Day 9 (12/9/2014): Tennant Creek, NT to Darwin, NT Distance traveled: 995km
We had stayed last night at the El Dorado motel in Tennant
Creek. This was where I spent a couple
days after my motorbike accident 3 years ago, while waiting for Pat to arrive
and take me home. They have made some
upgrades and added a restaurant and play area, but just staying there brought
back lots of memories.
Today was a long day of driving. Initially, we had planned to just drive from
Tennant Creek up to Katherine (approx. 7 hour drive), but since we weren’t able
to get the tour we wanted from there, and because we will need to pass back
through Katherine again; we decided to push through and go straight up to
Darwin. Overall, it was a 10 hour drive
– but with 2 drivers, we followed a pretty regular rotation of switching about
every hour. With that approach, it
really didn’t seem too bad.
Along with the quick stops to switch drivers, we had 2
stops. The first one was probably the
one that was most significant for this trip – to revisit the spot where I came
off the bike on my trip 3 years ago.
Thanks to the GPS tracker that I was using on that trip, I knew that it
was 50.1 km from the place I started in Tennant Creek. While there doesn’t seem to be anything
remarkable about the spot, the red gravel along the side of the road, looked
painfully familiar. After that, we
stopped in Katherine for a late lunch.
Katherine (population over 10,000) looks like a nice and bustling town,
and we would enjoy having a bit more time to explore.
But… on to Darwin. We
arrived around 5 PM to 38 C heat, and had a quick break to refresh after the
drive, then headed down to Mitchell Street.
There is quite a busy bar and restaurant scene, but we opted to just get
a pizza to bring back so we can watch Manly Sea Eagles play in the finals tonight. We saw the game. What more can I say other
than the Eagles were demolished South Sydney.
Tomorrow we are booked on a day tour of Kakadu – pickup at
6AM, and return at 7:30PM, so we will probably have more photos, less
writing.
You can just make me out. I'm on the other side of the road from where my car is. This is the spot that I spent a couple of hours waiting for an Ambo and getting treatment before I was taken to Tennant Creek hospital.
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