Hayes Creek

Tues 15^th – Thurs 18^th 

After stopping at Katherine, refueling and restocking the larder, we continued north to a little place that seems to be a pub and a couple of fuel bowsers. At the bottom of a steep track beside it, and down in a valley, is a caravan park with lots of shady trees. We are parked right beside the swimming pool and not far from the ablution block. Around us are several roofed areas to provide shade. We are parked beside the Szabos, on either side of a concrete slab with our doors facing. There is a paddock on the other side of the fence and a helicopter was parked in it all day undergoing repairs. It still doesn’t appear to be fixed. So what do you do when the sun is blazing and it’s 35⁰ plus? Well if you’re a Hosa you visit Douglas Hot Pools and go in the even hotter water.  What a beautiful place it is, and the water is quite hot on one side of a sand bar, and a little cooler on the other.  It would be lovely on a cooler day. You walk down about a dozen steps to a sandy beach where the creek is divided by the sand bar. There are the few dead branches here and there that you can sit on and dangle your feet in or there is a shallow edge where you can lie flat on your back on the sand with the water almost covering you.  Several people were spread along the river doing just that. We had a short paddle in it and then drove back to camp and had a swim in the cold swimming pool.

Success at last! George has finally managed to tune in his satellite TV aerial and is in heaven watching his 109 channels and quite a few radio stations. I doubt if we’ll see him for a while. The Szabos are now considering staying here for another week at least. I think we’ve almost had our last sighting of George.

 For the second day a team of people were working on the Geotech helicopter in the paddock and finally at about 5pm they got it going and took off with a huge contraption hanging from it – obviously it collects data and feeds back to their computer. They didn’t work long though and landed again for another day with at least three mechanics working on it. On the next day they got it going and did a couple of hours before stopping for the next day and a half. It show how blaze we are, this morning (Sat 19^th) when it took off we didn’t even glance at it.

On Thursday there was a free concert by a country and western band called Lance Friend and Muddy River in the hotel above where we are staying.  Lance is quite a prolific song writer and they mostly performed his own compositions. Naturally they had CDs to sell. It was a very good concert. Lance sang and played guitar and ukulele, there was a drummer who played a box and harmonised and there was a violinist who also sang harmonies. The audience consisted of 8 people initially, but ended up being 20 by the time a few other campers and some back packers finished work and joined us. We had dinner there in the beer garden where the stage was set and I had the biggest mixed grill I have ever seen – two sausages, 3 rashers of bacon, a big pork chop, a piece of steak and a piece of lamb steak, cooked tomato, chips and a huge salad. Mick ended up eating a large portion of the meat as well as his very big fisherman’s basket. Throughout the show there was one particular woman with big tattoos on the backs of her legs, who kept rushing up and taking photos. The next morning the drummer came out of her caravan. When he went back to his van, the lead singer went in and there wasn’t any doubt about what was happening. Then she packed up and moved out to Katherine. The band is still here, but their next gig is in Katherine - lucky band!

We went down through the paddock at the back of the park after watching the helicopter take off again with its big orange ring trailing below it. It was doing big sweeps up and down the ridges. There is a very pretty creek with a deep swimming hole with a swinging rope over it but we only looked at it. We continued along the track through a creek crossing and then on to Butterfly Gorge. There was a path going up to a shady hollow in the cliff with a big canopy of greenery, providing a cool, darker place which is obviously home for thousands of black and white butterflies. We drove further along the track, which was really only two wheel ruts that meander through the trees. There were many occasions when we barely squeezed between them. Finally we got bogged in the soft sand and had to be towed out by George. He only had a rope to tie down his load, and it broke twice, but finally we got out and returned through the bush, alongside the canyon wall, past the butterflies, through the creek and back to our van.