Friday 18th July

After a good night’s sleep in the bush camp at Wangi Falls, we were ready to move on again. Today, we left this lovely location.

We have met so many new faces as we move around. It is hard to remember their names when we come on them somewhere else. Just part of being on holidays, I guess. Anyway, this morning we again chatted with our neighbours who are from New Zealand. While chatting, another Kiwi turned up. There are people from all over the world travelling up here. Yesterday and today, we came across numerous people from Europe. There are people from every state in Australia, too.

When we left Wangi Falls, we drove to the little town of Batchelor. We were hanging out for a cappuccino but only instant coffee was on offer. How spoilt are we at home? In this little town we caught up on emails, as we had wireless coverage, as well as any phone messages. I uploaded several days of blogs, too.

Then we drove out to the Stuart Highway, again. We had lunch under a shady tree at the road junction. Remember, it is about 30 degrees up here!

After our lunch, we travelled a short distance to the entrance to remnants of the World War II Coomalie Creek Airfield. The interest in this is because Prue’s father spent about 3 months there towards the end of the war in the Pacific. He was promoted to Squadron Leader while there and he was flying the twin engine Beaufighter. It was known as the “Whispering Death” by the Japanese.

We were at Coomalie Creek Airfield by the current owner, Richard Luxton. He is so enthusiastic to ensure that this airfield is a living airfield that pilots can come and fly into unlike many others in the area that have been let deteriorate to unusable. Richard has a wealth of history and anecdotes about the airfield. He has overseen the reconstruction of the airfield chapel and hospital. The original runway is still serviceable and during the dry season can be used by a Hercules aircraft. Last weekend, there was a large fly in of various aircraft for 2 days. Even a C47 Dakota was there along with numerous other aircraft including a Savannah, the same as Dave Huett has. The resident RAAF squadrons that were at Coomalie Creek Airfield were the 31 Squadron of Beaufighters and No 1 Photo Reconnaissance Unit (PRU) and also No 87 Photo Reconnaissance Squadron of Mosquito aircraft. A wonderful trip down memory lane.

We left Coomalie Creek Airfield after again saying goodbye to Richard and Rita as well as Richard Luxton. We rejoined the Stuart Highway, south bound for Pine Creek. We planned to free camp this night. Initially, we went to Copperfield Dam but it was not what we wanted so we opted for a gravel pit just a few kms out of Pine Creek. This will give us an easy run to Katherine for the weekend.