When we arrived at the Northern Territory border, those going into Western Australia were stopped by police at the checkpoint. (We heard later that no travellers were allowed into the state unless they had a booked camp site including ensuite or, if they had an ensuite van, that they were booked into somewhere with a dump point. Apparently every caravan park from Kununurra to Broome was fully booked).  Those of us going into the Territory were not stopped nor were our entry permits checked. We had crossed the first hurdle.

The scenery changes going into the Northern Territory.  The Pinkerton Ranges rose to our left with red sandstone cliffs forming a collar around them. Our drive took us high into the ranges. Apart from still wondering if we had made the right decision and what we would do if the track to Nhulunbuy was closed, we enjoyed the drive to Katherine.

As we finally drove into Katherine, we finally had range on the radio and caught the 4 o’clock news: the NT government had extended its lock down for another five days. Kyran rang and told us to ‘put our foot down and get onto the track’ if it was still open. And we did. We had still 50kms to the turn off.

As we arrived at the turn off, the sign said the road to Nhulunbuy was open!  We drove along the track, which starts off as bitumen,  until sunset and then we pulled off to camp for the night. It was pitch black and we could hear the wild buffalo calls from a herd we had seen earlier. Anyway we slept well.

We took off at 8am the next morning, driving the 650 kms of red dirt, sand, corrugations and creek crossings towards Nhulunbuy unaware of what could be happening around the country or even the State.  We hoped the covid situation had been a storm in a teacup.

The Central Arnhem Road is a real mix of scrub, mini-rainforest, gum trees and large termite mounds. It isn’t a boring drive as there is so much to see. And the driver has to really focus on the track. We passed wild buffalo and donkeys as well as the usual wallabies. Last time I was on this road we saw a pack of dingoes and I’d have loved to see them again but we didn’t.

We passed several cars, trucks and caravans coming towards Katherine but very few going east with us. Other than the customary wave, we had no interaction with other people until we came across a car with a flat battery. Around it was an Aboriginal family – a woman, two men and about 8 kids!  The car was in a pretty bad way but John used his jump leads to try to start it. Meantime the kids were surrounding me asking if I had any chips I could give them. I gave them a large pack and they were delighted.

We could probably have made it to Gove before dark but …we got a puncture! John wasn’t keen on emptying the whole car and disconnecting the caravan to change the tyre so we got away with stopping every 20kms to put air in it!  

We limped into Nhulunbuy about 8.30pm. It felt like deja vu crawling in with car problems. Our main concern was that Nhulunbuy was closed off and we wouldn’t be allowed in but all was okay.  The talk was that if there were more covid cases, we wouldn’t be allowed to leave – but I was with family so I didn’t really care!