Going south............Day 1 and 2............to Larrimah and Tennant Creek

 We left Darwin about 9am, on day 27 of our journey, to head south again. We were homeward bound,  and mostly retracing our northern route.

It was a day of driving, only stopping for a couple of small breaks and fuel top ups as we had our packed lunches on board. 

We detoured off the highway at Pine Creek for a look around and rest stop. We were surprised to see lots of caravans parked in the streets as others were stopping for a break too. 

We kept going south and the next stop was at Katherine for fuel. This is a much larger town, and the centre of business for many of the large cattle stations in the area. It was a sunny day with no clouds and a temperature of 31deg. This was the painted wall at the fuel station.

The Katherine river runs through the centre of the town, and this is the bridge over it.....

............and if you can see how far below the bridge the river is.........

...........a few years ago, the river flooded and came up over the bridge and flooded many of the shops in the main street.................

After we had refuelled, Barry wanted to show me a spot he had stayed at many years ago............called the Lower Level Park, which is just on the outer edge of the town.................

                                    ...............the Katherine river runs through this area................

...........and they are doing some renovation work at this site...........

........and I loved these flowering white bushes, but don't ask me what they are!!

We had intended making a stop at Mataranka and staying at Bitter Springs caravan park, after a friend had recommended it...................but good intentions don't always work out, and when we arrived found out the park was booked out!!!! So it was onto Plan B, and we kept going to the next place which turned out to be Larrimah, where we had stopped on the way up.

After booking into the park there, we enjoyed another meal at the Pink Panther Hotel and were entertained by a country singer again.

The next morning it was back on the road again, and we were surprised to see just how many caravans there were on the road..............

The weather had changed and this was the first night we had not needed the air conditioning on at night and the morning was very chilly.

 I took this photo of 4 vans ahead of us, and there were 2 behind us that you can't see in the photo. 

Just after I took this another 4 came around the bend travelling toward us. !!  It was certainly the caravan brigade!! But it is the peak holiday season for this part of the country. The grey nomads all head north for warmer weather, from June to September and dodge the cold weather in the south.

Their were also many triple road trains on the road, with loads of cattle heading north. We saw a lot of cattle in Export yards at the Darwin Port, so presume that a boat load of cattle were due to be exported overseas soon.

I loved these yellow flowering shrubs all along the road side, and sorry it is a but blurry, but hard to photograph as we are driving along. Not sure what they are, but have to say some sort of wattle as I could smell them as we drove by.

We stopped at Dunmarra for fuel, and and rest stop at Elliot. Renner Springs was another little dot on the map. Banka Banka station caravan park was full with a queue of vans waiting to get in. There was a rest stop at Attack creek with many vans camped by the side of the highway there. It was 30deg, blue sky and not a cloud in the sky.

The roads are long................

....and in many places have been damaged by recent rains, so repair work is underway.

We made a quick stop off the bitumen to The Pebbles. The car and caravan were covered in red dust after a drive on this road..............

 The Pebbles are similar to the Devil's Marbles that we had seen on the north journey..........but I didn't think these were as stunning..............

It was back onto the Stuart Highway again and our next stop was to be Tennant Creek. We had not booked ahead her either so wasn't sure whether we could get a space.........

....but it was ok, and we had soon got settled, leaving the car hooked up ready for take off in the morning.

That's all for this post. I will be back soon for the next edition of newsfromjude.

Blessings, 

From Jude