Gypsy Soul Tour diary - Lake Argyle and Timber Creek

7th September 2010

We headed to Lake Argyle after a dip in Kununurra pools. The view is spectacular.

Lake Argyle

There is one tourist park there at the lake, but it’s over crowded and there are ‘no camping’ signs everywhere near the lake area and surroundings. We took a few pics and took in the view. The water was electric blue and gorgeous - almost tempted to jump in - but crocs about.

Lake Argyle

Lake Argyle is a man made lake and it runs into the Ord river dam, so it pretty huge.

 

On the way through to the lake we spotted a campsite near a lagoon called ‘Dead Horse Springs’. 

 

It was excruciatingly hot, so we headed back to that place to find out if we could sleep there for the night. It was absolutely quiet, nobody around, we stayed away from the lagoon because of crocs and set up camp for the night. It was about 3pm when we got there, the sun was starting to go behind the mountains and there was a little breeze. It was a really nice spot.

8^th September 2010

This morning we decided that we wanted to spend the whole day doing absolutely nothing and considering there was a breeze here at the campsite, we made an executive decision to stay here another night. The sun came up over the hills and when that happened it was boiling, so we set up a annex….Gypsy soul style of course : )

Where's wally?

Shanty town ...

It helped to keep out some of the sun. But as the day went on it started to get hotter and hotter. We were handling that okay by dousing ourselves with water every five minutes. Freddy was frantically digging holes under the car to keep himself cool.

If you don't move - you sweat less....NOT!

We had made ourselves a nice little cubby house and I was wondering what my dad would be thinking if he saw us now : ) A few people came by and said ‘You’re in a bit of hot spot there aren’t you?’ and stew replied "Oh it’s not too bad actually" - not much!

We spent the day reading, playing the guitar and I started carving my boab egg that I’ve been telling you about. Not as easy as I thought, but I think I did an okay job – Stew already layed claim on it before it was carved. I’ll see how attached I am to it, before I give it away!

My first Boab carving - On sale now for $30 at all good stores

As the evening went on the breeze stopped blowing -- uh oh, not good. The heat was intense and the inside of the van was not very comfortable, there was just no way of consoling ourselves from the heat, dousing ourselves with water was not working anymore.  We had dinner and then I started to get a headache, and then a tummy ache and then I started to feel dizzy.

We lay under the stars for a while, away from the van where it was a bit cooler. We attempted to go inside the van to sleep but it was like a furnace. I started to panic as I was getting worse and worse with my tummy and headache and then I vomited. Stew decided to start packing up the van in case we needed to go to the Kununura hospital because it was about 70 k’s from here. I think I was suffering from a bit of heatstroke. We thought we were fine because we were under shade most of the day, but this is unmerciful, hot country (as if we didn't know that). Stew said he felt like Burke and Wills :)

The tummy ache went on persistently and as I lay on the gravel Stew comforted me by singing some songs on the guitar and talking about Sunny Boy iceblocks! - well it worked for a while andI fell asleep to for a little bit. The worst of it was over. By that time the van had cooled down a bit and we went to bed. What a night! Now I know why it's called 'Dead horse springs'.

9^th September 2010

We vowed never to camp out in the open again in that kind of heat and headed straight back to Kununurra to the pool. I was still a little weak and weary, but I got through the night : )

After the pool (ahh, water) we made all the phone calls and emails we had to make.

I rang the Timber Creek Hotel to confirm that the gig was still on for tomorrow night. It’s all thumbs up and she’ll even let us stay at the caravan park there for 2 nights free. Bonus - and there’s a pool too.

I also emailed our next door neighbour Raymond about a gig he had organized for us in Alice springs with Lulu Reinhardt and unfortunately that was cancelled which is a shame. I was looking forward to that one.

We got to Timber Creek about 4pm - Back over the border to NT and settled in and dived into the pool. We had dinner and then decided to go and have a drink at the hotel and check out the venue where we’ll be playing – upstairs in the bistro. It’s pretty nice. An olden style bistro with the menu on a whiteboard. I thought that was pretty cute.

The bar below us was filled with the people, then on the street a 'friendly' fight broke out between two indigenous guys, which of course became 'unfriendly'. Their women were trying to stop them, swearing and yelling -full on. We got talking to the guy at the bar who was a tourist from Ireland and had been working there at the hotel for about a year.

He said that the indigenous guys who were fighting are regulars at the pub and they won’t do anything too stupid because they know that if they do, Pauline (the owner) will shut the pub down and there’s nowhere to go for 200 k’s either side to get alcohol. Pauline came on the scene and calmed things down saying "If you keep mucking up, you'll end up in jail tonight and no one wants that". Then the community patrol officers loaded up their van and took the troublemakers home. It's amazing how those guys sobered up when their booze was threatened by Pauline :)
The cane toads were out in the night and the guy at the bar said if we saw any to kill them. I don’t really have the heart to do that and neither does Stewart. We saw hundreds of them. He also said that if you lick the back of a cane toad it’s like taking LSD (mmm...I'll give that a go later) and if freddy gets poisoned by them, he’ll probably die. I’ll take a pic for you tomorrow night. It's much cooler tonight and I’m feeling so much better now : ) Thanks for asking.

xxxx