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We thankfully drove out of Elliott appreciating the fact we were still alive and it didn’t look like we had lost anything overnight. We drove on for half an hour or so before I looked in the side mirrors to see the front roof vent flapping around and it look liked it was broken. We pulled over as soon as we could and the only solution we had was to remove it completely so that it wasn’t a hazard to anyone following us. We both went into the van to try to pull it down and finally we succeeded, we put what was left of the vent into the back of the car, we will need to replace this as soon as possible and thought maybe some of the parts could be retrievable. I will contact the repairers in Darwin to see if they can get the part in as they are organising other parts for us. We turned out into the road and then noticed that 40 metres in front of us was a car of aborigines on the side of the road with their indicator on, obviously waiting to see if we were going to leave our van by the side of the road but one of the first things you learn when driving up this way is never to do that. Anyway, this car followed us from here to Daly Waters, sometimes driving behind and then coming back to pass us and when we pulled into Daly Waters Pub they were parked beside the road.
We drove up to the road opposite the pub and turned around and I went in and booked our site for two nights then we returned down the road to the entrance to the park where we had someone direct us to our site, after we had backed in we had a bit of a chat to the man guiding us and found out a little bit about the new owner for the pub who must have bought it just after we were here last time. We set up and then had a van come in beside us, it was a family with young children and they were farmers from up Shepparton way, we spent a bit of time with the dad discussing different things before we came in for lunch and they went over to the pool for a swim. I was cooking our favourite lamb shanks recipe for dinner so I spent most of the afternoon inside cooking, making mayonnaise and doing two loads of washing before joining Robb outside to do a bit of research on the next part of our trip. It is happy hour here between 4-6pm and we had already decided to go across to the hotel at 4.00pm. We walked over to the pub and I found a table while Robb when in to get our drinks, this is such a popular spot so there were only a couple of tables left when we arrived but thankfully, we were under the shade. We had a couple of drinks before being joined by another couple because there weren’t anymore vacant tables available. He was a geologist and she was a financial advisor and they had travelled quite a bit over their life together so it was good to sit and discuss various places we had both visited and compare notes. Every night at 6.00pm there is a duo who perform up on the stage but before they came on the owner of the pub rolled in on his scooter with Holly the horse following close behind, it isn’t often you see a horse in a pub so we were all equally impressed and took many photos of the event. He stopped up the top in front of the stage and allowed the children to come up and feed Holly from their hands, a nice little touch for an already quirky hotel. We sat and talked a bit longer to the people at our table before returning to the van. I needed to cook the lamb shanks a bit longer until the meat would fall off the bone and we didn’t want to eat too late into the night. We both enjoyed our dinner when it was finally ready and we are looking forward to exploring around the hotel tomorrow.
It was rather nice not having to get up and move on this morning, we sat and read while drinking our coffee out the front of the van. After coffee we went for a walk around town which is always fun there are lots of sculptures and old aircraft to look at and Tim’s shed has a great display of well-preserved old cars and motor bikes. We said hello to Kev the saltwater crocodile who lives across the road and walked down to look at the old Post Office. Further down the road we came to a fenced in area that held a pig who loved being scratched behind the ear and a couple of buffalo. We returned to the Pub where I took photos inside and a couple of spots outside, I had missed yesterday, like the pool area when we eventually found it. We then walked around to the outside structure that holds all the old thongs and I added my broken pair to the collection. I am very proud to have my thongs hanging up here. Then we returned inside and I purchased a pack of tablets for the toilet and a new pair of thongs, while we were at it, we thought we would sit and have a beer as I had a phone call to make and the service was pretty good in here. We sat drinking our beer and going through our social media, Robb was on one of his American videos that he likes when the guy sitting on the table next to us recognised what Robb was watching as it is one of his favourites, we had a long conversation with Geoff after that, it so happens that he has not long returned from America and it wasn’t long until the conversation turned to Robb’s favourite discussion point American politics. Needless to say, we were there for quite a while. We are going back to the pub tonight and we will be trying to find a good spot for service as I have an email to send and I would like to load up my photos. We will stay for dinner and the music tonight; we believe their pizzas are pretty good.
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