The routine of people packing up and departing the caravan park, whilst others arrived and were shown to their site (with Bert leading the charge from an early hour) continued like clockwork this morning.
Our neighbours Murray and his wife ‘Darling’ (as we chose to refer to her) were packed up and departed at around 9.15am for the drive to their next stop at Katherine, about 100kms north of Bitter Springs. No sooner had they departed than Bert was directing another large caravan into the available space. A family of three children, all under 7 or 8, spilled from their Toyota Sahara 4WD then fought over who would be first inside the caravan when it was properly parked up. The phrase “all the gear and no idea” came to mind as we watched them set up. Dad was engaging the kids in the set up – but this was possibly because they had a better idea than him of how to deploy the stabiliser legs or how to connect their hose to a tap. They eventually went down to the springs while we had a good catch up with family in Chicago over Skype.
After the Skype call it was our turn for a swim and our timing could not have been better. The new neighbours were returning, with their youngest displaying all the signs of someone who had ‘hit the wall’ and needed a rest.
Our afternoon was initially devoted to a few chores – retrieving and folding washing, filling the Tvan water tank and preparing a potato salad for dinner. When all chores were ticked off we followed the well-worn path down to the springs for one final soak in the warm, soothing and crystal clear waters before we continue north to Kakadu tomorrow.