Barkly Tableland and Tennant Creek

I did my biggest road trip thus far a few weeks ago.

On day one I headed out to Soudan Station on the Barkly Tablelands. You know how I drove from Mount Isa to Katherine in two days? Well I drove to within 300 kilometres of Mount Isa back the way I came - in a day! It was 987 kilometres, and I called in at a few cattle stations along the way.

I was pretty well ready for a beer and a good feed by the time I got there, which luckily is not hard to come by on most cattle stations! And I slept like a log that night.

The morning was actually quite chilly, much colder than Katherine. I hung around the station for a while and watched the ringers and head stockman sort out the horses to shoe them.

One of the main purposes of the trip was to interview a bloke who is a world expert on dung beetles. He was speaking at the Barkly Roadhouse, which is about 300 kilometres east of Tennant Creek.

I did my first live interview for the Country Hour from here! I've learnt to use this piece of gear that will give me studio quality sound if I'm in mobile range or can get to a land line plug. So then all you need is a powerpoint and you're right. Here I'm broadcasting from the tailgate of the ABC car! This is very, very fun.

After leaving the roadhouse I headed to Banka Banka station and had a night camping in my swag and eating tinned stew by moonlight. It was pretty darn fun! The actual cattle part of Banka Banka is managed from the next station over, so I was staying at a small campground on the highway. It wasn't your normal cattle station experience. This is my best Steve Parish rip-off photo.

That morning I presented the rural report from the office of the station using their phone line. I'm really excited about the possibilities of what I can do with this piece of gear. The travel is the fun part of this job, albeit also the tiring part. And doing live stuff for the Country Hour is really tops.

After I came off air I went for a walk following signs to a waterhole. It was a great place for an early morning dip!

That day I headed into Tennant Creek, via another station. On the way I called in at The Pebbles, as their known, just north of town. Apparently this is a traditional women's meeting place, though the signs say visitors are welcome!

Just down the road is the old Tennant Creek repeater station for the Overland Telegraph. Back in the day this was a pretty big deal, and it's amazing to think that a couple of people lived here when the nearest white fella was hundred of kilometres away - and from what I gather they certainly didn't interact with the indigenous mobs in those days.

I stayed the night at Tennant Creek station but had dinner in town with the station family and a whole heap of other people. There was a workshop and a bull sale on and so there were people from everywhere - it was a really good chance to make contacts.

Tennant Creek isn't normally my patch, but I was out on the Barkly for the dung beetle thing so my boss said I may as well go to it rather than our Alice Springs reporter. So I did my rural report from the Tennant Creek show ground about five metres away from the cattle yards, and did two live interviews for the Country Hour.

The job is going really well, and doing live interviews has really added another dimension to it. It's a bit of a stress but also a major adrenalin rush!

I left Tennant Creek at about 1.30pm on Friday and headed back the 672 kilometres to Katherine! I'm getting used to driving the longer distances. Though, I do occasionally think about our family holidays to Merimbula, which was about a 600 kilometre drive. We did it once a year and went for two weeks, and it was a big deal!

But yeh, the job is going really well and it's pretty good to be able to see some of the Territory while I'm at it!

Tiwi Islands grand final

A few weeks ago three mates from Katherine and I went to the Tiwi Islands, 40 kilometres north of Darwin.

They have a local footy competition there, and every year the grand final is a bit of a social event, with a few thousand people flying in to watch the game.

There's also some interesting indigenous art centres on the islands, and so it's a great day.

We were up in Darwin anyway because the Waifs were playing, and so it was just a quick flight - the captain advised our flight time was 12 minutes - to the Tiwis.

We had a bit of a wonder around and went to the main art centre. This is the channel between the two islands that make up the Tiwis - Bathurst and Melville. The water was a beautiful colour and so inviting, it was a very hot day. But there was a big sign up right next to me warning me I would almost certainly die should I try to cool off.

Before the footy a women's choir sang a few tunes, and then did the national anthem, first in the native Tiwi language then in English. They were pretty good!

It was pretty obvious how closely the community follows their teams. Everyone ran onto the field with them and did a lap! It was pretty funny!!

The game itself was a bit lopsided towards the end and quite physical, but good fun to watch.

In the end the team I was barracking for, the Eagles, went down to the hometown favourites the Tigers. There's always next year fellas...

Kununurra trip

Wow, it's been a long time since I've posted anything.

Yes, part of it is laziness, but mostly it's that I've been quite busy and having too much fun!!

I've been doing some pretty cool stuff, but I won't talk about it all in one go. But I will put more stuff up here soon!

About a month ago I had the opportunity to go to Kununurra in Western Australia for work. It's just over the border into Western Australia, and the home of my closest rural reporter colleague. It's about 500 kilometres from Katherine.

So I went for work, but there was also plenty of time to see a bit of the Kimberley and have fun!

The reporter in Kununurra, Matt, took me to this amazing waterhole. This is the top of it, we had to walk down this path to the bottom.

But it was totally worth it. The water was really, really warm, to the point where it was almost uncomfortable, but it was such a beautiful spot for a swim.

Plus it had a rope swing!!

On the way back to Katherine we stopped in at Lake Argyle, which is the largest fresh water body in Australia. It's a massive dam, except the dam wall isn't actually that big, it's just very well placed. It's the dam for the Ord Irrigation Scheme, which was a big deal back in the 70s and is currently being extended. I don't think it ever quite caught on like the planners had hoped, but it's a lot of water!! Apparently during the wet season (it was a really big one this year) there was one million litres of water a second going over the spillway. That's just amazing.

I was in Kununurra for two nights, and it was my first time to WA! It was a pretty great trip, and I'm sure we did more stuff that I can't think of right now (plus a bit of work).

Will put more stuff up soon.