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DAY 32

Week 5

ALICE SPRINGS (Northern Territory, AUS) to CLONCURRY (Queensland, AUS)
via Tropic Of Capricorn, Devils Marbles & Queensland Border (Northern Territory, AUS)

Thursday October 14th, 2010

TODAYS MILEAGE – 804 miles or 1294 kilometres

TRIP MILEAGE – 5881 miles or 9465 kilometres

In a hurry to get to "the Curry".

It was time to bid the warm hospitality and family love of Annie & Mugsy (aka Mum & Dad) farewell. We needed to push on and head up to Mareeba (Queensland) to stay with Sonia & Trevor Flux, for a couple of days in the final week of the trip.

The travel plan for the day was to try and make Normanton (Queensland) by nightfall. But due to recent heavy rains, we ended up in Cloncurry (Queensland), some 1294 kilometres (804 miles) away from Alice Springs.

The route was pretty simple, head North from Alice Springs (Northern Territory) hang a right at Three Ways (Northern Territory) and keep going into "the 'Curry".

First stop on the gloomy and overcast day was just 31 kilometres (19 miles) up the track, at the Tropic Of Capricorn (Northern Territory). This is where you'll find the 45th parallel, which encompasses the globe and signifies that we are heading into the Tropics.

A bit further up the track, we pulled over at the Barrow Creek Hotel (Northern Territory), which started out as a repeater station on the Overland Telegraph Line, but is better known as Les Pilton's pub. Les has owned the watering hole for over 20 years and back in the day when I was the Sales Rep for the national auto parts chain REPCO, I would stop off once a month for a chinwag and a beer with Les and drop off any freight that he may have needed, while on my way to and from "TFC" – Tennant Fucking Creek.

The Barrow Creek Pub always had a great feed, a cold beer and a warm welcome and nothing has changed over the years, save for the restructuring of "The Bank". Like any true Territorian tradition, "The Bank" started out as a bit of a giggle and ingenuity. You see, the locals would write their name on any denomination bank note and then pin it to the ceiling, for when they came back to the pub and would have some spending money for their next round. From there, "The Bank" grew to where the entire ceiling of the pub was covered in bank notes, from people from all points of the compass – locals and tourists alike.

The restructuring of the bank came about several years ago, when the pub ceiling collapsed from all the weight of the bank notes as well as the fun police in the form of Les's insurance company, who would not insure him, they had to hang the notes from the wall, thus forever changing the Territorian tradition.

From there it was up to the Devils Marbles (Northern Territory), a site where for no apparent reason, the man upstairs, decided to lay down these huge boulders in the middle of nowhere. A quick stop at "TFC" for a quick fluid & energy replenishment for both vehicle and occupants and we're on the road again.

The reason Tennant Creek (Northern Territory) is known as "TFC" is because in my opinion, the best thing out of there is the Stuart Highway. Don't get me wrong, the people who live there reckon they have found their own nirvana, but for me, they've set their expectations pretty low.

After heading East from Three Ways and stopping of at the Barkly Homestead (Northern Territory), the equal most expensive fuel for the entire trip at $1.75 per litre ($6.71 USD per gallon), we headed away from the setting sun and into some of the most vivid landscapes for the entire trip, at the Queensland/Northern Territory border.

A quick chat to one of the truckies at the Camooweal (Queensland) roadhouse dictated that due to local heavy rains, we would have to forego the dirt shortcut I'd planned to get to Normanton (Queensland) and head further East into Cloncurry (Queensland) for the night. This added another 92 kilometres (57 miles) to the odometer, but at least we knew we wouldn't run the risk of getting bogged and thus stuck miles from anywhere.

This also presented another challenge, dodging livestock - as the road into "the Curry" is unfenced and travelling 311 kilometres (193 miles) at night is not the smartest of moves, as we nearly found out just the other side of Mount Isa (Queensland), the birthplace of Greg Norman, amongst other notables.