Last time we spoke we were just about to head to Nhulumbuy, The Gove Peninsula in Arnhem Land. We didn’t leave Katherine until 1 pm due to the large shop to ensure the family wouldn’t starve. We had no real concept what facilities would be out there but looking back, it seems pretty silly.

After leaving the bitumen, we let down our tyres and hit the dirt. We were a little nervous so taking it easy was the key as we didn’t want to break anything. After all it’s better to make it out there late then not at all. Although I was surprised how many cars were heading back to Katherine from Nhulumbuy, we started to get a feeling that we weren’t going to be the only ones out there.

They have a great little grassed area you can have a campfire if you wanted to and it’s right next to a river that was as clear as day. There was a bunch of small fish swimming around the water and we were also told that there were some freshwater crocs in there too, however we didn’t see any. But it didn’t stop us trying to throw a line in to catch that elusive Barra that we all wanted to catch, but no luck.

The next day we headed off reasonably early (well for us it was) and headed towards the next station Bulman, the foundation of the road between Mainoru and just past Bulman seemed to have large rocks and the van didn’t agree with it. We ended up having a rock wedge between the inner rim and the outer rim punching a hole through it. This was our first flat tyre for the trip, and we had it swapped over in no time. Along the journey we saw a bit of unusual wildlife for us Perthies, there were lots of donkeys, water buffalos, large snakes, a small little croc, a few stray half breed dogs, swamp birds, cows and horses.

The road out to Gove Peninsula was great for us, it had just been graded most of the way and the only section that was dodgy, apart from where we got the flat, was between 100km and 40 km out from Nhulumbuy, where we over took the grader working the roads. The drive itself took us about 12 hours to drive, even with our 21.6ft van. We just went steady and made it with no more damage.

As we approached the town a local stopped us and asked if we need a place to stay, at this stage we still thought we where headed to Neverland, we polity declined as we had booked prior to our departure at the Walkabout Lodge Caravan Park. As we turned the corner, we both looked at each other in shock, as the first thing we saw was a large hospital and centre link, lol we mustn’t be to remote to have these, Jayde said with a sign of relief. The locals all must have been in shock as everyone was staring at us driving into town, thinking how are these crazy people towing a huge van like that up here. The size of the population surprised us a fair bit too “probably shows how much research we do before going somewhere”.

We will leave it there so be sure to read next months story on what is to do and see out here and what we get up to.