Gregory again

I went to Gregory Downs last weekend again. My mate Tristan from Newcastle was passing through as part of the Postie Bike Challenge, which is a charity thing that rides little posties from Brisbane to Darwin.

As he had come all the way from Newcastle, I thought it would be rude not to go up and see him! So I left on Friday after work and got up there just after dark.

I realised half way up there that I had left the memory card for my camera at home! I realised because I stopped to take a photo of some bushfires that were burning and surprisingly my camera wasn't working.

It was great to catch up with Tristan though. There was a fair bit of alcohol consumed and then someone decided to bring a postie bike into the bar...

The riders headed off pretty early on Saturday, and I stayed around and had a swim in the river, which was beautiful. It was only a short trip but man it was good!

I did a story on the postie bikes for The Star, you can read it here.

Gregory

I meant to post this ages ago, but ho hum.

At the beginning of May I went to a tiny little locality called Gregory Downs.

It's on, unsurprisingly, the Gregory River. There's this big canoe race every year on the Labour Day weekend (solidarity) and there are horse races too. It's a basically an excuse to hit the piss and have a good time.

I camped with my friends Caitlyn and Scott from the ABC. The great thing was that because I got a few yarns for the paper, I got to take the General Manager's 4wD and his petrol card!

I didn't get away till about five in the afternoon. It was a really nice drive, a fair bit of dirt road. But just driving through the outback at sunset by myself was a pretty special experience. Hitting a kangaroo not withstanding...
The moon was amazing! I don't think this photo really does it justice, but you get the idea.
I stopped for a toilet break (by the side of the road) and the stars were fantastic. Absolutely beautiful. If I didn't have another hour or so to drive I could have stayed there for hours and just gazed up.

This pretty much sums up the first night (and the second for that matter). That's Scotty, reaching, nay, lunging for alcohol with a big grin on his face. Good times. I kind of leeched onto their group, Scotty and Caitlyn were camping with some friends from Doomadgee, but I brought a case of beer so I was pretty welcome.
This is actually a photo by Caitlyn, I just like it because it makes me feel masculine... The swag did me proud once again.
This is how we spent a large part of Saturday. This was perhaps 50 metres away from where we were camped. It was a pretty hot day, and the water was beautiful! The current was pretty swift and you had to hold on to something, but it was amazing. Yes, there are definitely fresh water crocs in the Gregory, and yes, a four-metre salt water croc had been spotted at about this spot just a few weeks ago. But I figured there were enough other people in the river to have a statistically decent chance of not getting eaten... I took this photo of Scotty and Caitlyn as I got out to grab another beer from the esky... There was this log right there that Caitlyn is sitting on that we were leaning up against, we called it our special river bar!
That afternoon we went to the races, where Brad's tips failed to do anything. Saturday was another night of, well, drinking. But I had to drive back the next day so it wasn't too big a night.

It's a beautiful spot, and there's this great, true outback pub in Gregory. I did this really great profile on her, she's a real character.

Alas, Sunday arvo I had to drive back for work the next day. But this photo might give you an idea of the sort of country it is up here.
An absolutely great weekend. I'm hopefully going to be traveling a bit more, so will have more photos to put up!