Day 53 - Coral Bay to Cane River

Deciding to stay at Nanuttara Roadhouse, where it cost $20 to pitch a tent and $6 for water, the boys met a fellow from Holland, who is riding about on a motorbike. After some getting to know you chat, they were convinced to get their money back and ride on a further 20kms or so and all camp together. Now I havn't got all the details yet, but apparently this involved staying under a bridge for the night. Yes, I was interested too. I will add more detail when I talk to Ulick later.

Okay, what happened was, is they followed the highway and stopped where it crosses the Cane River. Not far off the highway is where they camped, near the overpass of the highway and kind of in a dry river bed. The river bed had stagnant pools of gross water and the tents were visable from the highway, so every time a truck went past during the night it gave a freindly honk honk. Hmm, not sure if I imagined this picture when I thought about Ulls and Torsten camping in the outback. But that's not all folks! There was a festival in town. The FeNaClNG festival. Now I hope I get this right. The 'Fe' stands for Iron, the 'Na' stand for sodium, and the 'Cl' stands for Cloride, and 'NG' which stands for Natural Gas is silent. It is pronounced something like 'Fee knuckle..'. Ulick told me about the scattered ant mounds everywhere which are built into sky scrapers of red earth. What an interesting day on so many levels.

The beach at Coral Bay. Did we back board shorts? Of course not...

Ant or termite mounds

Close up of another mound. Looks very Giger.

A very odd fungus growing out of the red dust. Absolutely no moisture here and the ground would burn to walk on. That's one tough 'shroom!
We touched the 'shroon and it went boom! It seems it was just waiting to be touched to release a large cloud of spores.

Stopping by a dry river bed for a break and a photo.

And now up to our gearbox in sand... again.

Picking a spot for our tent.

Bas and his Pegasso at our site for the night beneath the bridge.

The road used to cross the creek via this causeway. In these dry conditions it's hard to imaging raging torrents ripping these slabs and flipping them over.