April 1st to April 4th - Happy Easter

We left Cooinda very early in the morning as we had a long drive ahead of us as we had to backtrack in order to get a decent highway go to Queensland and the Ocean.

On the way back we stopped at a place called Larrimah, it is a "bad luck" place for Aborigines so you never see any hanging about there.  We went to Fran's Tea House.  We met a few people who had experiences there so we felt we should stop.  It is a trailer with a built on roof, covering a patio of sorts.  Fran is a little lady about 5' tall, weighs about 250 lbs., no teeth, no shoes, and tells you what you want to have.  She has a sign by her door that says "Don't Fuck with me, I Fuck back".  I guess that says it all.  The food was good though.  She never tells you what the price will be, I think she looks at you and decides what you can afford.  Lucky we were slightly bedraggled looking because she only charged us $28.00 for 2 cups of tea and two pieces of apple crumble.

We went back to Daly Waters for the night, met up with two couples from Cooinda, one couple were riding a motorcycle around Australia.  In my wildest dreams, I couldn't imagine doing that.

We left Daly Waters at 6:45, another long day of driving ahead of us.  We drove all the way back to Tennant Creek, an extra 50km as we didn't want to pay 190.5 for diesel at Renner Springs or 160.9 at Three Ways.  We ended up paying 144.5, that made Dalton feel better.  He didn't care about the extra 50km we put on.

Dalton got tired of driving around 4:00 and we still had 250km to go to our next stop so we pulled over in a free camping spot across the highway from the Avon Police Station.  We felt quite safe there and there was even a "long hole toilet" there.  There was another couple using the same area, however, they had a bus.

While I was trying out the facilities, Dalton was making new friends.  The couple, Paul and Kylie Clarke are from Geraldton, WA and they converted a Greyhound bus themselves and did a beautiful job.  While we were there another bus drove up, they happened to be friends of Paul and Kylie, whom they hadn't seen in several months, Geoff and Evelyn James from Melbourne, Victoria.  We had a lovely evening.  Paul makes his own Bourbon, so the fellows had quite a time testing his wares.  We all slept like logs that night, it rained a bit and cooled off nicely.

This was the first thing we saw when we went to get out of the van.  We were told to be wary of wild pigs as they could charge you.  This one, however, didn't seem to be interested in us.  Just to be on the safe side, I told Dalton he better not cook any bacon.

Kylie, Robi, Evelyn, Paul and Geoff.  Dalton is taking the picture. In front our our van

Kylie and Paul Clarke's bus

Evelyn and Geoff James' bus - they bought it already converted

Everyone parted company the next morning as we were all headed in different directions.