18th to end July Exploring around Ross River N.T.

Friday 18th
     A couple of photo's.

These two parrots visit occasionally,  they are Port Lincoln Ringneck's, there only seems to be a pair of them at any one time. 

 The other is our camp at this stage, looks like we have been here for a while doesn't it?

Saturday 19th

What can I say!! another beautiful sunrise.

 

Monday 21st

Having some fun while out walking Dot and Yip. Could this be an ancient rock painting??

 

Maybe not!

Yip and Dot are getting along great, enjoy taking their walks with me and rides in the car when ever we go out. Yip is becoming quite an attraction to other travellers and slowly becoming more used to people.

 

Wednesday 23rd

     ARLTUNGA

a pioneer village - alive and kicking during the gold rush days.

     We went to have a look today. 33km of gravel road, not too bad though.

We skipped the visitor information centre, too many NO! signs, (no pets, no camping, no fossicking) and drove out to the old police station and lock-up. The pictures above  are from this location, the buildings are fantastic, all made of the local slate rock, of which there is plenty of, even back when these were first built there wasn't much around in the way of trees or much vegetation at all apparently, to build with, so they are all rock buildings.

     We went another 57km to have a look at Ruby Gap, which is where the pioneers thought they would get rich on rubies, but they turned out to be only garnets and not worth as much as rubies.

     The road out to the gap left much to be desired!! Very rough and ready, but had some fun being rally drivers, (much to our bodies demise). When we got there we had my picnic lunch and turned back for the resort. On the way we came across these two cute donkeys.

 

They took little interest is us, but I had to get photo's.

     We carried on , it took us two and a quarter hours to travel the 80km back to the Ross highway intersection, making pretty slow travelling on the corrugated road, but we had another great day.

That's it for July, catch you in the next instalment of my story.



 

Driving out to the Red Centre Wednesday 9th

      Not much happening around the camp site, just day to day stuff but we have taken a couple of exploratory drives, as follows -


Wednesday 9th
     Started the day out just going out to the airstrip to watch a small plane land

to pick up one of the resort managers, having a sticky beak really, it was nice to see.
  



      Jim decided we would follow a track out into the wilderness, letting one of the resort people know where we were going before we went. I had no idea where we were going but Jim seemed to have a plan! We passed these trees on the way, they are Red River Gum, I had to photograph them - as usual for me -
     On we travelled, the scenery is so different, I keep forgetting we are in the middle of Australia, the red centre, it's called, I can certainly see why now.
     this piece of rock was one of many rock formations we came across, it typifies the sparse never ending spaces and dry terrain we saw all along the way.

     We travelled on a dry creek bed for some time through a gap in the range until we decided to turn back for the resort and camp before we ended up who knew where. We later found that we had gone about 60km from the resort into the edge of the Simpson desert.

     This piece of rock was lying in the creek bed and it looked like some sort of drawing or fossil formation or something similar, but it was only the rock in it's natural state.

      We had a great drive although next time we head off into the great unknown I will make sure I take a picnic basket, we had plenty of water but no food and our little trip to the airstrip ended up being a five and half hour drive.