Across the Top (1)

 

Dawn at Five Rivers lookout

As I sit down to write after a too long silence (unavoidable) big blops of sub-tropical rain are falling. 

Except they’re not, because weather apps, and even the Australia Bureau of Meteorology, assure me it is “sunny with no rain.”

Silly me.

I haven’t seen rain since, as I mentioned, the Pinnacles, near Geraldton in WA. That, according online apps, about 5263 km. Except it isn’t. You could just about take that route these days because they’re slowly making it passable, but no. Not this little black duck. Not because I’m crazy, but because I’m less crazy that you think I am, it’s actually been approximately 9,600 kms since I last saw rain.

Besides, a diameter doth not a circling make.

If you happen to be interested in the whole saga, including the extra two or three thousand kilometres necessitated by a dodgy mechanic, the car has travelled 18,146 since I bought it. Which is why I’m taking about twelve days off the big stuff, waiting to have it serviced, by Mitsubishi mechanics, here in Townsville. It deserves fresh oil, hoses, belts – even injectors. 

Soon I'll be back on familiar ground, and the circling will be done. But not the miles. 

But this, Townsville, from where I'm writing these retospections, is where I was always going to slow down the hard yards. In this last quarter of the continental circuit I will be (so far as lost time permits), taking pauses. They begin here with wonderful friends Richards and Leisa. Time to smell the roses. 

Or at least, it seems, the petrichor.

The rain which is officially not happening, is accompanied by thunder now. I’ve disconnected my computer from the mains. While not a Top End storm yet, this is not mealy kiwi mumble-thunder. A mildly decent imitation of a window-rattling crash.

Nice.

But when I left you I was on the roadside, catching 40 winks after the back-breaking slog over the Gibb River Road. I woke up after a couple of hours and made my way to another of my bucket list towns, Wyndham.

Why Wyndham? Because. But also because many circuiters of The Big Lap omit it. They head straight across to bigger, brassier Kununurra (which has a river and traffic lights and banks and stuff).

Poor little Wyndham.

So after my forty winks I crept up the highway as far north as it publicly goes, and grabbed forty more. And woke as the fist, barest hints of dawn infiltrated the eastern sky (to my right, as I hoped it would).

Here GPS came into its own. For, when I flicked it on, I discovered I was near (as the crow flies, albeit 18 kms by road), something called the Five Rivers Lookout.

I U-turned, and hastened, and oh my golly gosh I will be ever thankful that I did.

There was not a soul in sight as the black turned to grey turned to purple to oranges to yellows to the crowning of the new day.

I looked down on the Ord, Forest, King, Durack and Pentecost Rivers. Down on the ore works and the mangrove swamps and the steely grey-blue waters, dead calm (though beneath the surface seething with crocodiles), stretching to the horizon and beyond to …

 … to where? Indonesia, I guess.

For an hour I sat and heard and watched the day creak into life. I stayed longer still, made myself breakfast and coffee and still not a human soul disturbed me. I consumed my victuals. Occasionally, from the mining operation 360 metres below me an engine mumbled, and that was all that was not nature.

Me. Me and the universe and creation, human and divine.

Eventually needs must. I cranked up the now-trusty steed, and made my way towards the Northern Territory border, 165 kilometres, away. Then on to Katherine (a town, not a waiting wild woman!). A further 450. My heart sang.

My back not so much. I permitted myself a motel again.