Tuesday 29th August, and we are at Mango Farm on the Daly River, having arrived here Sunday, after driving alongside several hot burn-offs, and roadside fuel loads that are scary, due to the previous very wet, Wet Season. Although not far from Douglas Hot Springs there is a humidity factor here, and as the official Bureau of Meteorology recording station, we had 37 degrees C, yesterday, and a heavy smoke overcast last night and this morning. www.mangofarm.com.au
Put the boat in the water yesterday afternoon and spent an hour trolling lures without any luck yet; however both Sunday and yesterday there were other fishermen filleting Barramundi. which they are catching on cherebine live baits. Since filling up the vehicle with LPG at Katherine, we have been unable to top up again, as the bowser has gone from the Lazy Lizard at Pine Creek, all the bowsers have gone from Emerald Springs on Stuart Highway, and Hayes Creek all the bowsers are locked due to finance difficulties. So we are running on petrol which we can replenish locally and conserving our remaining LPG. In fact bought unleaded yesterday to mix outboard fuel, 179.5 cents litre at Daly River pub and 150.5 at the Mission Station, same brand, same owners, couple of kilometres apart????(bought ours at the Mission) But the pub gets the tourists!!!!!!! Also an odd coincidence with the current emphasis on LPG as an auto fuel that this is the first trip since the 1980s that we have had to run on petrol, and not been able to get LPG.
Saturday 26th at Douglas Hot Springs NT. 32 degrees C. inside the van, and about to have another soak in the river up till time for our evening meal. The social life is as always here concentrated on sitting in water, hopefully at your own comfort temperature and engaging in all manner of conversation with those currently sitting with you in the river. This has had an added interesting aspect this past week by groups of children from a Darwin College being put through a gentle form of survival training. Eighty children of different ages, races, cultures, and domestic backgrounds had been picked out to quite deliberately form the greatest possible representative mix of youngsters from the College. The youngsters were inquisitive and asked the tourists all manner of questions, and the senior aged tourists took an active interest in everything the groups of young people were being required to do. As the overall group of eighty were broken up into smaller groups, and the tourists also were coming and going there was always someone fresh to give a different perspective on things. This campout was the first in a series of three, the next to be two weeks duration, then the final one at Lake Argyle in WA, to include canoeing, absaling, and other more demanding skills.
Our hosts at Daly River Mango Farm are Gary & Rhonda Higgins and Gary was concerned when we arrived that the site we had previously camped on was occupied and he was busy seeking a suitable alternative site, but Rhonda heard our conversation and advised that the site was at that moment empty. Then Gary said there are people intending to have that site in 2007, but we will worry about that then!!!!! They had left the sign in this photo. However we reassured him that this time we must be home this October, but they certainly do welcome you back.
