There is nothing quite like an early morning swim at Mataranka. While Jenny kept sleeping, I headed down for a morning soak. With the steam rising off the pool, it was too good to get out and pack up the caravan. An hour later it was time to get out after having the pool virtually to myself for that time.

One of the first stops of the day was to the Gorrie Airfield, an airfield from the WW2 era which has been long abandoned and the scrub has taken over but there is a geocache there. This also was an opportunity to put the offroad caravan through its paces with skinny dirt tracks, bull dust holes and trees down. It didn’t take too long to get in but I decided to take the shortest track out which ended up not being the quickest having to remove fallen trees and to do some off road bush bashing.

Our original plan for the day was to stop at Daly Waters Pub but as it was just down the road from Mataranka we arrived at lunchtime which is way too early for us apprentice grey nomads, but would be perfect timing for the seasoned grey nomads so we continued on our journey.

The next plan was to stay at Renner Springs after catching up with the guys coming home on motorbikes. We both managed to get phone coverage – us at Elliott and them at HiWay Inn and came up with the Plan B. On arrival at Renner Springs there was no phone coverage and no spots in the caravan park to suit our van and still at least 3 hours of daylight, so we continued on our journey. The bikes ended up staying at Renner Springs but it sounded like we made the better choice to continue on.

Our Plan C was to camp at Banka Banka Station but with still daylight left and only 100 kilometres to Tennant Creek we continued on our journey. There is a pattern starting to form here.

Plan D and the final plan for the day was Tennant Creek. We arrived well before sunset (that doesn’t happen all that often). After refuelling it was around the corner to the Outback Caravan Park for the night.

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It was not our biggest drive but was not far off it with a distance of 650 kilometres to travel from Fitzroy Crossing through to Kununurra. So it was up early to get on the road but not too early. We woke at 6:30 am but decided even though it was daylight it was still too early. We eventually got on the road at 8:15 am.

Again there were plenty of cattle and boab trees in the morning but that gave way to more horses than cattle in the afternoon.

We had a break for fuel and lunch at Halls Creek. At the Shell servo in the Main Street, there was a queue to get to the fuel bowsers but I found the truck bowsers around the back and they were empty so no waiting around here.

Once again we arrived just before sunset – nothing unusual there as we like to use all the available daylight (well in the afternoon anyway).

At least we won’t be doing an overnighter as we will be staying Kimberleyland Caravan Park for a couple of days. The park is nice spot on the water at Lake Kununurra but electricity dropped out a few times both for the caravans and the cabins.

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A pretty cruisey day today with a 400 kilometre drive to Fitzroy Crossing from Broome. The weather was perfect – not too hot and not too cold and a slight breeze.

Apart from the road, there were a lot more cattle, road trains and boab trees of all sizes. Another thing there were a lot of was termite mounds. These ones are different than those in the Northern Territory as they resemble Jabba the Hutt rather than the tall spear like shape.

Single laned bridges started making appearances today and being big has its advantages with cars tending to wait for me to come through.

We stopped for lunch at Willare Roadhouse which has now taken the mantle for the most expensive fuel so far at $1.89 a litre for diesel. The price dropped 50 cents to $1.39 at Fitzroy Crossing.

Today was one of those rare days where we arrived in daylight and it was good to see the Fitzroy River Lodge caravan park in daylight. It is an impressive place with the amenities up on a hill with the sites all radiating out from it. The sites are also grass.

It was a bit overcast for the sunset and a few drops of rain starting dropping. A quick look at the radar and it appears we have driven into another tropical cloud stream. How much water drops this time, we will have to wait and see.

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