Running Waters Camp Trip

The plan:  Drive the Boggy Hole track cold turkey with a five day camp in the middle!

On the way to Boggy Hole and Running Waters

We got a bit of a late start on departure day...There are always so many items to do last minute!  I filled the Disco with fuel the day before, but at "the last minute" Trent decided we should bring two extra jerry cans of diesel.  Boy, was that a blessing because we used that fuel to get us home at the end!
So we left Alice about 11:30 AM headed toward Hermansberg.  We reached the Boggy Hole track about an hour later and headed south.  What a pretty drive!  The track follows the Finke River (mostly dry), but through gorgeous river valleys, sandy roads, groves of river and ghost gums trees and desert oaks, giant red cliffs, savannah type land and fields of wildflowers.  We did see a couple brumbies (wild horses) watching us pass.  Also a very confident ibis who just went right on poking about in the water just a few feet off from the Disco as we crossed its shallow billabong.  About 1:30 PM we stopped for a quick picnic lunch on a fun rocky stretch of "river." 

In speaking with friends we had learned about a favorite camp spot called Running Waters that is outside the actually Boggy Hole Reserve, which means there is no camp fee and you can collect and burn firewood from the immediate vicinity.  Perfect!  Only trouble was, we weren't sure when we got there that we had arrived, as there were no signs or any markers anywhere.  There were certainly no "running waters" in the river bed!  We did see a very beautiful cliff with standing water at base and all along where the river might flow if it was coming from somewhere and going to somewhere else...
"This could be it!" we told ourselves, but passed it by for a while to be sure.  It was nearing 4:00 PM by the time, so we really didn't have time to waste with an entire campsite to set up and dinner to make before 6:00 PM when darkness would descend upon us.  After a bit more exploration, we decided the cliff with water was indeed the "X" marking our spot, so we turned round and finally finished the day's trip at around 5:00 PM.  Yay!

Australian Straw-necked Ibis

Well, obviously, we worked like mad getting a site picked, setting up the sleeping tent, "bathroom" tent (really a tiny two room pop-up:  one side for the bucket and one side for the shower), getting food out, making a fire ring, collecting wood, and starting the fire for cooking our traditional salmon-over-the-fire for the first night on a family camp!  Whew.  Luckily we were the only ones at Running Waters for the entire five days we stayed, so we could make as much noise and be as free as we wanted.  Lovely!  It was dark when we finished cooking the supper but at least we were done traveling for the day and could finish unpacking the next day.

Golden Orb Spider attacking a rather large grasshopper!  We almost walked through its web strung from the ground to a tree.

Sometimes you stumble across the weirdest things in the Outback - a crime scene?

That water sure looks good...

Stone diving board

Spinifex crested pigeon

Jones and Jax digging in the sand on our own little beach

Dry clay pan

Brumby print with Hilary's foot

Camel print with Hilary's foot

Home Church

Curious Jackelope?

Major Mitchel Cockatoo

Of course, it rained a bit that night, but nothing the sun and fire couldn't dry out the next day.  It was so loud, though, that rain on the tent roof!  I had forgotten what that sounded like.  Trent, Beaux, and I were woken up for the duration by the noise, but Jax and Jones are made of sterner stuff and slept right through.
The following days were full of fun.  We were spied on by at least one brumby, but we never saw another.  The trail they used from the water up through the bush and meadow grass was very visible so one day we followed it a while, but never quite tracked then down.  We hiked the rocky ridges, the cliff base, down the "river," up cliffs and over to some very interesting dry clay pans.  We saw horse tracks, camel tracks, dingo tracks and possible donkey tracks, and lots of the tracks had smaller versions trotting along beside, so there may have been young ones of all the wild things out there too!



Clay pans are very flat, clear ground that are mostly clay on top, which doesn't allow plants to grow.  When it rains the clay pans don't drain, so they fill up all across forming a shallow lake.  The one we found was dry, but the prints of both camels and horses were preserved in the dried mud.  There were even several skidded marks where the animals had slipped on the slick clay.  Or maybe they were just having some fun in the mud!
There were actually lots of flies in this area, as opposed to lots of places in the NT at this time of year when the cold weather kills most of them off.  We think the abundance of horse and camel "fertilizer" at Running Waters helps the flies live longer than the usual population.  In any case, we used fly nets and fly cream every day, and only escaped the wretched insects in the eating canopy, in the tent, or after dark--when the mozzies came out!  :)



Temperatures were excellent during the day:  not too hot for hiking, but not cool enough to need jackets.  The nights got cold (6 degress C the coldest night), but we had anticipated the need for extra blankets.
We loved having a great big fire of our own!  We roasted smores, hotdogs, baked cornbread and cinnamon rolls in the dutch oven, used our propane stove for breakfast sandwiches, grilled sandwiches and making coffee.  I have to give a plug for hot cocoa packets from the US of A here...It is so much easier to make cocoa with boiling water than heating milk every time, or worse, using the powder that blobs into yukky goo!  And of course, American s'more fixin's...graham crackers, Hershey's bars, and big vanilla mallows as opposed to "digestive biscuits," 1/2 inch thick choc. bars that don't melt, and small raspberry flavored mallows that turn to liquid at first sign of heat.  You can understand why Aussies haven't quite caught on to the craze.



Anyway, it was pretty fun to explore all around each day and just be on our own for a while!  The kids always stay busy:  digging in sand, skipping rocks, playing cards, poking at the fire, etc.  Endless fun!  Trent was amazing collecting water from the somewhat stagnant pool of water near our campsite and filtering it, boiling it, making sure we had the correct temperature of water not to burn or be too cold for our showers every day (well, every other day for the kids).  He always pitches in with cooking and fire and feeding, washing, teethbrushing, herding kids...I sure can't imagine camping without him!  Not to mention all the water jug filling, trailer packing, tent putting up, route planning he does.  Camping is definitely lots of work, but it is great to work together as a family and create an adventure out in God's land somewhere.
As always, the memories will last forever:  guitar by the campfire, brumby sightings, church held in the tent, tracking central Australian animals in their territory, drinking cocoa/coffee out of camping mugs, hearing camel calls and dingo song...eating with sporks...I mean, the list goes on!
The trip home was continuing forward on the track for another couple hours before we made it to the highway.  We were so amazed by the diversity of landscape, from scrubby bushes, to beautiful pastureland, and desert oak forests all along a pretty red dirt road.  We saw one kangaroo, several Major Mitchell cockatoos, and not much else for the ride home.  There was one clay pan area to drive through where the road just disappears basically, and Trent rip roared through there to the other side, where the road just appears again and continues on!  We felt like we were driving out on the deserts of Utah or wherever they test those fast cars!  The kids were very impressed.
Again, God blessed us with a safe trip and we made it home in time for some Macca's (McDonalds--Aussies have an absolute passion for abbreviating words!!) and unloading the necessary items before bedtime.  As always, it was good to be home.
Mission accomplished.  Boggy Hole Track--Check.
Love,
Hilary