Seven Emu Station to Borroloola

Seven Emu was certainly the place for a one night stay. There wasn’t much to do there except look at the view or fish. As the fishing was quite difficult to access we didn’t launch our boat there. At $50/night per vehicle it’s expensive because they supply nothing but the view. But the view is worth the $50’s for sure.

They had some very relevant signs near the cliff that had significant meaning to me!

Aunty Jayne certainly tried hard to line up nephew Shane with the pommy lass that worked there, I think she would be quite cute under the layers of dust she was wearing over her clothes that hadn’t seen a washing machine since the 3 months she had been working there.

To get out of Seven Emu we had to navigate a few obstacles.

From Seven Emu Station we headed off to Borroloola which has access to the Gulf of Carpentaria via tarred road, a real luxury around these parts. Borroloola is nearly a real town, it has a supermarket of sorts, 3 petrol stations, one which doubles as a hardware store and another as the supermarket. It also has a pub. Well it actually was once a pub, but they have just closed the hotel side of it and now only open the restaurant side. This allows them to sell full strength beers and spirits. But you have to buy a meal before they will serve you drinks. When they had the pub side open, you could only buy mid-strength beers and no spirits. This is all due to the licensing laws they have to comply with due to the large aborigine population there.

Jayne and I went to the pub for dinner and had Barramundi, chips and salad. It was really good Barra and chips, and seeing we haven’t caught any fish as yet, it was a nice change from meat.

The aborigines there are exceptionally friendly, actually without a doubt the most friendly we’ve ever come across anywhere. We got out of our car at the petrol station to be greeted by two mid-twenty year old aborigines who were very black. After a chat and getting the low down on where they lived along with an invitation to their place, we did our shopping in the hardware store.

At the pub I was buying our first drinks and there was a group of 6 or so younger guys standing next to me. The tallest most brutal looking guy standing in the middle of the group looks at me and says “G'day!” We had a quick chat and I left totally unintimidated. Surprising.

We were sitting at the rear of the main outside area away from the many groups there. Just after we had finished our dinner, this older couple come over (well staggered over really) and sat at the table next to us. They introduced themselves as Martin and Maryanne and they said “you can just call us the M and M’s”! Such friendliness from them is totally unknown to us.

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We had an interesting discussion with M and M about their life etc. They had moved a little way out of town to get away from their kids and grandkids due to the constant Humbugging from them. So this humbugging is a real issue. Imagine having to move away from your kids and grandkids just to get away from their persistent bludging money and possessions of you. What a shame.

They were watching the AFL game, Sydney Swans vs. Hawthorne. With half of them going for Sydney. Maryanne kept saying to us “Sydney Swans are my daughters team” once she knew we were from Sydney.

Overall it was such a pleasant experience with them that Jayne decided to donate our two fishing rods complete with expensive lures to the local community by leaving them at the boat ramp after our days fishing. Well I should say after our day fishingless which we had. Yes yet another days boating without even a bite. But we did take the boat out into the Gulf and also up the river, there's amazing scenery there.

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Our outboard motor always cops heaps of dust and needs to be cleaned before we use it every time.

From here we head to Lorella Springs, which is a million acre property complete with hot springs and 20kms of coastline onto the Gulf.

I have to report on the LandCruiser at this stage, now that we’ve done over 1,600kms on dirt road towing the Kedron, I have a new appreciation for it. While I still don’t like the dinosaur gearbox it has, it handles the dirt roads like their tarred roads. We keep getting told by other travellers about the terrible roads we’re on and we actually don’t think they are that bad. But looking at the condition of the van I have to say the Cruiser handles the corrugations unbelievably well.

I guess it has to have something right about it! We had a dust issue inside the cabin of the Cruiser but after some pointers from another Cruiser driver we fixed that issue.

So it’s off to Lorella Springs now.

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