Living Life: HALLS CREEK & SOME OTHER SPOTS

I forgot to mention in my last blog about the Bungle Bungles that we were told Cathedral Gorge was used by Qantas to film part of the song I Still Call Australia Home (with the children singing).
We headed to halls Creek last Sunday (17th) and into the only caravan park for one night. There is no chemist in Halls Creek and I have run out of one of my presciptions. I have also run out of nicorettes so trying not to smoke too much is a challenge! We got the washing done and a bit of a clean up of the caravan and then had long hot showers. Even though we wash while out on the road, nothing can beat a good shower! We even appeared to have washed off some of our tan. We went out to have a look at the China Wall and Old Town. It is a dirt road and pretty rough. There are a few other things to look at in and around Halls Creek and we will put them on the 'next time' list. We were entertained at the caravan park that night by an indigenous band which played for 3 hours. They were very good musicians and it was a nice night.
It was quite overcast Monday morning. We packed up the caravan, got fuel and did some shopping (very limited choices and pretty dear) before heading off. Halls Creek has a good butcher (limited range but very good meat). He has a sign outside his shop which says "We offer Tough, Tasteless, Fatty Meat & Iffy Seafood .... at City Prices plus freight etc etc etc ...." We asked him what we should do if the meat we bought wasn't tough, tasteless and fatty and he suggested we post it back! He was very funny. They have also recently opened a bakery so we indulged there before heading off. It was a nice bakery and we managed to get some fresh baked bread.
We spent Monday night at Mary Pool - a free camp by the Mary River. It is a very large camp and provides toilets (flushing and reasonably clean) and a dump point. It is a 24 hour stop only (although we don't know why that would be). Lots of trees and shade. We were told by some other travellers that Mabel Downs stopped charging the road toll to the Bungle Bungles on Saturday (the day after we went there)! We should try to get a refund.
On Tuesday we headed to Ngumban Cliff Rest Area. This is only about 84km from Mary Pool but you can stay as long as you like. As the name suggests it is up reasonably high and there are no trees. There is one toilet but it is pretty horrific! We were the only ones there when we arrived Tuesday morning but a number of people came in and left during the day, including a couple of tour buses. This is a reasonably good size camp area with plenty of room but despite that we had a couple in a Winnebago pull up right behind our caravan and completely blocked our view! There were plenty of other spots they could have used. They stayed there 2 nights and the third night we had our view back, at least for one night. There were quite a few people ended up coming in late in the afternoons and staying for one night then moving on. The area is very windy during the day with some very strong gusts from time to time. The wind generally eased off late in the afternoon. It was pretty cold at nights there and we even had to use the quilt! We had beautiful sunsets and starry nights and I experimented with the camera and managed to get a couple of reasonable photos but need to work on it a bit more.
We left Ngumban Cliff this morning and drove to Fitzroy Crossing - details on that to come in the next blog.