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!

The move to Katherine!

If you’re reading this, chances are you already know that I’ve taken a job with the ABC in Katherine, in the Northern Territory.

I finished up at The North West Star on New Year’s Eve, and started driving on January 2.

I went to Google maps to see how far it would be between Mount Isa and Katherine - about 1200 kilometres. But the directions were pretty funny.

Head out of Mount Isa on the Barkly Highway, continue for 635 kilometres. Turn right onto the Stuart Highway, continue for 648 kilometres. Arrive Katherine.

So it was pretty unlikely I was going to get lost.

I head off a bit later on Sunday than I had hoped. I was house sitting for the photographer at the Star, Jane, and by the time I put the last few things in the car, vacuumed the house and did the dishes it was 10am.

Here’s the Queensland/NT border, just west of Camooweal. The only time I’ve “been” to the NT was when I went to Camooweal for their campdraft and drove 100 metres across the border.

Up until this point the car was going fine, loaded to the max as it was. But when I stopped for a loo break a bit later, there was something a bit weird going on, less power in the car.

But I meandered along, had lunch at Barkly Homestead, and then came to the one intersection of the trip where I actually turned left and drove into Tennant Creek.

This is what the Barkly Plain looks like, more or less for all 600 odd kilometres. Sometimes there were bushes. An info sign I stopped at said it hasn’t changed for the last 500 million years. That’s what it felt like.

Now, some back-story. On New Year’s Day I broke the door handle of my driver’s side door. Annoying, yes, but I figured it was just one of those things that happens. But being a public holiday, and the next day being Sunday, I figured I would just have to deal with it.

But when I stopped at the motel in Tennant Creek I shut the door on my seatbelt and couldn’t get the door open. At all. Luckily I had renewed my NRMA membership before I left, and I was able to call the NT version – the AANT. Unfortunately the bloke in Tennant Creek was on holidays and couldn’t come around until 8am the next morning.

So I went and had a few beers at the Tennant Creek Hotel and went to bed. After my late start on the first day I wanted to get on the road much earlier. But it was about 9am when the AANT guy arrived and opened the door with a bit of a jiggle of the door handle – very embarrassing.

But I asked him about the engine and started up the car for him.

He said he wouldn’t drive it, and the engine was missing pretty badly. I could give it a go and might make it, might not. He would drive it, he said, but he did point out that he was a mechanic.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not a mechanic. In fact I once had to take my bike to the bike shop after trying to tighten the brakes. But it was January 3, the New Year’s Day public holiday and there was nothing open in Tennant Creek.

The worst-case scenario would be breaking down in the middle of nowhere, which is describes pretty well all of the Stuart Highway.

So after a chat with Dad, I decided to see how the car would go from Tennant Creek to Three Ways roadhouse, 26 kilometres up the road. If that went well, I would see how it went to the next roadhouse, and so on.

The car sounded alarmingly like a lawnmower, but once it got going it seemed okay. So I continued on, holding my breath.

It was all going well until I stopped for petrol in Elliot, and, embarrassingly, shut my door on my seatbelt again!

I had seen the guy open it, and he said all I needed to do was open the door a bit harder. But I tried and tried and couldn’t get it open, and I didn’t want to break it. The guy at the servo directed me to the AANT guy’s house, and he was good enough to come and open it first try for me. I’m really going to have to learn that technique.

So up the Stuart Highway I went. The landscape for the first few hundred kilometres was quite outbacky, with a few hills and crests.

This was a memorial to Sir Charles Todd, the bloke who designed and oversaw the construction of the Overland Telegraph. For those of you playing at home, that was the telegraph line that linked the rest of Australia to the UK for the first time. Amongst other thing, this meant we could get the cricket score in the UK overnight, rather than in a few weeks. The memorial marks roughly where the line joined. It was built from the south and the north and met in the middle. Note the telegraph pole in the background. I’m not sure if this is legit or not, but it’s interesting!

I actually wish I had gone to the repeater station at Tennant Creek, but I was fretting about my car when I passed it and didn’t want to stop when it seemed to be going well. I also reckon I will be back down there for work at some point, so watch this space. Katherine also has a repeater station, which I will visit in due course.

The Stuart Highway has a lot of tourist signs advertising World War II historic sites. Again, I wanted to stop and have a look but the roads were dirt and wet, and given the mechanical dramas I figured it would be better to visit another day. But I’m pretty keen to have a look. After all, in terms of Australia in WWII, this was where the action was.

As I drove along under clear blue skies I eventually saw some clouds on the horizon. As I edged closer it became apparent it wasn’t just a few clouds. This was a monsoonal low! Excuse the dead bugs on my windscreen.

I hit some pretty serious rain, which was actually quite nice because it cooled things down a bit.

The landscape also changed and the country became greener. I suppose the further north you get the more rain falls. There were more trees as well. This photo is pretty blurry, but you get the idea.

So I was pretty well stuffed by the time I got here. The ABC is putting me up in a caravan park cabin for a few nights, and I have a couple of numbers to ring about a place to live.

I start work tomorrow. It’s a rural reporter position, which means I will be filing for the Australia’s longest running radio show, the Country Hour – not Hamish and Andy believe it or not. I’ll also be presenting a 15 minute rural news segment at 6.15am (that’s early!) three days out of every six. There’s also opportunities to file for national programs like Bush Telegraph on Radio National and the World Today.

Katherine seems like an interesting sort of town. It’s about 9000 people and has similar sort of services to Parkes. In fact the Woolies seems a lot nicer than Mount Isa’s, which is almost triple the size of Katherine!

The heat and humidity is pretty spectacular, but I’m told it’s worse in Darwin. But I’m feeling pretty optimistic about the whole thing and looking forward to my first day at work tomorrow.

I was thinking about my first few days in Mount Isa, and it’s definitely a better feeling to be here! Though I suppose a lot more had changed when I moved to Mount Isa.

I’m going to try to post blogs a bit more regularly. I well and truly dropped the ball in recent months, but with a new town, new job and plenty of travel for work I’m sure there will be plenty to write about!

Watch this space.