Wild Wedge Tail Eagles

After being engulfed with dust from the Oodnadatta (which we are still finding in the van), and getting bogged in sand in Kakadu, my romantic notion of heading back east along the dirt roads of the Savannah Way, camping by billabongs and generally getting back to nature have disappeared in a figurative plume of dust!! It’s bitumen all the way from now on baby!! As a result we had to back track along the Stuart Highway all the way to what’s known as the Three Ways, the intersection of the north –south Stuart Highway with the east west running Barkly Highway. Camp for the night after leaving Kakadu was the Daly Waters Pub. This place is a bit of an institution for travellers of the outback, not because of the campsite so much but for the pub and its entertainment. We arrived at Daley Waters to find several police cars and twenty or so members of the Odin’s Warriors bikie gang! Not your typical clientele for an outback pub. It was quite obvious that gray nomads and locals alike were quite apprehensive of this new contingent of travellers. It turns out that the bikies were returning to Queensland from a meet in Darwin and the NT police were tailing them the whole way to the border.

After booking in for the night ($24 with power but no water) we were directed to our designated site next to a very nice couple of GN’s and their two border collies – Jessie and Jackson. The dogs immediately befriended the kids and we were told by their owners that the dogs were missing their grandkids, so Ash, Sean and Timmy became surrogate grand kids for the afternoon.

We’d heard about the famous “Beef and Barra” and the ensuing Wild Wedge Tail Eagle show dinner during our travels so we booked in for the 7pm sitting. The show was quite funny and the more risqué punch lines sailed over the kid’s heads (although Ashleigh has grown taller since we’ve been away!!) The bikies were well behaved much to everyone’s relief and the food was also very good.

We were woken early the next morning to the roar of Harley’s starting up and not long after we too were on our way. If the countryside was non-descript and repetitive on the way north, it was even more so on the return trip. The monotony was only briefly interrupted by the occasional Harley as it roared past us. Our stop the next night was the Barkly Station Road house. Again we shared it with the Bikies but we didn’t venture into the bar this night as we had drinks and nibbles with Brian and Jan, a couple of GN’s or Geriatric Gypsies (an hilarious term we picked up from the show the night before) as we have re-dubbed them, from Sydney. They were great company for the evening as we swapped travelling tales over a few cold drinks.