Union of Australian Socialist Republic are we?

12 kilometres up the road, at the border we are pulled over for the border check. There are two lines of traffic here. The police are doing a great job, there are only us and those in front of us and they are leaving as we arrive. 

We have the pleasure of Constable Cate Campbell’s company as she goes though our documentation. As we arrived her colleague was assisting our predecessors with photographs of them in front of the Northern Territory sign. Great police work in my opinion. 

Back to our Olympian namesake. She smiles and suggests she would be very rich if she had $5 for every time the analogy had been made. The time checking the documentation pases much quicker than expected made all the more palatable by the demeanor of those checking the details. In our discussions she suggests they have been doing about 300 vehicles a day. Must be tough to stay pleasant and positive under those pressures.

We have well over 300 kilometres today and Robyn is up for her share. We split it in 2. Robyn enjoys her time behind the wheel. I get time to take some shots of the ever changing landscape working my camera to its best ability.

Finally into Barkley Homestead, its been a long drive because of the Mt Isa dealings and the border crossing. We had heard rumours of lengthy queues here but we are pleasantly surprised at the ease in which we get into the park. Before we go in, we look to fill up and while I am content to join the queue Silver Leader, noticing the bowser serving the other direction is without a customer, snakes around. He is followed by a couple of others. 

The result is we get hemmed in after our fill up. BNo worries though as eventually someone in the queue realises the error of their ways and allows us out. We find a spare spot and set up for the night. 

Time to replace this isolator part. Like I said it shoul;d be easy – famous last words. Whilst the dismantling of the terminals and the screws were easily dealt with, the earth wire needs to be spliced in. Something well beyond anything I want to try. I reinstall the old one.

There is supposedly wifi here, but from our spot in the park we have no joy. I pick up my laptop and head to the bar area thinking the reception may be a bit better there. 

As I walk into the bar area I acknowledge another guy who I just dont quite hear. He retorts he was simply asking how I was. I answer all the better for meeting him. Any angst is quickly dissolved

There is no joy with the wifi here and asking the bar staff they only laugh. Apparently what wifi there is, comes from Northern Territory Tourism and on a good day is spasmodic, on most non-existent and they can do nothing about it, only take the chagrin of the patrons. I spare them this and simply order a bourbon.

The others join me momentarily.

While waiting in the queue to get drinks for everyone I get speaking to a jovial traveller and in a “I might be having a bad day but yours was far worse” she tells the story of their trip so far. Week one they rolled their Winnebago and were only saved from severe injury by the Suzuki they were towing, stopping the Winnebago from rolling more than simply on its side. Her biggest problem is that the replacement vehicle, supposedly the same vehicle was a newer model and many of the quirky bits were not in the same spot or are nonexistent, not to mention the new ones in the improved model. With all the tribulations they were still alive and still travelling and grateful for it.

Funny she was only at the bar because her travelling companion had neglected to get her a glass of ice when on his shout.

We dine in the bar area and head back to the vans full to the gills. Its dark, very dark so I head outside to take pictures of the stars to annoy my astrophysicist daughter. Not quite the great shots, there is too much in the light pollution, as I have taken in the past but very acceptable and when sent to Kirsten gets the normal reaction.

The marketing of internet here in the outback is somewhat misleading. We are finding the more we travel the worse getting connected is. Optus suggest they cover 98% of Australia, how wrong is that. Even our phones who are with supposedly Telstra related partners, do not have the same coverage as Telstra and that is not wide enough. If we were all to stand still in our homes we “might” have a chance of meeting their marketing campaigns, but as soon as you move outside anything like a built up area or a metropolis there is little or nothing. 

We wait Elon Musk and SkyLink, although our investigations so far reveal, unless you want to pay exorbitant amounts of money or have a static facility, running your business internet from your caravan is not a real option. Perhaps in the day and age of the great increases in Grey Nomad numbers, connection will become a priority and someone will come up with a cost effective answer to this question.