We headed off in convoy to Arltunga Historical Reserve. This is officially Central Australia's first town born out of the Gold Rush. We had a little drive around and checked out some of the old ruins and old cemeteries. Chloe & I are fascinated with old cemeteries, something we have inherited from my Mum. After a little look around it was time to head off to Gem Tree, it was decided we would all make our own way to there as we all wanted to spend different amounts of time at Arltunga. To get from Arltunga to Gem Tree we had to drive on the Binns Track, quite a famous track for these parts of the woods. A rough road driving through different cattle stations. Whilst on this trip it has become quite a joke about how cows are attracted to our car and sure enough around a corner and there waiting for us was 6 cows. We slowed and waited for them to pass before we could continue. Further along the track the most magnificent Big Red Kangaroo came hopping across the road and off into the distance. I don't think I will ever get sick of seeing the wild life out here.
Linda was a couple of kilometres in front of us and radioing back anything we needed to watch out for. Over the radio came a message pulling over for a road train, and another, and another and another. 4 road trains on a very slow dirt track, they are huge! Fully loaded with cattle. We pulled over and watched them come around the corner to pass us and then get engulfed in their red dirt, what's a bit more red dust in the nooks & crannies. But quite a site to see.
Finally arrived at Gem Tree and caught back up with Dan, Mel & Family & Steve & Nadia who had been off getting repairs or having some R & R from the bumpy dirty tracks.
We had booked into baked potato night along with a couple of the other families, so headed down to the billabong for some delicious baked spuds followed by a game of pademelon bowling. Pademelons are a fruit which are good for nothing, they grow all over the sides of the road in the Northern Territory & are too seedy to eat. The object of this game was to select a pademelon write your name on the fruit and bowl it similar to lawn bowls to earn points. It came down to a drawn game after the second round between Matt & Steven. Game was getting serious, I was so bad at this game that I won't mention where my melons ended up haha. Anyway back to the final round. Matt bowled his pademelon and it somehow came back around and stopped closest to the pin. Matt was the winner of Pademelon Bowling! He won a free night in a powered site but we are hoping to get this prize changed for something else as we can't stay longer & not sure when we will get back here.
At the baked potato night we met a young German Backpacker who is spending 9 months riding his bike around Australia. He left Tasmasnia in March & has made it up here! Crazy but he would see a lot of this big big country.
Early night for tomorrow we are off to so some real fossicking for Garnets. This is something I have been looking forward to the most. My Dad got his love if fossicking up here & I'm hoping to find something I can take back for him to cut & polish for me.
Today's log was written by Di.
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