26/07/2004 - Stage 2, Day 59, Page 2 of 3 - Bourketown to Limmen Bight River, NT

From Bourketown we headed off west again along Savannah Way. That night we pulled up at Hells Gate Roadhouse for the night. The roadhouse has recently changed management and the new folks were pretty good for a chat. The cook recommended that we head to Borroloola the next day via the Calvert Road and the Tablelands Hwy, but we decided to stick with the Savannah Way. Good thing we did too, because there was plenty to see.

Not far out of Hells Gate we came across a section of road that was covered in locusts! As we drove along they bounced up and we hit stacks of them. There were locust corpses going everywhere! We took a couple of movies, the first one is the best, but it really doesn't do it much justice.

P1010084.avi (1.16MB)


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After the locusts we came across a black headed python on the road so we pulled up for a few pics.








Next we crossed the boarder into the Northern Territory.


Not far down the road we saw a feral pig (a boar). After stopping for the pictures bradley tried to run it over, but had no luck.




This is the scenery along the road approaching Echo Gorge.


We stopped for a look at echo gorge. Definatly worth a look if you pass by, but we forgot to take pictures! Sorry Sylv! We did notice that one of the locust was still parked up on our bonnet, so we took a couple of pictures of it.




Camped that night at Borraloola. Not much chop though. The pub was fenced in like a prison, which gave the place an eerie feeling. It gave bradley an even more eerie feeling when they wanted $4.80 each for stubbies of local beer at the bar. Dad asked me to find a friend that he'd met some years ago and to say hello to her and her daughters. His friend Nettie Miller turned out to be in Darwin having kidney dialisis and one of her daughters had been murdered. What a place! Decided against sticking around the next day! Packed up and headed out of Borraloola on 16/07/2004. Left Borraloola on the Carpentaria Hwy and turned right onto Ryan's Bend Road about 26km out of town. We followed that for about 63km before turning right onto Nathan River Road which headed north towards Roper Bar. This road was about the best section of road we travelled on between Cairns and Darwin. There were quite a few creek crossings and some really great spots to stop for a look-see. Took this picture looking up a creek as we drove through it.


The best spot we stopped at along the way was the Southern Lost City. It wasn't on any of the maps, but the turnoff was just north of the Lorella Springs turnoff. This is the turnoff sign.


The place was about 4km down a dirt track off the road. It was really beautiful! A positively AWESOME place to camp, but there was no water there, so you'd have to bring your own. There were hundreds of lovely huge red rock pillars which you could walk amongst. Amongst the pillars were some lovely white-trunked eucalypts.






Bradley offered to climb one of them and pose on the top.








And just incase you're not already bored, here's some more pics...




Before leaving we drove back away from the Lost City and took a panorama shot showing how the place is in the middle of relatively flat boring land. You'll need to scroll across to see all of this picture, coz it's pretty wide.


Next stop was about half an hour further up the road. It too was not marked on any of our maps, but the sign said Butterfly Springs. It was a pretty spot with a formal camping area set out, but nowhere near as good as the lost city. There was a fairly tall waterfall flowing into a lilly filled pond and a really classy toilet to see.






We camped that night at a really awesome spot. Not much further up the road is a turnoff to Limmen Bight Fishing Camp and it's about a 25km long track off to the right. The turnoff is at Cox River. The river is really huge and runs straight out into the Gulf of Carpentaria. There is several km of river frontage on which you can camp, so it's pretty easy even in peak season to get a lovely private site. There were also a number of boat ramps and most of the campers had a tinney for fishing. On top of this, it was only $10 per vehicle per night, which is pretty cheap compared to a lot of the other camping grounds we've stopped at. We tried out hand at fishing that night, but alas, we failed again as usual!

Didn't get a picture of our actual camp site, but got up early the next morning and took some pics of the sunrise over the river.