I did leave rather late this morning as I needed to pick up my forwarded mail from Sydney, fill in some paper work, looked for and found Westpac Bank, dropped my deposit slips into their mailbox, filled up with Diesel and by the time I drove out of Town, heading North West towards the border of the Northern Territory, about 200km away, it was just after 10.30.
Many times I have heard people say how monotonous Australia's landscape can be, that everything looks the same, flat colours, too much light etc. etc. I can't say that I agree with that view, as I see the landscape change constantly, if often only subtly. Today I saw a variety of different outlooks, from scrub showing a lot of red dirt in between the grass and then miles and miles of Savannah flat country, yellow grass to the horizon, the horizon being a cloudless blue in every direction, no interruption to the view, almost like looking at the horizon from a ship in calm seas. Whatever direction I turn my head, the same, no-one ahead of me, no-one seemingly behind me, the road is all mine, traveling along at around 100kmh.
Take a real wide view...
A bit later the landscape changes back to scrub with lots of termite mounds, this time they seem to be much larger, man-size and twice as wide. Roadkill on the section coming in and traveling NT was way down, I saw only two fresh carcasses with large eagles having a feast. There must be a reason. It can't be explained by the traffic as the speed limit from Queensland is 110kmh and in NT its 130kmh. I'm thinking, maybe they have run them all down already, or the 'roos are smarter this time of the border, or maybe something different altogether...
I've turned on my aircon after I left Camooweal as the sun was starting to make a real impact in my driver's cabin. Closed all windows and while Australia rolled past outside my window, I listened to L.v.B. 6th Symphony, turned up to underline the scenery outside.
I'm really enjoying this!
Camooweal is represented by a 'larger' dot on my map, but, in fact its just a small line-up of houses, a filling station on each end of town, a Police Station somewhere in between, a small shop doing double-duty as filling station and Post Office. I bought an icecream to keep me cool, topped up my fuel tank and sat in the grass under a tree to take a rest.
The campsite at Barkly Homestead
No comments:
Post a Comment