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The local Aboriginal community – village – family – have an open day / fete / sports carnival / concert. Its in Arnham Land and for the open day the usual permits are not required. We got distracted at humpty doo music shack and arrived just in time for lunch – and munched down a buffalo burger. We were too late for the bush tucker. Bugger!

The community is very small just a few streets, a football oval, youth centre, basketball court, school, grocery store, etc.  and we saw the kids paintings at the school and we saw the local artists studio and gallery, The fibre arts were amazing. Dilly bags and baskets woven from palms, reids and grasses etc.

In the afternoon (in the scorching heat) local AFL teams had a round robin with about 20 minute halves. One side of the field has a giant tree with a colony of fruit bats. The opposition team and suppupporters we underneath it. It was pretty noisy. We saw the final which was between the local team St John’s and another team.  It was a dramatic match. In the second half the St John’s were found playing with 19 players – after a breif head count – all their points were taken. With 8 minutes to go they needed 12 point – 3 kicks and they got them. The crowd were on their feet. But in the dying seconds the opposition got a behind and the come back was dashed. A good game though – and everyone thanked the ref. Who was running around in 30+ heat for 2 hours! what a champion – what a tache.

Everything seemed to slow down after the football and the locals went home and us tourist were either making tracks or sorting out their beds for the night. Jono and I wondered across to the wetlands – and watched the sun setting on the rocks. We found a giant mango tree and dragon flies zooming around everywhere.

On our way back to the troopy – we saw a band was setting up on the back of the truck and this lovely line of kids, sitting in front of the truck ready to watch the show. Later in the evening the band struck up. The first band were the Sunrise band. They have been playing for 20 years. The lead guitarist was a live wire – playing with his teeth and behind his head (and pretty good too).

The second band  we saw earlier. They were great. After a song or two an old lady got up and started dancing – follwed by an older fella and then everyone up. They were singing in local language and the music and harmonies sounded great. We got up and had a dance and we got talking to a local fella who told us what the songs were about. He was lovely. The band he said were the Gunbalanya’s version of the Back St Boys. They were called the Bunyani band and Bunyani means boy/man. There were 15 of them on the back of a semi-trailer -and did look the part. All dressed in jeans with white t-shirts or singlets. Towards the end an elder lady got up on the truck and spoke to the crowd. They were laughing and our mate told us she was the Clan leader – he calls her Mum. And she was telling everyone what a great day they’d had and now its time to go to bed. So the band played 2 more songs and everyone went to bed.

(Everyone except for old mate with the dodgem cars – he was playing Kidd Rock and co. for another hour so. Or so Jono told me – i was fast asleep.

Mt Isa - A long way from everywhere

I didn’t have a lot of expectation or preconceived imaginings about the Isa.

I had heard of the place – knew the John Williamson song, and it has recently been in the news as the towns Mayor made headlines, inviting all aesthetically challenged women to visit.  As the town is proportioned something like 8 men to every women. i.e the blokes aren’t picky. I believe the local ladies were not impressed.

So we roll into town yesterday morning – and were confronted by the mine. it dominates the skyline with a massive chimney and other stacks.
This isn’t just a mining town – its a mine with a little town attached.
This country community is dominated by the big food chains. The first maca’s kifka, and pizza hut combo we’ve seen since leaving cairns. I guess they are following the truck loads of cash that follow the truck loads of copper, lead, zinc and silver being hauled out of this place.

The mine and the town

We checked into one of the caravan parks. Nothing flash but very full with some very permanent guests – and decided to head to the pub on the corner for a drink. It is Friday afternoon and they look like they do cheap meals.
The pub was terrific.
We spent the first couple of hours talking to each other – watching the footy and having a bite to eat. The bubble was broken by an Aboriginal lady who sat with us. She was from mornington island and just loved the band. The band were so good we couldn’t really hear each other properly – but she was visiting her daughter and grandchildren for the school holidays.
As for the band – they were a classic covers set up of drum machine, guitar man and sexy singer.
He was into singing his dire straits – which left her to add some percussion and shake her bootie.
The mostly male crowd was warming up.
I guess the sight of a young female moving and shaking is enough to get their attention – but the songs she sang amped the sexual tension to a new high.

‘When i think about you I touch my self’

‘Some like it hot’

‘Hit me with your best shot’

‘How deep is your love’ and some classic Guns and Roses.

At some point the bloke started a rendition of ‘The boys lit up’ – and from the bar we hear a taunt – just let the girl sing… followed by much cheering and laughter.

We headed out to the beer garden for some peace and quiet (but finding none) and made fast friends with big Rus and his best mate James. They were lovely fellas asking us how we were findiing mt isa. I said we only arrived today.. So they let us know how they liked it. Mount Isa is the best place in the world.

Mt Isa Rodeo - 7,8,9 August 2009

It wasn’t that you could earn 170K with 5 days on and 2 off. But i don’t remember hearing much else,
apart from the Mt Isa Rodeo – which does seem to be the highlight of the year.
But recently the Rodeo had been dulled down due to lower alcohol beer and pre-mixes after 6pm.
Still it seems everyone was looking forward to it.

We spoke to Rus and James for the rest of the evening and were introduced to their many mates and invited to a bbq and james place tonight. What lovely country hospitality. Though the way were feeling today… I’m not sure we’ll make it.

We made it back to the van park with our wobbly boots, and were treated to a night of random drunks screaming on their way home. The bird chorus at dawn and then the horrid realisation of how much we drank and sore heads, luckily we had a little snuggle went back to bed and felt much betterer the second time round.

day two-hundred-and-two of the Big Trip
Distance traveled: 11363 kms, 280058 on new Odometer
Fuel used: 1232 litres unleaded, 166 diesel

After a 3 month hiatus in Tamworth getting a 4-wheel-drive vehicle set up (1995 troop carrier with crazy pop-top conversion, solar panels permenantly attached to the roof, one large seat-and-storage steel box bolted to the interior, another large steel storaage container also bracing our fridge to the side) and getting an ecommerce website created for a client (launching soon), we’re finally on the road again.

The panel van is out as we’re heading North into territory that will require a 4 wheel drive to get us to all the interesting spots – and to get us out again. The panno clocked up 10670kms with a final odometer reading of 243153. In our initial travels we used of 1232 litres of unleaded petrol, which we’ll be carbon-neutralising in the future… and from now on we’ll be counting up all the litres of diesel instead.

We’ve been on the road since Mother’s Day, taking in the Big Bowl in both Armidale and Lake Cathie, and inbetween the Big Chook in Moonbi and the Big Eight Ball in Port Macquarie. Big Things aside we can highly recommend Apsley Falls outside of Walcha – over the millennia the granite walls have be worn away to be wider at the bottom than the top all through the gorge, and the effect is quite dizzying – not so much that the walls are falling in on you, but that you are falling backwards yourself. Quite a disconcerting experience when you’re hundreds of feet up on a small wooden walkway jutting out into the void!

The trip along the Oxley Highway from Armidale to Port Macquarie isn’t to be recommended for those with hangovers or small travel-sick children (we only had the former) as the road winds and twists constantly around the mountains of the great dividing range – and while the view is spectacular, the constant motion is nauseating after an hour or so. On the way though you can stop off at Wauchope and step back in time to the 1880s at Timbertown – a town within a town – a small village in the woods with narrow dirt roads and rows of wooden buildings with boarded pavement attached, very wild-west in feel. Everyone working there (in the blacksmiths, the wood turners, the wood mill, the train station, the newsagents) is in period dress and acts accordingly, although they still charge 2009 prices. It’s pretty quiet there in the week, but I imagine weekends or better yet school holidays brings a greater number of townsfolk out in character and a hustle and bustle to the muddy streets. If for nothing else its worth it just to ride the steam train around town.

In the last few days we’ve been to the Trail Bay Jail at South West Rocks: not just your average australian convict jail, this grim building housed hundreds of Australian Citizens who happened to be first-generation immigrants from Germany, jailed purely for no crime other than their place of birth… World War One was underway and Australia was taking no chances. Unsurprisingly the jail was not required during World War Two as the government saw fit to deport all the prisoners back to Germany upon the end of the war, as if they were not secret dissidents when they were locked up, they certainly would have been by the time they were released.

Kempsey and bought ourselves some decent hats at last – Akubras of course, seeing as the factory is in Kempsey, but like a couple of nerds we ended up getting the same hat, same colour. Will this lead to matching raincoats, jeans and tracksuits into old age? I hope not…

We’re currently in Scott’s Head, about to go further up the coast to Coffs Harbour to get a caravan place to attach a large water tank to the underside of our vehicle before going anywhere too remote – a quiet spot with a good beach, lots of campers but a very relaxed atmosphere.

While the fires continue to rage in Victoria I’m thankful at how fortunate we were not to have timed our trip slightly differently – almost every area of Victoria we explored has been affected by bushfire to a greater or lesser degree: the Dandenong ranges, the Grampians, Wilson’s Promontory, the Yarra Valley, Ballarat, Bacchas Marsh, Dunkeld, Sale, and along the Hume and Newell highways that we took out of Victoria to return to Tamworth for Australia Day.

There a doubtless many such long-shot “it could have been us” stories out there, but sadly it doesn’t affect the huge loss of life that has occured.

We’re currently back in Tamworth looking at a 4 wheel drive that’ll take us North off the track in the Northern Territory and beyond.

Just before that we’d been hanging in Melbourne for a month, taking our time (perhaps too much time) to explore the big city of little alleyways over Christmas and New Years. We’ll write Melbourne up soon, but in the meantime we’ve uploaded new articles for the semi-demolished Cape St. George Lighthouse in the JBT, Booderee National Park also in the Jervis Bay Territory and a postcard to Ryan from Newcastle.