Gypsy Soul Tour Diary - We're in the NT

8^th August 2010

That morning at the camp site not far from NT, we had all awoke taking care of our morning ablutions and then Freddy vomited up his casserole from the night before! ... as I watched on with motherly care, I thought I couldn handle it. Then, just as Freddy finished, uh oh,  I start retching and vomiting. It wasn’t funny at that moment, but it’s pretty funny now.

Killing time - John Travolta on the van ... then jumping Jack Flash coming off the van

We realised that we had a long way to go to get to Katherine by Thursday. I have a radio interview on the Friday at Katherine and then we’re playing at the Katherine Markets on the Saturday. Stew realised that I made a boo boo and booked a gig 'near' Katherine (by Northern Territory standards!) on the same Saturday night, but it was actually 300 k’s out of the way in Top springs, so we’ll be backtracking a little bit. Oops. It’s hard to know these things when you’ve never been to most of the places - they all look so close on the map :).

So now we have to get a wriggle on to make it on time to these places. We headed off and stopped at the Northern Territory border sign and took a pic for proof. As soon as we’d taken our picture with our camera on timer, about 5 cars turned up and asked us to take pics of them and we were stranded with 5 cameras’ between the both of us taking pics in the bloody heat.

Not that you can see us!

Didn’t get a chance to record that new song, so you’ll have to wait until I have the energy and time : ) Sorry.

Found a campsite for that evening about 2 hours after the NT sign. It was packed with campers. We found our own little spot a bit further away. Unfortunately my flu is not quite over. I’m suffering from a very sore throat and chest cough now. I think it has a little bit to do with all the red dust everywhere. Funnily, I was just looking at myself the other day thinking how my tan was looking rather splendid ... and then I washed my face before bed and realised a lot of it was a thin coat of red dust haha. 

We got to bed very early that night, about 8pm, for a much-needed rest.

I'm in Croc Country - Get that up ya!

9^th August 2010

I woke up whispering and thought I had lost my voice. I got a bit frantic about that, considering I need my voice for working. A pot of hot lemon tea at least brought it back. We pretty much had breakfast and left the site this morning. Petrol stops are few and far between so we need to fill up at everyone we pass now. The petrol we just filled up with was $1.89 per litre just at Barkly Homestead. Bloody Oaf. (gotta use the country lingo around here)

Barkly Homestead where we refueled

We plan to get to Tennant Creek today. It’s a few hundred kilometers drive. This next couple of days will probably be more and more driving. What I have noticed on our trip is that most of the creeks on the way through are dried out. I don’t think I’ve seen a full one since we passed Charleville. We’ve had virtually endless blue skies and warm weather since Longreach onwards. Nice.

 

So we’re at Barkly Homestead, which is just a petrol stop for us really, but we notice the signs are saying ‘Beware of Freshwater Crocodiles in creeks and rivers’. Yikes! We need to be a little more careful with Freddy and his explorations. As I’m typing, Freddy is about 100 metres away and being circled by two hawks ready to have him for lunch ... I think we're in the NT!

xxx