Borroloola and King Ash Bay Fishing Camp

The brochures for the guided tours and resorts in the Northern Territory look spectacular. The reality of driving and camping is it’s a tough slog! You are rewarded with pretty spectacular scenery, there is no doubt, but it’s the heat, flies, frogs, toads and general “wildlife” I’m struggling with. I just want to go to the loo without panicking about what is in, could be in or could crawl into it or the shower while I’m using it. It’s freaking me out and poor Lucie is just about beside herself. On the flipside, Lucas is in his element!

Borroloola is an Aboriginal community on the NT side of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Essentially a “dry” community, with all locally run businesses. Unlike a few other places we’d been through, it seemed to work and we were pleasantly surprised with a really well stocked supermarket, with loads of fresh localish produce, fresh bread, milk and eggs. Packaged and processed foods were really expensive, which is certainly a good incentive for people to eat fresh, should be more of it I say!

We drove about 50kms out of Borroloola on one of the worst roads we’ve been on so far to King Ash Bay – a Barramundi mecca on the Gulf. We found out after we arrived that it was a mecca provided you had a boat, which we didn’t have. Fishing without a boat meant off the banks and with the croc warnings everywhere I got to play fun police again and poo pooed the fishing. Instead of fishing like he’d hoped, Sean then spent the afternoon putting the kitchen back together. Given the conditions we’d dragged the van through – corrugated roads, washouts, river crossings and endless bull dust, it was reasonably OK and there was no major damage – mostly all the screws in the shelves had wiggled their way loose and everything was covered in fine dust. Surprisingly all our condiments (we have lots!) also survived in tact. Who says you can’t travel corrugations with glass! After surviving these roads, we should have no qualms about doing the Gibb River!

It was still Anzac Day, so in lieu of fishing, after the cabinet maker had worked his magic, the Fishos Club was the next best thing. Gambling responsibly of course, we introduced the kids to Two Up with the locals. Lets just put that down to giving them a well rounded education!

SP: King Ash Bay – Mental note: I NEED A BOAT !!