Thierings on Tour

We tried to be as efficient as possible this morning to get on the road at a reasonable time, as today was the day we were starting our trip to Nhulunbuy in East Arnhem Land. Now, this is quite the detour and a lot of planning & fluking has gone into this part of the trip.

Nhulunbuy (and the coastal sections of East Arnhem Land) are around 700 kilometres off the main highway, travel here requires a permit for the Central Arnhem Road, you can only get a permit once you’ve confirmed your accommodation (of which there are only 2 spots in town), to visit any areas you require a recreational permit and to drink/buy alcohol you require a liquor permit. So it’s a real logistical juggling act, but it’s been one that came together in a wonderful fluke for us and I’m so grateful we get the opportunity to explore this part of the world!

The road is notoriously bad and to make it worse, you can’t just break it up and free camp as you please because the condition of your permit states that you can’t. So we knew that we would be travelling 250kms of bad dirt today to Mainorou store and around 480kms of rough dirt tomorrow. In fact we’ve been psyching the kids up for days… 

Chris was pleased to see every kms of bitumen along the way until it finally turned to dirt. And dirty, dusty and bumpy it was. We started off with Tyre pressure of 35psi to make it a bit smoother, but corrugation and rocks are never your friend.

We took it easy and took our time. The girls did pretty well, especially Scarly and we finally rolled into Mainoru Store for the night. Seeing Chris Hemsworth’s photo on the wall gave me confidence – if he can do it, so can we 😉 (although he probably had a private helicopter or something!)

We set up camp for the afternoon and the red dust was already starting to seep in everywhere… 
I think everyone was glad to stretch their legs and explore. The water behind the caravan park looked ideal for crocodiles, but so pretty. Jazzy also spotted a hawk nest in the tree above with both parents coming back to feed the little bub all afternoon.

As a reward for the big trip, we enjoyed steaks for dinner, yum! 

Kms travelled – 253