Paradise Lost??!?

1,367 clicks

April 17

Lots of clicks put on the Wombatmobile today.  Passed from the Northern Territory to Western Australia today & had to pass through a quarantine checkpoint (no fresh produce, honey, unroasted walnuts or eucalyptus can be brought in to WA -- or cane toads!).  That meant Chris had to drop his collected specimens at a rangers' station in the NT & we'll have to pick them up on the return. While we were there, we finished off all of our apples & carrots & went to use the rest rooms. That's where we met this cute little fella:

Chris tried to grab him because we're all drinking at least 4 liters of water per day and we'd just been on the road for three hours. Unfortunately, he swam deeper into the bowl.  So...we travelled on. 

This is the terrain we drove through during the drive today.  We discovered there's another low growing, purple flowered roadside plant to confuse with Solanum. D'oh!!  We passed a number of controlled burn areas while passing through an Aboriginal territory -- you can just make out the grey puffs of smoke in center of this photo. 

At one point, we drove over a stretch of road that was covered in grasshoppers. We kept saying, "Don't jump, don't jump, take your chances," but these plump little bugs couldn't help themselves & the Wombatmobile became a killing machine as they leapt to their deaths.  

After visiting three separate hotel/caravan parks, we wound up back at the first one -- we were hoping to grab a cabin & not camp tonight because our hikes are just on the edge of the town & to take the whole caboodle apart for a 5-minute drive is not preferred, but at $70 rather than $1000, we're camping.  (It's Easter weekend and Kununurra is a very popular place to visit!!) 

One hotel receptionist mentioned to Chris that there's usually a car break-in every few months, "like in every other town."  So, we're in the Discovery Caravan Park along some unidentified lake, on the edge of town. Chris must've made an 87-point turn trying to wedge us into our last-one-available, tiny end-lot #86.  One way, the sleepers on top would've been tipped sideways, and another, the lower sleepers would've been over a big acacia root. 

This is the latest we've ever made camp & though we're pretty quick at it, we were all sweaty & hungry & there were about 12 million bugs flying in the lights & our water pump had turned on during the drive & dampened all of our pillows/raisins/band-aids & filled the sink. We were on a slippery camp-nightmare slope & it kept getting worse....this was our dinner:

While I was boiling water for our delicious Cup-o-Ramen, Isabel ran panicking toward the tent & said there was a dog in the bushes, coming toward her. (Just read the headlines about 6 dogs attacking a woman & her dog in Kununurra earlier in the week).  I yanked both kids into the tent and asked how big the dog was, was it alone, where it was exactly. Isabel responded, "It wasn't a dog, Mom. It's a FROG."  OMG. (Did I mention we're at a lakeside campground??!?).

To cap off our evening, some man, who I'm sure is a perfectly decent fellow when he's not drinking & hasn't locked himself out of his camper, spent a good hour and a half stringing obscenities together, throwing his phone, and threatening his camper with harm. He eventually quieted, but I think Chris & I both slept with one eye open for the rest of the night. A zippered wall doesn't offer much comfort!!

The cherry on top of this camping horror sundae???  Since we hit another time zone, the sun rose in all of it's hot Australian glory at 5:15 am and simultaneously set off a thousand or two feathery alarm clocks. 

Ugh. It's gonna be a loooooong day.