Step 92 Banka Banka – Avon Downs 406 km's

Tuesday 26^th July

Quite brisk again this morning, hoodies required to start the day. But don't fret for us too much it soon warmed up.

Stopped for morning tea at the appropriately named: 3 Ways. Exiting the car park of the roadhouse you can either:

•    go back the way we came in and head North for Darwin (been there, done that, didn't buy the t-shirt)
•    go straight ahead and head South through the Alice for Port Augusta (no thanks, doesn't appeal this time)
• or turn left and head East for Cairns. We have a winner. That's the way we will go then.

Turning left takes us on to the Barkly Highway (highway might be a bit of overstating the qualities of the road). The Barkly Highway is designated Route 66. Bit different to the last Route 66 trip we did. Funnily enough I remember the song saying “down to Tecoma, Flagstaff Arizona” … but I don't remember anything about Barkly Homestead or Avon Downs. Must have been something to do with iambic pentameter or something.

Filled up with diesel at Barkly Homestead and made up a sandwich for lunch. They had fresh beef here, but Di wasn't keen.

With Di driving after lunch the excitement mounted. No, not her driving, it was what was happening as she drove.

First off we passed a load of cowboys rounding up the cattle, into big pens

Missed some of the cowboys in this photo but we were doing 100 km/h

Then two baby emus, or brolgas, or some other really large bird tred the suicide run across the road. They failed (in their suicide), they succeeded (in crossing the road). Leading to the question: Why did the emus cross the road. Answer: to scare the life out of Di.

Just as the heart rate was dropping a BIG, FAT snake tried to leap into MM. Well actually it was just crawling along the road but I heard a story once about a guy who thought he had run over a snake but it had managed to get thrown up into the wheel arch. Then it crawled in through the bulkhead and bit him on the leg. True story! Well maybe it's Urban Legend (or that should be outback legend).

An exciting few kilometres anyway. By the way it seems to be real cattle country out here. Lots of cows in the paddocks. I say paddocks but they are each about the size of an English county.

That's not the main road,
The Main road is off screen to the left

We ended up stopping for the night at Avon Downs. A free camp just off the road. Literally. A nice quiet night in MM though, gotta love those ear plugs.