Meet Hugo 1.

Tuesday 15th July.

It was very pleasant sitting around our campfire after dinner and in the dark last night.

Unfortunately there was still a fair amount of cloud cover so the 360 degrees sky panorama was somewhat void of stars, however for brief moments there was a break and we had a partial view of this magnificent spectacle.

On the road by 8:30 heading east into the sun towards Barkly Homestead some 160 km's away.

We stopped at the Homestead just long enough to buy a couple of souvenirs and check the diesel price out of curiosity, our decision to fill up at Tennant Creek with sufficient diesel to get us across the 475 km stretch of the Barkly Highway to Camooweal was justified when we saw the $2.10 per litre cost at the Homestead, there is a very large sign at the entrance to the shop there explaining that their prices for everything are higher as due to their isolation they have to generate their own power 24/7 in order to keep the facility open 24 hours for the benefit of their customers. The fuel consumed to keep these generators going is 500 litres per day, each and every day of the year.

We stopped mid morning at a roadside rest area to boil the kettle for a coffee then Gail took a turn at the wheel for the next 160 km's, we changed over again at our lunch break at the Avon Downs rest area which left only about 75 km's for me to drive to our destination for today, beside the Geogina River at Camooweal. This rest area was recommended to us by Wendy and Keith who stop here regularly on their annual migration to Darwin from Victoria.

We arrived around 2:45 to be greeted by dozens of caravans etc, parked parallel to the river stretching for about a kilometre. We found a very pleasant vacant spot with more than enough room for us to also park parallel to the river giving us a great view from the dining area in the motorhome. We have phone coverage at this spot, the first on our stops since we departed Mataranka. The couple next to us are travelling in a Mitsubishi Canter 4WD truck (nicknamed Hugo 1) which has been fitted up to their specifications for travel through all kinds of terrain from deep sandy to black soil tracks. They have travelled on some really remote tracks around the country over the last 5 years.

Although their vehicle has extremely high ground clearance with lots of external storage lockers, the interior is quite cramped in an effort to keep the overall length as small as possible with virtually no overhang front or rear.

We spent a pleasant afternoon and evening chatting to Charles and Robyn who are from Sydney.