A fish flies over the heads of pelicans waiting for a feast as saltwater flows over the Mary River barrage - the one in the territory, not the one back home in Maryborough. The freshwater upstream and the saltwater downstream is infested with the world's finest concentration of crocs.


 Mrs Wilson is dreading what lies ahead. The build-up has started in the north of Australia. She’s been in the Top End for six years and hopes it will be her last summer here.

I didn’t get her name or photo but the pretty blonde woman, abut 50ish, could have been Rebel Wilson’s mum. She was slimmer and older than the chubby Australian actress but she had the same pleasant, pretty, slightly vulnerable appeal.

Mrs Wilson was behind the counter at the service station, helpful and friendly. I said it was a bit sticky; she said it was disgusting. Some were saying the wet would start early because there wasn’t one last year; she said “Who knows? It might not come at all. Then you have humidity, 100% or even 110%, 24/7.”

I wondered what 110% 24/7 would be like and wondered if it was like drowning but didn’t query it. Mrs Wilson was too emphatic. I did mention she was in the air-conditioned office at the service station so maybe it wasn’t too bad.

She shook her head mournfully. “I only work here until 1pm. Here’s where I make the money. Then I go and work on our mango farm in the stinking heat for nothing.

“Last year we didn’t have a wet at all so we had 18 months of build-up. You’ve heard of people going troppo. That’s real. They do.  I am over it.”

Mrs Wilson comes from the wheat belt north of Perth and she’s heading back next year, as soon as she and her husband take in the next harvest and sell the farm. All the kids have moved back that way and she can’t wait to follow them.

We were heading for Shady Camp on the Mary River, east of Darwin and towards Kakadu. Millions of mango trees lined the Arnhem Highway in plantations more extensive than anything I had imagined.

Shady Camp is a pocket of the Mary River National Park where a barrage across the Mary keeps salt water out of the wetlands. Except on high tides. On either side of the barrage is the world’s finest concentration of snapping handbags.

Crocodiles aside, Shady Camp is a pretty spot. We chatted to Paul, a retired teacher who was camped there with an old school friend Rita, a ceramic artist and teacher from near Byron Bay. Her husband had died four years ago; she had met up with Paul again at a school reunion. “He was the first boy I ever kissed,” she confided with a smile.

We were pretty sure they were kissing again. The setting was romantic as a golden moon rising above the pandanus reflected off a glass of red.

Rita was handling the build-up just fine. She didn’t mind the heat and was rather enjoying the humidity. She even paddled in the mud on the downstream side at low tide to get a fishing rod a quarry worker had lost the night before. He caught a fish that was seized by a fish hawk, wrenching the rod from his hands.

Full moon was the next night. It was even more romantic but spoiled just a tad by four blokes from Darwin on an overnight fishing trip. They lobbed on to the barrage mid-afternoon in high spirits, loudly swearing, drinking, doing roaring burn-outs, ignoring parks fishing regulation and chucking rocks at crocs (maybe not such a bad thing).

About midnight the full tide was spilling over the barrage. Excitement grew as a 4m croc slid across the barrage. Then a 5m croc waddled across to go downstream. None of the boys were actually sleeping on the barrage at that time but some were on the wrong side of the river. They scampered back barely touching the water and sometime early in the morning they roared off.

Maybe they were a bit troppo. Mrs Wilson would have deduced that.

Nick di Candilo (above)  is closing the Mandorah Beach pub on the west of Darwin harbour today. There goes one of the best pubs and best publicans we have come across for a long time.

The charismatic, innovative publican is going to put up at couple of hammocks in the yard, listen to good music, read from a backlog of more than 30 books and drink cold beer from a couple of his favourite boutique breweries.

Then he and partner Diana Maddalozzo might tour New Zealand. After a while another pub will probably rise on the to-die-for pub site at Mandorah, a stone’s throw from where the city ferry berths. Nick’s not in a hurry to do anything right away.

No, the pub isn’t closing because it has an asbestos problem says Nick. That’s a rumour. It’s just too old with water, sewerage, roof and lots of infrastructure deterioration.

No, he hasn’t been offered $20 million by Kerry Packer. That’s another rumour and a bad one: Kerry died a few years ago. But he has been pleasantly surprised at a recent valuation of the land and is in talks with a couple of hotel groups.

Nick is not in a hurry to make changes too soon after putting his heart and soul into building up a fine pub business in the last five and a half years.

Mandorah Beach hotel was built by Diana’s father in the 1960s and sits on a fair chunk of land near the harbour’s West Point. The first enterprise had a couple of sheds, one with cold scones and the other with hot beer. After that was switched around, the pub passed through a few hands. By the time Nick and Diana moved in it was seriously run down.

They cleaned it up, added a new roof and learned it would cost about $70,000 to put in a new chimney for the deep fryer. They thought laterally and chalked in capitals on the menu: “The No Hot Chips Hotel”.  That was destined to become a frequently photographed menu board and Nick was to repeat several thousand times why it was so.

“We decided to do away with deep fried food and concentrate on developing a really good potato salad and coleslaw as the sides. It was healthier and more suitable to the climate.

“A lot of people have been incredulous and one bloke stormed off calling me a bloody wanker but we focused on really good, fresh food and it paid off.

“We didn’t advertise much. We just bought the place and thought ‘Oh well, we’ll open and if people come they come and if they don’t they don’t.’”

They came, attracted by the good food, spectacular views and a range of some of the best boutique beers in Australia. On weekends they have stood 10 deep at the bar soothed by easy-listening music.

Nick makes no apologies for playing Dean Martin instead of Jimmy Barnes. It’s about ambience, family-friendly and cool-down, chill-out time.

 “We took out all the poker machines too. We were told we were wankers and would go broke but we didn’t. We wanted to create our kind of pub.”

Nick talks fine beer talk. Common brands are stocked but a big ice chest has chilled bottles of boutique Australian beers that are slightly fruity on the front palate, leave a little bite in the back of your throat or have an earthiness of a classic brew.

Nick worked for the Fred Hollows Foundation in remote communities for 20 years and has developed an easy manner that has served him well with patrons. About 60% come by ferry and about 40% by car from Darwin. Today they will mourn the loss of what has become an iconic pub across the harbour from the city.

The shut-down this afternoon will be low-key. Tony and I plan to make it for lunch, the last meal.

Another pub will materialise on the site. It won’t be the same but it will more than likely have the laid-back di Candilo stamp on it. He is not interested in selling but has a notion about building a new pub and getting one of the hotel chains to run it. We will have to keep an eye on that when we return to Darwin, even if it’s just to see if hot chips are on the menu and Jimmy is on the sound waves. I hope not.

ABOVE: Jack's back yard and our front yard for a couple of nights.

Darwin has idyllic free camps spots down 4WD tracks on to beaches east and west of the city. Wandering through the landscape are entertaining characters, loudly profuse in advice about the attributes of the area and profane in description.

“I f#ck*!g left here for 16 f#ck*!g years and went to South Australia and all over the f#ck*!g place,” was the bright morning greeting near Waigat Beach. Jack had been for his morning stroll to the beach and had stopped to admire Isabel.

“How do you like my f#ck*!g backyard? F#ck*!g marvellous isn’t it?” I was still in bed and decided to lie low for a while. I couldn’t hear Tony’s reply but Jack’s words came through loud and f#ck*!g clear.

“Came back in ’98 and wondered why I ever left the f#ck*!g place,” he barked. “Why would you f#ck*!g live anywhere else? I can walk 60 metres out the f#ck*!g back door and drop a crab pot into the f#ck*!g creek. How f#ck*!g good is that?”

Eventually I slid out of bed and sallied forth to meet Jack. He wanted to know how I liked his f#ck*!g back yard. We wanted to know how to get to One Fella Creek and Two Fella Creek.

Jack told us to take the road out past the wartime Liberator plane wreck and turn right at pylon No. 32 for one and Pylon No. 52 for the other. We weren’t sure which was which but thanked him.

He advised us to try fishing at the Mandorah ferry wharf. “There’s some f#ck*!g  big fish there. You’ll get f#ck*!g smashed.” He pushed off, hollering cheerfully that he hoped we would catch lots of f#ck*!g fish.

We examined the Liberator wreck and absorbed the sad deaths of US airmen returning to Darwin after a training flight. Two schools of thought surround the crash in January 1945. The San Diego-built Liberator Milady had flown more than 50 missions and might have been weakened by dropping so many bombs at low heights – or the pilot might have been a bit gung-ho and flying too low.

We pushed Isabel down some narrow and bumpy bush tracks from pylon 52 and seemed to be heading to a creek when an oncoming Cruiser pulled over. Derek jumped out. He had been to the same finishing school as Jack.

 He said apologetically that he wasn’t trying to tell anyone what to f#ck*!g do but if we kept going ahead we would come to some terrible f#ck*!g soft f#ck*!g sand and we would get f#ck*!g bogged for sure “and I can’t pull you out because the f#ck*!g Cruiser’s got a f#ck*!g busted CV joint”.

One Fella Creek was ahead but it was f#ck*!g ratshit with no f#ck*!g water in it until you get a f#ck*!g five metre tide but Two Fella Creek back behind us was a better f#ck*!g bet.

Derek was an electrical contractor whore. “If they offer me enough f#ck*!g money I’ll go and do what they f#ck*!g want.” We nodded solemnly and absorbed boundless information about Two Fella and fishing off the wharf. He echoed Jack to the last syllable: some big f#ck*!g fish were under the wharf and you would get f#ck*!g smashed.

He waited up the road to guide us towards Two Fella. We found a close-to-perfect campsite overlooking the harbour entrance with a busy parade of yachts, freighters, luxury cruisers, commercial tour vessels and fishing vessels were almost outnumbered by American and Australian naval ships on duty and exercises. Overhead planes flew in and out of one of the nation’s busiest airports.

A few days earlier we had been camped on the beach at Gunn Point where we had view the planes from the east.

Over here on the west side the harbour traffic was even more entertaining. Then along came Bruce, rough and wide as he was tall, with three dogs in the Wrangler.

Bruce was also in for a friendly chat and plenty of advice. He had a strange high pitched bellow but, surprisingly, he used no profanities as he described his life and his dogs and told us six or seven times that if we wanted to catch big fish we should go to the wharf but “you’ll get smashed, man you’ll get smashed”.

Tony wasn’t interested in big fish or getting his gear smashed. He fished around the nearby rocks, swapped his lure for a bit of mullet and got smashed.

On the way out of Two Fella we came across Derek again. He had been at the wharf fishing the night before with some mates who had caught the ferry over from Darwin. We think he had been a little smashed after a few beers at the pub but certainly he was “f#ck*!g smashed a couple of f#ck*!g times by some f#ck*!g big fish”.

Sadly, he had also misjudged the sand around One Fella and was f#ck*!g bogged for four f#ck*!g hours and had to f#ck*!g dig himself out. We nodded solemnly as we commiserated with him and headed east again.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”

Somehow that quote by Dickens from A Tale of Two Cities springs to mind when I think of Katherine and The Boab Tree caravan park.

We like to stay in the bush and offbeat places but now and again we pop into a caravan park. Katherine didn’t have much to offer in the way of unpowered sites but The Boab Tree looked pretty and the guys in the office/shop/café/bottleshop were super friendly.

Not so happy were the chaps at the boom gate the next morning. They were gloomily trying to repair damage by backpackers revelling in the age of foolishness; later in the pool former pro golfer Len Thomas (above) was revelling in the best of times in the age of wisdom.

Backpackers trying to explore Australia on the cheap are causing a few problems, especially in the Northern Territory. Sneaking into caravan parks and national parks and escaping without paying after using the facilities is one of the common tricks.

At The Boab Tree, three young people had whipped in and forced the boom gate up so they could throw up a tent and have a shower before getting thrown out. Unfortunately they wrecked the mechanism and Katherine does not have a surplus of boom gate repairers.

The trio, at least one probably from Brazil, had tried the same trick at the caravan park down the road. A day later the NT News carried a story about a young Italian tourist being attacked in Kakadu. She was whacked on the leg and her hire car stolen. The News the next day had her in the clanger waiting to go to court: she invented the story because she had crashed her car and couldn’t afford the excess.

A few days later a couple of young French blokes were in court. They had run out of money so simply walked into a supermarket and ate what they fancied before leaving past the checkout. The News showed a picture of them pretty happy as they left court with a warning.

Our high prices – many foreign tourists complain Australia is the most expensive in which to travel – and low penalties seem to have made Aussie travel a bit of a game for backpackers: see where you can cheat because if you get caught they will feed you in the watchhouse and let you go. Pay fines? Don’t be daft.

Back to Dickens’ best of times and the age of wisdom: That was epitomised by retired pro golfer Len Thomas who was revelling in, and lavishing praise on, the pool and every other aspect of his caravan trip around Australia with his wife Sally.

He reckons she’s a better golfer than he is now. “I can hear the ball land now when I hit it.”

At least, I observed, his ears are still good.

Len spent 17 years teaching golf in China and crossed clubs with legends such as Bob Charles, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus. He played the last round of the Australian Open in 1966 with Arnold Palmer “but that's all in the past now.”.

As the sun went down, Len came visiting with a fine wine in his glass and a fine line of conversation.  We were sharing a sundowner with the neighbours from Canberra. His enthusiasm was so infectious that when we called it quits Mrs Canberra, who had appeared a bit standoffish, embraced both Tony and I with something close to fervour.

We didn’t see the neighbours in the morning but Len was around bright and early, leaving his address in case we ever make it to Dunsborough, south of Perth.

We may just do that Len.

Kris Kristofferson’s lyrics from The Highwayman strained out to the footpath at the Daly Waters pub to greet us in the warm afternoon.

Grey whiskered and check-shirted, the singer (above) strummed his guitar on an outdoor stage in the beer garden, with crude painted letters claiming “Reflections of the Aussie Spirit Show – 100% Outback Stralian”

The irony was not lost on our Americans Ed and Rita, especially when a few number’s later Col Kerley swung into Willie’s “Back On The Road Again”. But this was the colourful side of Australia our friends from San Diego enjoyed best when they came Down Under.

The beer was ice-cold, a mirrored disco ball dangled incongruously from the roof and the “Beer and Barra” buffet special was too good to resist.

Then there’s the donated personal stuff from all parts of the body – head to toe and all bits in between. The pub reckons it has the original thong tree. Signed caps hanging in the bar must now number in their thousands. T-shirts autographed in rough and witty language hang on rows of pegs. Hats and footie shirts cover more of the walls.

A few years back one girl grateful for a cold beer slung her bra over a rod near the ceiling. Now dozens of red, black, yellow and grimed white cups, AA to Double G, are up there.

A couple of girls more recently displayed even greater enthusiasm for their coldies and went a step further than tossing their bra off. A discreet ruffle of assorted knickers is also now growing above the bar.

The tradition of leaving something behind at Daly Waters was started about 80 years ago when Bill and Rita Pearce opened a Drovers’ Store to cater for the tough men shifting cattle in the Territory. Legend has it that drovers’ taking mobs to towns would leave behind some money on a post. If they blew their pay the way drovers were wont to do before heading home they could at least be assured of beer at the Daly Waters pub.

Explorer John McDouall Stuart named Daly Waters after the governor of South Australia, Dominic Daly, when he came across “the fourth chain of ponds” on June 10, 1861.

 A smart service station now sits on the Stuart Highway at the junction of the Carpentaria Highway, 360km south of Katherine, but travellers in the know always slip five or six kilometres off the highway to soak up the character of the old pub.

In the winter months they arrive by the thousand, mainly to overnight at the caravan park and enjoy the buffet and ballads that run nightly. We want an unpowered site. The Irish and French girls in the bar send us 80m down the road to where the big Stop sign is at the gate.

Mike the caretaker, up from South Australia for the six-month season, is exasperated. The unpowered sites are at the overflow space across the road.

“We were told to come here,’ I say meekly.

“The girls didn’t radio through,” he says sternly. “They would send you to Tennant Creek if you didn’t watch them.”

He hops on a little motorbike and escorts us back up the road to the unpowered sites. It’s been hectic since April. He’s been putting hundreds on sites every night. “This is just starting to ease off a bit now.”

It doesn’t appear that way. Col in the beer garden sings again at night and says he’ll be heading back to South Australia soon. The regular singer, Chilli, had to go back home pretty early in the season so Col’s been filling in every night for months. The “100% Outback Stralian” proclamation is Chilli’s, which is why Col can shove American and anything else he damned well likes into his repertoire. 

Roadhouses and cheeky anthills make the long stretches of highway in the Northern Territory a lot of fun.

Ed and Rita voted for bitumen and a couple of nights in a comfy bed after we left Borroloola. We were thinking of heading to Roper Bar but the Americans were keen to get off the dust and corrugations for a while. They also had their eye on a motel in Katherine for a night or two after a couple of weeks of cramped quarters in little Thelma.

That suited us because we had an energy hiccup with Isabel. Our motor home had performed excellently over thousands of kilometres of unsealed roads and we were delighted with her sealing powers, insulation and ventilation.

Barely a speck of dust entered while we were travelling and at night the air circulated freely through the high screened windows.

At King Ash Bay we found the battery power dropped. We were happy to head for civilisation at Katherine and/or Darwin with our sleep-deprived American friends. Suspicions about a dud battery turned out to be right – we had hit the one-in-a-hundred chance of a defective deep cycle.

Back on the tarmac we visited the pink Priscilla and Elvis loos at Cape Crawford’s Heartbreak Hotel - a strangely named junction with a strange pub name. Cape Crawford is about 150km from the coast and any landmark that could be called a cape.  It is a world away from Memphis and anything connected with Presley.

We swung on to the Stuart to find dressing up anthills has become more fashionable than ever. If you want to make a statement anywhere in north Australia, pack a cute costume and create the outback version of a snowman.

Roadhouses along the way make an effort to add character to their establishments. The Lavenders of Hayes Creek Inn do that. Colleen and Justin claim to have the “best barra and chips” and the best pies in the Territory. We weren’t figuring on pies that early in the day but we couldn’t resist. The claim was not in vain.

The Lavenders have gathered quirky furnishings and features to add to their establishment with the prize picture opportunity being the fuel bowser painted in Jack Daniels livery. Jack regalia bobs up throughout the inn/service station/caravan park that promotes itself as a gateway to features south of Darwin.

It’s worth a stop.

LEFT: Gunna miss little sis: Tony and Barb with their seafood baskets at the famous fishing club near Borroloola. For the last supper before Barb and Phil headed home it was thought just fine for someone else to catch the fish and do the cooking.
 





Barramundi were jumping out of the water at King Ash Bay Fishing Club but they were just warming up for the wet. We were a little early, we were told, although here and there a boat came in with a fair catch.

We stocked up in Borroloola before heading north-east to King Ash Bay and once again realised we had failed to check the alcohol restrictions that apply in remote communities. Restrictions vary and information can be hard to find in advance. It's difficult to work out sometimes where the communities start and end. In Borroloola, we waited for the pub to open at 10am but learnt ruefully that cartons of mid-strength beer only were available at the shop after 2.30pm..

Fortunately the KABFC has an excellent open bar at the camping ground run mainly by volunteer workers. That was the happy venue for our last couple of nights with Barb and Phil before they pointed Narelle in the direction of home.

Our little convoy had a campsite right on the bank of the McArthur River above a ledge used for fishing.  We were told we were lucky: only a week ago the camps had been three-deep, although the fish were not biting.

We poked rods out and sighed at a teasing 1.5m barra leaping out of the water. 

The fishing club has more than 600 members from all over Australia. It was formed about 20 years ago when authorities decided the straggle of fishing huts thrown up in the area needed a more formal arrangement.

King Ash Bay Fishing Club was formed, a couple of hundred acres leased and some powered sites put up near the club house and bar. A strip of flat land was mowed for unpowered sites and fairly basic showers and toilets built. Membership costs a couple of hundred dollars a year and most work is done by volunteers who get reduced rates.

If you are really good you get to be a life member and can be offered a permanent site to put up whatever structure you fancy.

That’s what happened to Lynn and Tom Burton from Childers, who discovered King Ash Bay in 2006 and have been going back every year. Before they retired Lyn worked at the high school in Childers and Tom at orchards in the Isis.

The fishing club is now their second home. They have a boat they leave in a shed on their block and use the place as a springboard to explore the north of Australia in the winter.

Lynn was acting as caretaker in the office when we called in to book our sites. Casual campers on unpowered sites pay $11 per person per night, or $83 a week for the site; powered sites cost $35 a night or $177 a week.

The Burtons had been at KABFC since March. Boy, was the fishing good then! It went off in June. They were planning to go back to Childers in October after the fish began biting again and before the big swelter.

Concern that day was for an elderly couple from Brisbane, who had come up with a caravan and boat. He had injured his shoulder loading their gear ready for the trip home and had been taken to Darwin on the Royal Flying Doctor.

His wife thought she could tow the van home with the boat on top but would need someone to hook it up. The fishing club members were all pitching in to help out and make sure the couple both made it safely home to Brisbane.

“When you get crook up here or anywhere remote it’s always hard,” said Lynn.

We didn’t stay long enough to catch fish but we enjoyed seafood baskets caught and superbly cooked by someone else at the KABFC. The price was fine, the beer was cold and the company excellent for our last supper with the Dwyers.

Fuel, food, water, but sorry, no smokes: Part of the family that spent the night camped beside their Patrol, out of fuel and food about 80km from home.


Bill Olive has a gammy leg, crooked and strapped up, but he gives you the impression he is the sort of guy you wouldn’t want to mess with too much.

In 1985 he slid a donga off the back of a truck and pushed it into place with a D4 on the Great Top Road front of his property near the Northern Territory border.

“That was two days before they brought in GST. Great timing wasn’t it?” he said wryly from behind the counter at Hell’s Gate Roadhouse, 90km west of Doomadgee Aboriginal community.

From the donga he stepped out his vision for a service station and built the framework. Hamburgers were sold from the back kitchen and fuel from 44-gallon drums. He built amenities for a caravan park, saved up until he could afford bowsers and took out a liquor licence.

That built up a solid trade, turning over close to $500,000 a year before the licensing commission clamped down. Tough restrictions limiting alcohol destined for Doomadgee went on the roadhouse three years before being implemented at hotels.

“They knocked the stuffing out of the business,” said Bill.  In disgust he more or less shut down the roadhouse to a low-key operation and worked the cattle property, returning to the enterprise at night.

“The caravan park always operated and we were open for emergencies. Anyone wanting emergency fuel had to wait until we came home at night.”

Now he is back doing a busy trade in the dry season with increasing numbers of outback wanderers. Business had been aided by closing of Tirranna roadhouse between Doomadgee and Burketown.

We had had an intriguing encounter with a Doomadgee family that morning as we drove north from Kingfisher Camp to the Great Top Road, better known now by its more touristy name of The Savannah Way.

A bloke of about 40 waved us down about 15km from Kingfisher. His Patrol had run out of fuel and his family, an assortment of two mothers and seven cousins, had spent the night camped beside the road.

Phil pulled out his container with 20 litres of spare fuel. As he and Tony poured fuel into the Nissan, Barb and I wandered over to see the grandmother and young mother on a blanket in the shade of a bush.

They were OK, they said, but asked for water. Did the children have anything to eat? No, they said. I found a bottle of water and some biscuits. Barb found some assorted cans of food. No, we said, we didn’t have any smokes.

With a flurry of thanks and broad grins, the children devoured the food as the younger mother said they had gone on a weekend fishing trip at the Fish River outstation. They had stayed an extra day catching bream and catfish.

Tony took note of the fuel bleeder as old mate restarted the Nissan. It was worn. Running out of fuel was not uncommon, apparently. Neither was travelling in the outback with only a little water and no food. Neither did old mate have any money to pay for fuel.

The women hopped in the cab, the kids swung on to the back and they were happily on their way to Doomadgee, about 80km away.

With a chorus of farewells and thank yous, they turned east as we turned west at the highway, where the ruins of Corinda are found. Police stationed there in the 1890s regularly escorted settlers as far west as the rocky escarpments of the Constance Range, which runs north from Bootjamulla (Lawn Hill).

Police officers refused to go with travellers beyond the hills because of the fierceness of Aboriginals in that area, giving rise to its name of Hell’s Gate.

They’re a tough breed out here, the native animals, the people who choose to live here and the feral animals that survive and thrive. We camped at the Robinson River on the dirt road to Borroloola and listened to the latter.

Our sleep was punctuated by the bellowing of lonely rival bulls, the challenging whinnying  of a couple of stallions and the squawling of a herd of donkeys.

You wouldn’t tackle it in the wet season but the back road from Adel’s Grove through Kingfisher Camp is a drive far more interesting than heading back to the highway at Gregory Downs Hotel.

We had an entertaining 180km drive through a dozen pretty creek crossings, picturesque station buildings, red, white and grey dust and a dozen gates.

As Isabel was leading the convoy the job of opening and shutting gates fell to moi. Even though Ed and Phil drove Thelma Toyota and Narelle Nissan through the gates I held open with tender care, I was covered with accretions of dust before we were half way.

Exercise was the consolation as I climbed in and out of Isabel and curtsied politely as Thelma (seen above bravely fording a creek) and Narelle sidled past, adding  a few bars of Happy Anniversary for Barb and Phil. I needed to be nimble.

At one gate a feisty charbray bull was trying to make a determined run at the gate so he could reach his girlfriends further down the track on the other side.

Keeping Isabel between the agitated randy bull and me, then manoeuvring the convoy through the gate, proved a bit of fun. Bulls are awesome creatures, projecting with ease their impervious nobility and superior strength. Fortunately they are also stupid and slow on the uptake so by the time Charlie Charbray figured out what was going on with our little procession it was too late.

We apologised to the cows and kept going into an encounter of the whirl kind. As I was shutting another gate behind Narelle a magnificent whirlywind materialised on the road behind us. They always go across roads, I thought, and stood for a few seconds mesmerised as it grew in intensity and came straight down the track.

I squealed, too late to reach Isabel or even get in Narelle beside Barb. Crouched beside Narelle’s  bull bar, I shut my eyes and disappeared. When it passed I was in The Land of Oz, which in my case was a lot better than being in Kansas. I was, however, seventy shades of yellow.

Ed and Rita took the lead for a stretch so Rita had a gate-opening stint but fortunately had nothing more than a bit of dust with which to contend.

Kingfisher Camp on the Nicholson River had no fish but it did have blessed green grass on which to camp and magnificent margaritas, knocked up by Ed to celebrate Barb and Phil’s anniversary. And it had hot showers, blessed, magnificent hot showers.

I wondered why Dorothy never needed a shower after the big whirlywind took Toto and her to the Land of Oz.

“Slap Ya Mama” was the secret ingredient for an authentic feast of Mexican tostadas in the unlikely setting of Boodjamulla, better known as Lawn Hill.

It was also where brother-in-law Phil turned out a fine lamb roast in the cooking gizmo, made from an old gas bottle in the Maryborough suburb of Granville. It roasts, grills and fries and would probably make you a nice cup of coffee if you asked it nicely.

It’s a versatile cooking arrangement particularly useful for areas where you are not allowed open fires – or when it would be unwise to light one.

“Slap Ya Mama” is a Louisiana brand of chilli mix that Ed and Rita bought with them from the States to treat us on the track. The result was divine (see recipe below).

With margarita sundowners and tostados, following the next night by lamb roast, we might have been close to the routes taken by old drovers but we were a long, long way from sharing their privations.

Tom Cole in his superb book Hell, West and Crooked devotes a chapter to describing the diet of the drover and explaining why those men who lived in the saddle were usually lean. Weevils were in the flour used for damper, the meat was either too fresh or going rotten and there was not a lot else. They ate only enough to survive, not enjoy.

We ate to enjoy. The tostadas, made with other authentic ingredients Ed and Rita had brought with them, were perfect.

We had another traditional snack for breakfast: tortillas fried with white cheddar filling.

Ed presented me with the rest of the “Slap Ya Mama”  chilli powder that I am learning to use carefully. Very carefully. They wrote out the recipe:

Tostadas

Ingredients: Corn tortillas (pronounce the “ll” as a “y”) or tostadas shells; ground beef (mince); chopped onion; chilli powder (If you can’t get “Slap Ya Mama” eat your heart out); cumin, garlic powder; salt and pepper; guacamole; refried beans; salsa; chopped tomatoes; shredded lettuce; sour cream.

Method: Brown mince with onion and add spices. Saute tortillas in oil until slightly crisp. Spread refried beans on tortillas, sprinkle a layer of mince on top and then layer guacamole, salsa, tomatoes, lettuce and sour cream.

Enjoy! And if you have any tortillas left, sprinkle them with cheese and fry them for breakfast.

ABOVE: We take it easy while Rita and Ed from San Diego conjure up a Mexican feast.
BELOW: Phil does a magic lamb roast on his magic gizmo.