Chapter II - We are off!
We are now living ‘on the road', that is traveller speak for living in our little house on wheels! Yes, eventually Annie got all her stuff into the HoW (house on wheels) and we drove away from Darwin. We travel slowly and enjoy all the stops along the way.
In Katherine we found a nice shady spot to park up for most of the day and we visited the School of the Air, where Annie was asked to record a short interview to be used over the air at a later date about Labradors and Whippets and travelling with dogs.
We returned to our shady parking spot to have lunch, on the way we met a little Aborigine person who pointed to us dogs and exclaimed ‘a dog!' – Annie said ‘No, 2 dogs, see?' but the little person looked at her a bit strange, shook his head and said ‘1 dog & a Wallaby'….fancy that, he thought I was a Wallaby!
After Katherine we turned West onto the Victoria Highway, free camping along the way. There are always other dogs to have a chat with whilst our people are doing something they call ‘happy hour' at the free camps.
At Timber Creek there was a boat trip on the Victoria River (which runs through Bradshaw Station, now an Army Base, and one of the old Durack properties). Victoria River is really wide all the way down but with many sand bars to fool the boatie people. At the mouth it is about 45 kilometres wide and really hard to find the true river.
Only 3 people turned up to do the cruise and as the other people had a little dog too the operators said we could travel with our people as long as we are were all well behaved! Annie played safe and tied us to a seat as well as holding onto our leads, (well, Carlin is a Labrador after all!) There were Crocodiles and Wallaby (real ones, not the Whippet types) and fish to see, it was such fun and this little Whippet was so excited! I didn't like the Archer Fish that kept squirting us with water spurts though! Ugh, what awful manners those fish had!
Then it was on to Kununurra, where we stayed on the Showground and had a great oval to play on and lot's of doggie friends, in fact everyone had to have a dog or a really big H.o.W to be allowed to there stay at all!
One of our new friends was Tiger, a Silky/Aussie Terrier X who rides in a special seat on a side-car and motorbike with his 71 year old person Mary! Mary enjoys a 3 month trip each year – her husband plays bowls but she says ‘that is for old people!
We all went to see Lake Argyle together as Mary’s motorbike had been off the road for a few days whilst it was being repaired. She and Tiger were getting rather bored. Lake Argyle is so big. I got a bit worried that Carlin might try to swim right across, but I convinced him not to try it, or we would have still been there waiting there for him to get back! We had to leave Kununurra after 6 days as they were having their Agricultural Show, there were dog events that we could have gone in….fastest eater – Carlin would have won that easily, he sort of vacuums his food!… and fastest recall, I would have won that I am sure! But in the end we thought we had better let the locals have a chance.
Then it was on to Wyndham, where would you believe it, a big person thought I looked just like a Joey? I woofed at her and told her ‘I am not a Joey, I am a Clancy!' this business of being mistaken for the wildlife is a bit of a worry.
Here at Wyndham we drove up this really steep hill and could see over the whole world, or at least it seemed that big, even I could not have run around all the Country I could see! The place was called 5 Rivers Look-out. We also visited a reconstruction of an Aboriginal camp, there were statues of the little family that may have lived there and of some of the wildlife too, I was very taken with the ‘humpy’ as it smelt like there could have been some rather nice bush tucker left behind.
We travelled to Wyndham with Mary and Tiger, they were giving the motor bike a run to make sure all was well now. We stayed in a lovely quiet and pleasant Caravan Park but after a couple of days we had to say our good bye’s to Tiger and Mary, which was a little sad.
From the road junction we headed for Halls Creek to the South West and Mary and Tiger returned to Kununurra and then headed back towards Queensland and their home in the cane fields.