The Indian Ocean Again

From Mary Pool we headed into Fitzroy Crossing where we stopped for lunch before continuing on to the Ellendale Campsite about a hundred kilometres further towards Derby. We decided to keep the day relatively short, leaving a quick run into Derby the next day as Max has a nasty ear infection and we wanted to make sure we had the whole day available to try and see a doctor to sort it out.
The Ellendale campsite had a reasonable patronage, but nothing like Mary Pool the night before. This morning we were astounded to find both our swags covered in tiny ants, thank goodness for the insect netting we have over both of them. I haven’t yet worked out what was attracting them though, as even when I moved them into the middle of the sun the ants continued to cover them.

Old gnarly lookinng Boab West of Fitzroy Crossing

The trip into Derby was pretty uneventful, although the countryside is slowly changing. The most noticeable change has been that the majority of the Boab’s now have leaves and nuts on them.

The Prison Boab is 1,500 years old

On the way into Derby we stopped a the Boab Prison Tree, which Max found fascinating. Adjacent was a 120m concrete water trough left over from droving days. Nearby was also a small (disused) swimming pool that had been constructed by and for the use of soldiers during the 2nd World War.

We then drove straight through Derby and out to the Jetty, where we saw the Indian Ocean again for the fist time in over 5 months, which is a fair length of time given that I used to drive along it on my way to work every morning and evening before we started travelling.
The jetty is still in use, but not for cattle any more – nowadays it is only lead that is exported through it. It also (apparently) has the largest tidal movement in Australia – we were there during fairly low tide.
Following this we headed back into town and found that the only place we could get Max checked out is Emergency, which has given me time to type up max’s most recent blog entries and put together this one.