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On the road again...as gravel flew and the Wombatmobile screamed to a halt, Jackson & I were given a good scolding by our driver for not telling him soon enough to pull off for a pit stop. BUT our full bladders lead to a very fortuitous discovery of Solanum dioicum at Ngumpan -- female plants that are helping to prove a previous collection might be a new species.
I was busy photographing the bathroom floor as Chris was making his discovery:
We arrived in Fitzroy Crossing (pop. 2,000) and checked in at the Fitzroy River Lodge after getting some provisions at the IGA & sending out some postcards. Set up the walls of the tent & headed for the pool...
We all needed this little oasis...water has such restorative power, even if there's a little chlorine mixed in. We saw a goanna looking for dinner while we swam & watched the kids do a million or so backflips. 
Chris made friends with a stick bug that flew on to me afterward, and yes, I yelped. 
I actually stayed up until 10 pm reading "The Goldfinch" last night -- that's a good 2 hours past my regular bush bedtime. No kookaburras waking me up this morning at 4:30, just the familiar din of garbage bins being emptied by the park employees.
Found this little cutie in the lower portion of the tent this morning:
He was as friendly as our camping neighbors who turned out to be traveling photographers. They live out of caravans for 10 months out of the year, traveling to small towns in the Northern Territory & Western Australia taking family portraits and staying in caravan parks along the way. They've got a pretty swanky set-up too -- they were watching tv on an outdoor flat screen last night & they had a mini washing machine running this morning. One of their caravans has a full photo studio set-up inside of it. They send one team to town & they book appointments, then the photographers follow. Some of these towns we're passing through have little more than a grocery store, a pub & a hardware store, so this is the only opportunity to get a portrait professionally taken.
They were very interested in our expedition & had a lot to say about the Aborginal situation here in Australia. We all agreed we wouldn't last a day in the bush left to our own devices, yet the Traditional Owners of the land would have no problem.
It was another banner morning for solanum. We've pulled off the road 5 times in the last 2-1/2 hours for Chris to collect. This has thrown us waaaay off schedule & we're staying in Derby tonight instead of heading directly to Broome.
Here's our lunch stop -- this boab tree is HUGE!!! And guess what...no tuna for lunch!! I had a frozen lettuce & hummus sandwich (our fridge temperature gauge got turned way down low to freezer temps & we woke up to frozen yogurt, frozen carrots, frozen hummus). Ugh!!
How's that frozen ham, Erin?
For dinner tonight, we went to the Derby Wharf & shared a couple take-away battered fish dinners in addition to our soup appetizer "Ramen a la Parking Lot." It's pretty handy to have a kitchen & water supply in your vehicle! Derby has the 8th biggest tide change in the world & is the 1st biggest in Australia. It changes over 12 meters with each ebb & flow. 
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