Limmen National Parl / Mataranka 25/8/2013

 We had a peaceful night with no sign of the Dingo. We had packed most of the stuff away the night before as we didn’t want to take any chances or give any creatures a reason to come and visit. We got on the road pretty early and set off to find some side tracks to explore. We soon realised that as the area had been declared a National Park the year before, they had gone through and gated all the  tracks, and closed off the places we had seen last year. We were becoming more and more disillusioned with the area, so decided not to stop over again and just push through to Mataranka.

We stopped off at all the designated camping areas just to have a look and see, and while they were nice and the facilities OK – toilets, no showers – they were not really anything that special. We came across a sign for a camping area we had not seen before, and as we approached we could see it was enormous. We pulled in to have a look, and ended up chatting to the ranger, apparently they don’t have the funding yet to open up all the places we had seen before, so perhaps in the future it will get better.

We were about 20km from the camping area when we went around a corner and there was a car sideways in the middle of a bull dust pit, with people standing around it. We realised there was a problem so pulled up, there was a poor guy kneeling next to his camper trailer that was completely minus a whole wheel. It had sheared off at the axle. They were a young couple with 3 young kids and you could see he knew they were in a world of trouble. We convinced him to pull it off the road, and park it up. He wanted to unhitch the car and drive to Roper Bar 20km away for help. We managed to convince him it was better for them all to stay where they were, as we were heading for Roper Bar anyway and could send help. We got their sat phone number and headed off. When we got to Roper Bar, which is a small Aboriginal shop and roadhouse, we realised it was Sunday, none of the guys in the workshop were there. We got the number of the local police and called the couple on the sat phone to let them know what was happening and give them the number for the police. We area ite decided that while we were there we would take a look at the Roper River and the crossing that gives the 'town' it's name - the Roper Bar.

We got around 100km from Mataranka when we saw a flatbed truck heading towards Roper Bar, we sent them a text message letting them know. We never heard back so hopefully it all worked out ok – a very expensive holiday it will have turned out to be!

We continued on stopping off a t a lay-by, and using their water tank as a prop for another photo-shoot.

We decided we were going to stay at the National Park camp ground in Mataranka, when we got there it was quite busy, but everyone was spread out enough that we weren’t on top of each other. We got ourselves set up and settled in with a cup of coffee, when the biggest mosquitoes arrived. We got the bushmans out, and long pants and shirts. It was otherwise a relaxing evening, until it got dark and the campers just down from us got started. The kids were going nuts and the parents just let them run wild, eventually they went to bed and peace reigned. For about 10 mins – then the adults got started. From the conversation we heard that he had got some disability so they were on holiday!