Australian Outback Adventure - Day 6 - Ghost Towns

Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - Road Trip Through Ghost Towns

Way Outback Itinerary for Day 6:

No trip to the ‘Territory’ is complete without a visit to the Daly Waters Pub, an important watering hole for explorers and drovers in days gone by and now a great spot for a cold beer, a bit of history and a ‘fair dinkum outback experience’! Later in the day you can take a soak in the Mataranka Thermal Pools, a lush oasis fringed by paperbark trees and nearby where we camp overnight.

• Daly Waters Pub
• Mataranka Thermal Pools

John told us we could sleep in this morning, as we would not need to leave until 8:00 a.m., but I think our bio-clocks and the cacophony of morning bird sounds woke us while the stars were still twinkling overhead.  The birds here are amazing, day and night.  I got up to take pictures of the desert sunrise. 

By 7:00 a.m. everyone was dressed, fed, and ready to go so we hit the road.  More roadhouses and potty stops.  We passed by several small bush fires and in fhe middle of nowhere there was a police road block and random safety inspection.  Our driver was only obliged to show his lecense and we were on our way.

The brush blurred past us as we continued our journey up the Stuart Highway.  Brush Fires, Safety Check Points, and Truck Trains kept us entertained on this long day of driving.

Truck Trains

Move Over Buddy

Newcastle Waters Cattle Station

We stopped briefly in this little community, most of which is a ghost town remnants of a time in the 1930-1940s when stockmen would stop here for the night as they herded their cattle through to market.  There was enough water here for the herd.

Daly Waters Roadhouse Pub

We stopped at Daly Waters Roadhouse Pub for lunch, swim, and cold beer,  The inside of this roadhouse is filled with mementoes from travelers purposefully signed with names and dates, hung, tacked, and draped on posts,walls, and ceilings by collections of hats, shoes, patches, badges, t- shirts, license plates, paper currency, photo IDs, panties, and bras. The place was chaka with stuff!  Got to have some fun in  this desolation.

Outback or Bust!

Our group spent a couple of hours sitting in front of a large cooling fan in the shaded patio area where we grilled sausages and bacon for lunch.  And of course, nothing helps better to slide down sausages than a cold beer.  After that we submerged ourselves in a lovely little pool off of the bar.  Eventually, we packed up our gear and got back on the road.

We stopped a few more times for breaks along the way, one was an old telegraph station and an abandon airport strip that was used during the war and later as a fueling station for Qantas transcontinental and planes headed to Papua New Guinea. Those abandoned places are eerie as the corrugated metal panels that have broken from their bolts swing, creak, and clank in the wind.  

Our itinerary indicated that we would be visiting the Mataranka Thermal Pools today, but because of accommodation problems near Mataranka, our itinerary has changed a bit.  Instead we will be staying at the Pink Hotel...sounds interesting.

By late afternoon, we reached our evening encampment, at, the Pink Hotel and Caravan Park.  And yes it was pink!  The hotel, out buildings, camping cabins, camp kitchen....all pink.  Besides its pinkness the property had a mini zoo, train and plunge pool (above ground 4 foot high, 10 foot diameter tank) with cool clean filtered water.  The return water gushed back into the plunge pool via and overhead wide mouthed water hose.

Russ and I explored the little zoo, then while he took a train ride, I got into the plunge pool to cool off.  The pink camp kitchen was outback dirty.  I felt compelled to help John clean it up before we started dinner.  John swept up the ground and cleaned out the fridges while I washed off and wiped up tables, chairs, counters, sinks, toaster, teapot, fridge fronts.  By the time everyone returned from the train ride, the kitchen was cleaned up and ready for our chicken carbonara preparation.

Russ and I sat outside of the kitchen in patio chairs sipping wine coolers that we made from merlot and lime soda, while letting some of the other campers work on dinner.  John and Tarynt had built a campfire in a bar-b-que barrel for making the carbonara and pastas.  We had to move our  chairs back because it was blazing hot.  The meal was delicious.  Russ and I help with the cleanup.

We had been offered one of the pink camping cabins.  There was only one pink cabin available.  It had screened windows, two cots, and  four electrical outlets.  Age has its privileges I guess.  It was very tempting, but we turned it down, opting for the cooling breeze that would blow across the outback and skim over the top of our swags as we slept under the starligh just like the drovers of the past.