We are on holiday!

Tuesday 19th July 2022

A rather windy night followed with a rather windy morning, and Otis complaining of a sore eye. 😣 We ended up putting him in the car watching a tv show on Richie’s phone….thankfully he had thought ahead and downloaded some emergency viewing from Netflix before we left. Bonnie took her breakfast and joined the girls camping next door for the morning, making me wonder if she would even want to come with us on leaving. They were very sweet, Penny from Alice Springs and Amelia from Sydney, and assured me they were having a lovely time talking all things fairies and art!

Despite Otis’ upset, we managed to get going at 9:40. The landscape became shrubby, with cities of little termite mounds, making it feel like a miniature village! Also lots of colour and contrast – silver leaves grevilleas with red, yellow or orange flowers, pink Sturt’s desert rose and golden wattles were all common along the roadsides well past Tennant Creek.

We stopped in Tennant Creek to get Otis’ eye looked out, which hadn’t improved at all, first at the pharmacy, then feeling none the wiser we checked in with the GP and were able to get an appointment immediately. The lovely doctor thought probably a sty, fixed us up with some just-in-case antibiotics, recommended painkillers and sent us on our way. We dosed Otis with paracetamol in the car and he fell asleep minutes later, poor Bubba. 😥 We left Tennant Creek feeling a bit better about the situation, eye things make me feel a bit nervous.

We pushed on through beyond Tennant Creek, stopping at one very uninspiring roadside stop briefly, that was packed with caravans set up for the night. The further north we drive, the bigger the trees and termite mounds got, now looking like little castles!

We pulled into Daly Waters pub at 4:30 – what a place! everyone we had spoken to had raved about the pub so we were pretty keen to check it out! The place was incredibly busy, the camping grounds stretched out with caravans, tents and everything in-between! We had booked a pub room for the night – a very basic room but the kids were stoked because there were two bunks, which meant no fighting over the top bunk!

After much needed showers we had a little walk about the place, checking out various dilapidated planes and helicopters, then going into ‘Tim’s junk yard’. Described as a ‘random collection of 35 years of junk’ – which included vintage cars, motorbikes, lamps, barbed wire and all sorts of random things!

We moved on into the pub, and spent a bit of time hunting for a table – they don’t take bookings, which seems fair enough given the number of people that obviously move through the place in an evening! We eventually found a spot and ordered the kids a pizza and a bottle of wine for us. Richie and I had pre-ordered the “famous Barra and beef”, which you order for a time slot. We just got in for 8pm, which felt incredibly late after getting used to earlier camp dinners, especially after 1/2 bottle of wine! 😵‍💫 Our food did eventually arrive, and it definitely was the best steak we had eaten in a long time, worth the wait!

We checked the live music out briefly after dinner – a country style cover band that reminded me of my years working weekends in the Hilton pub at Adelaide! Then off to bed, which being right next to the beer garden meant we could continue listening to the band! This was fine, until at 1030, when someone started blasting some classic 90s pop through the speakers, which gave the kids some renewed enthusiasm for the evening, resulting in a very late night by the time we got them to sleep! Thankfully it was turned off after 4 or 5 songs!