Day 61
Daly Waters - Barkly Homestead
"ohh out on the highway, ohh out on the airwaves, yeah yeah yeah yeah. Over the radio, your heart starts beatin now....."
Hit my first kangaroo today.... I had no chance of swerving to avoid it, the thing was on a mission to cross the road and we happened to be in its way! I knocked it clear off the road too - lucky it was only one of the small Euro Roos - only damage done was a dislodged light cover that just popped back into place.
We left Daly Waters just before 8 for our trip South to 3 Ways . Other than clocking the roo, it was an uneventful drive. We fuelled at 3Ways and turned left heading towards Queensland.
Just past the turnoff, there was a faded Telecom Australia sign that read " Darwin to Melbourne in 1.9 seconds" it must have been from the late 80's or early 90's as the Telecom logo was the mission brown with the egg yolk yellow. I had to laugh - 1.9 seconds these days would be a sackable offence! You'd have no customers!
The night before at Daly during the entertainment, Chilli, Daly's resident comedian/singer had told us a yarn about how gullible Americans were when it came to travelling the outback. He told us a story about how his mate Terry and he were driving some American girls about the outback and they had asked what the Radio Repeater Stations were. Terry told them they were cattle pacifiers. Because of the big storms and heavy rains they get up in the top end, the cattle can become very unsettled and stressed and so these big antenna things are placed all around to play classical music to calm the cattle! Of course believed 100% -awesome. He also told us that they were told that the windmills were cattle coolers!
We had lunch at the rest area at Attack creek where the explorer Stuart was turned back by hostile natives and sickness on his first attempted expedition to traverse South to North. No such hostiles today - just travelers like us stopping to spend a penny or to have a bite to eat.
We rolled into Barky at about 4pm - a pretty big days drive all up - 570ks . We have a few of them ahead of us .
Tomorrow we leave the NT and head to Queensland - heading for Mount Isa first and then the Gulf.