Troopy Travels

Kalkarindji - A Last Goodbye

We recently found out that there was a type of social club at Kalkarindji. A small bar that opens for a short time each day to allow people to have a drink or two. They have pool tables, some hot food and beer.

This being the closest wateringhole to Lajamanu (110kms up the Lajamanu road) we decided that we needed to investigate this place before we left and that it would be fitting to share the moment with a few friends before we left Lajamanu.

A couple of others in Laj happened to be leaving at around the same time, so by the time it was organised we had a bit of a party.

7 of us squeezed into Chris’ mighty Pajero and bounced up the road, singing, laughing and sharing the shit along the way.

At Kalkarindji we were a little apprehensive when we reached the bar. It was fully fenced off and we werent sure of the reception we would recieve. But, of course, we were ushered in and immediately felt at home in the place.

After a few beers and a getting my arse kicked at pool a few times, we decided to take some pictures. Here is one of the group of us, settling in for our first beers

Here is me with one of the local pool sharks :) and if you have keen eyesight you may see one of the other pool sharks hiding between the two of us….isnt that right Bradley, hehe

We also met a couple of the Kalkaridji elders. This gentleman in picture below kept us amused with stories of the area and ensured we felt welcome at thier social club. He was very keen for us to return and bring our friends…which Im sure the other Lajamanu folk would be happy to do.

All up we had a wonderful time and all to soon the bar was closing and people were ushering us out. Between Kalkarindji and Dugeragu (5 minutes from Kalkarindji) is a nice swimming hole, so we decided to cool off there before heading back to Lajamanu.

What we found was a beautiful river with plenty of rocks to laze about on. I got busy swimming and encouraging Anneliese to jump in. See the slideshow pics. We really liked that spot and at the end of the day we had to agree that as far as send offs go, that had to be one of the best. In only a few days we would be on the road to Whyalla, likely never to return to Lajamanu.

Footy Finals!

Roo’s Vs Magpies in the Lajamanu showdown!

What an exciting day. Everyone turned out for this game. The dirt oval was painted up ready (the first time we had seen line markings on the oval), cars were painted up….even people were painted up. There was excitement in the air.

I dont know if Ive mentioned this before, but these kids can certainly play footy. Ive never seen people jump so high, kick so far (even without boots at times) and play so hard, they love this game and you can certainly see it….why isnt there an NT AFL team? Cause they would kick everyones arse is why.

Here is our favourite team getting ready, the big pep talk before the match begins

By the way, thier coach is Jonathon, a guy I worked with in the warehouse. Good bloke and has many footy wins up his sleeve.

The kids love the footy as much as the adults and many of them got painted up for this match. Again, there are some great pictures of the kids in the slideshows section, but here is a sampler

Thats the footy oval behind them, its dirt…some rocks. Not the sort of place you would expect to see a footy final happening. But this IS the desert remember.

Sambo Revisited

People come and go in Lajamanu. While working in the after hours store one evening a lovely couple came in that we insantly took a liking to. Chris and Lindell were a very happy couple that shared a lot in common with Anneliese and I.

We decided one weekend to take Chris and Lindell to visit Sambo waterhole. It was rainy season and so we were a bit dubious about the state of the tracks leading to the waterhole, but decided to give it a run anyway. A bit of 4wding would do us good.

We loaded the troopy up with bbq equipment, beer and passengers and took off up the road. It wasnt long after turning off the main road that we found the road becoming progressively worse, slippery mud tugging the car and slipping the wheels from under us. But we soldiered on. Eventually coming to a large lay of water across the road, Chris jumped out and immediately started plotting a path through the bush that was relatively dry.

It turned out his path worked wonders and we got through relatively unscathed (barring one incident when I didnt listen to the man and very nearly got the troopy bogged, a quick let down of the tyres got us out first time though). The road from then on was a little boggy, but pretty good otherwise…lucky for Chris who by this time was looking like a lady in a day spa getting a mud bath.

Getting to Sambo we immediately cracked open a well earned beer and took some photos

and of course I had to have a turn

After we took photos, Chris went scouting while the ladies had a chat and I went for a swim. About the time I decided to start cooking lunch the ladies went for a swim (and Chris was still scouting).

It was a really nice relaxing day. Not too hot, the water was lovely, the food was good, the beer cold. I decided it was time for me to go walkabout and find some nice pics to take…of course, they are currently residing in the slideshow section of the website. But I thought Id put this one up for view. I was playing with this picture a bit later on the computer and just by using an infra red filter in the photo editing program I got this nice tree and river scene to look like some wierd water fountain. I found it quite interesting and decided I need to play with this stuff a little more…what do you think?

Our trip home was fine, the heat of the day had dried the roads up enough that we had no problems at all and the GPS made it easy for us to follow our track back through the boggy patch.

Mystery

Anneliese and I had heard of a really nice waterhole called Neeve Gorge, up near Kalkarindji. Apparently this place is a really nice spot to camp, so we decided its time to head up there before we leave and have a look around.

We packed the troopy and headed off, we checked the map before leaving and had the GPS with us. The plan was to head to Kalkarindji and then turn in about 12kms past there. We drove up and down that road past Kalkarindji looking for the turnoff, but with no luck. The GPS was no help because I forgot to put the waypoints in. So we decided to hook the GPS up to the laptop and use the moving map to help us find the way….hmmm, trouble was I forgot to bring the cord to join the GPS to the laptop computer.

As a last resort we went back to Kalkarindji, the only person we could find that could offer help was an old Aboriginal man walking down the road. We spent a good 10 minutes chatting to this guy, and left having pretty much no clue as to what we talked about. None the wiser we reviewed our options…head back to Laj or find somewhere else.

We had heard talk of a place called Mystery Waterhole. Apparently from the Laj turnoff onto the Buntine Hwy, we turned right and headed off to just before the second cattle grid on the road. It looked like a real small runoff and we werent sure about this, but gave it a shot anyway. Heading down that way and through 2 gates, we ended up on a very rocky decline into a valley. This matched the description we remembered, so we continued on.

Rounding a small rise we found a group of young people camped with tents, trailers and boats…looks like we were on the right track. We headed up the road looking for a nicer quieter spot and eventually came to the end of the track, and some Lajamanu people that we knew. We headed back to about halfway between the two spots and setup camp.

Once setup we went to have a chat to the Laj folk and enjoyed a drink or two with them, before it got time to go and cook dinner.

That night, we were just starting to get to sleep, when the young folk down the road started up. Music playing, grog swilling, farting, swearing and boats racing up and down the river. This continued for hours and in the end I gave up trying to sleep and decided to have a cuppa by the waning fire. It was a nice bright night, so I started playing with the camera, taking photos of the moon and clouds.

The next day we didnt hang around long. We packed the car and headed down to the river for a look. Mystery is on the edge of the Victoria River near to the point on the map known as 10 mile. Its a lovely spot, especially for boats. lots of green grass and plenty of water.

Apparently, there is great fishing there as well. (Anneliese told me to add this).

On the way back we noticed heaps of black Galahs around everywhere. Hundreds of them. Of course we only managed to snap pics of a couple of them. But here is a sample for your enjoyment.

The rest of the journey was pretty normal and not worth mentioning :)

Back in time

Time to go back in time a bit. I was going through putting all the photos onto the website (see the slideshows section on the front page of the website) that we hadnt added yet. There were heaps more than I realised and I noticed there were a few from before we left Lajamanu.

So, lets go back in time (play the Twilight Zone theme now)….

Whyalla

Whyalla. The place of my birth (Stuart, that is…I forgot I was logged in as Anneliese).

It was good to get back there and say gudday to the family. Mum put us up for a week while we prepared for a week with the kids and got the troopy sorted out again.

I was really surprised at how good it felt to be greeted by the family again. Mum had everyone over for a bbq one night. But even before then family members were popping over to say hello and welcome us back, it was so nice of everyone. We got invited to greet the newest member of the family and then when it was getting close for us to leave we had people popping around again to say goodbye.

Seeing whyalla again brought back a lot of memories, we took the troopy up mount lofty, walked along the beachfront and drove around the old haunts. Its a nice little town and probably about the right sized place for Anneliese and I. But our time there was very short before we had to head back up to Alice Springs to see my kids and show them a bit of this ’stuff’ we have been doing for the past year.

More on that soon :)

Fuel

Oh! Before I go on with more travelling stories. I just wanted to share my experiences with Bio Diesel while at Lajamanu.

The takeaway shop at Laj threw out about 20 litres of oil from thier deep fryers each week. I decided that I could put all that oil to better use, so I began saving it up and got a book on biodiesel…http://www.tasmanenergy.com.au/biodiesel.htm

I had already done a test batch from the info provided on this site and it all looked pretty good and easy. The book confirmed I had done it right and gave me the confidence to get stuck into it properly.

Right from the get go, I noticed a definite power increase from using bio diesel. I also noticed better fuel economy. Neither were much, but it was there and considering it cost me around 0.50 a litre to make I was pretty happy with the result.

Most times I would only use about 1/3rd to 1/2 a tank of bio diesel, more because I just never had enough made than anything else. I found I had to empty the water trap on the fuel filter a couple of times, to drain out some glycerin that had got in there. I changed the filters after about 4000klms and they were pretty gluggy, but I had expected that. I had expected it to clean my system out a bit and figured the first couple of filter changes wouldnt be too far apart, but also I wasnt allowing the mix to sit for long and so that added a bit more to the mix.

When we left Laj I had a full tank of only my own made bio diesel. I also had another 20ltr drum on the roof for later. We had absolutely no problems the whole way and she performed beautifully. The first fuel stop with no bio diesel at all in her had me noticing again the difference in economy and performance. its funny but even having only 20 ltrs in a tank of normal fuel made the difference I reckon.

So there it is, I certainly feel that if you have the time and space, playing with bio diesel is worthwhile. .Maybe next time we stop for work for a while Ill be able to take it up again, but while on the road its simply not practical.

 Anyway, time to go to bed, speak to you all again soon.

Old News

Well, as the title suggests, this is probably old news to many of you now.

We have left Lajamanu. Things didnt really go as we had hoped and so we called it quits after 6 months there. A pity really as we had been really enjoying the community and had made some new friends…but thats life eh?

Leaving Laj we headed south to Rabbit Flat Roadhouse for a cuppa. Then Yuendemu, Alice Springs and was intending to stay the night at Marla. Got to Marla around 8:00pm and found out they had no accomodation. We had a car full of gear and couldnt camp that night, so we went to the next town, Cadney Park as we had found accomodation there. Funnily enough, Cadney Park was pretty nice, it seems most people miss it in favour of Marla and yet the accomodation there was quite nice, the roadhouse had good food and was well stocked and prices were not unreasonable.

Leaving Cadney we headed onto Whyalla the next day, it was a rushed trip (2 days from Laj to Whyalla isnt bad) as we only had a week to spend with my mum before heading back to Alice Springs to see my kids for a week.