DAY 26 : KATHERINE TO TIMBER CREEK

23 April, 2010.   On the road again.....  first stop VICTORIA RIVER Roadhouse.....

This was a popular stop for travelers.  Their hamburgers - including Buffalo Burgers - were in demand.  Spoke to a group of aboriginals who live on a settlement 30 kms away.... one of them is sitting on the grass with four little dogs.  They drive into Katherine each week to shop - 194 kms away!!

Beautiful grazing country..... lots of grass and shady trees.   We saw a mob of stockmen rounding up brumbies.

Escarpment Walk

Looking down on the town of TIMBER CREEK (285 km west of Katherine.)  We free camped here for the night next to the Victoria River, the Northern Territory's largest waterway.....

The Victoria River and popular boat ramp next to our campsite.

Fishing and water sports here came with a warning....  and limitations......

Parked the van at the campground and went off in the car down a short dirt road to see the GREGORY TREE.  This tree marks the spot of the base camp for Augustus Gregory's North Australia Expedition in 1855.  Scientific and financial interests in England wanted to know more about the North of Australia and financed this expedition.  Two boats sailed north from Sydney, past where Darwin is now and into the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf.  A party of 20 men went up the Victoria River in the schooner.  The boat was badly damaged on rocks and they set up a base camp on the riverbank and used local timber to repair the boat. (Hence the name Timber Creek).  Click to enlarge map....

This illustration shows the layout of the base camp..... the boab tree near the water was inscribed by the party with the dates they spent there - October 1855 to July 2nd 1856.   At the back of the compound is a forge for shoeing horses, etc. next to two smaller boabs.   They are still there and one also has a message inscribed on its trunk....

The message on the tree on the right reads "Letter in Forge"

The Victoria River in the early evening light.....  the bridge crosses the river to a secret army base... there are no signs except warnings not to drive across.   There was a signals station here during the war.