After a therapeutic lunch we headed off to Lorella Springs Cattle Station. This place is amazing. It is over 1 million acres of wilderness gulf country, and the owner Rhett has no idea how many head of cattle he runs. The station predominately consists of untouched NT remote coast line, river systems, water ways, huge chasms and gorges. There are wetlands, swamps, thermal springs. You could stay here for 6 months and not see everything – but we have to just cram in as much as we can into our 2 or 3 days.
There a lots of places to visit on 4 WD tracks throughout the property, and as long as you let Rhett know where you are headed you can camp where you like. At one place you can feed the 6 foot long groper that comes in each after noon for a treat. There is an amazing collection of people here and we have been having some fascinating discussions. At 4.30pm each day, everyone meets at the homestead for “happy hour”, and food is cooked on a roaring fire in camp ovens. Current guests who are ornithological experts and a National Park Ranger has discovered a whole new bird never before seen in Australia – here at Lorella Springs Station. The bird watching is incredible, and there are frogs everywhere.
One of the other guests is a motor mechanic, and he has agreed to rivet the roof rack back on (there goes the mobile), Rhett is letting us use the station workshop for the job at a small cost.
We have done 4WD drives out to wildfire gorge, and emerald pools – both lovely. It is great to come back to camp at the end of the day where a hot shower awaits. There are these terrific ‘choofers’ made out of 44 gallon drums and car radiators to heat up the water! You do have to watch out for frogs everywhere in the showers and toilets, and last night a beautiful olive python was happy to join me in the shower as well – no doubt after the frogs.
When we went to pack up camp we opened up the trailer to find a number of frogs settled in happily inside eating mossies – infact further down the road when we stopped for coffee – one hopped grumpily out of the coffee pot!
