It’s not just about a base camp

Day: 210 Stage three / total expedition days 601

Sunrise:
05:23

Sunset:
18:50

As the crow flies:
24,2

Daily kilometers:
38

Total kilometers:
6204 km

Temperature - Day (maximum):
41° degrees, sun approx. 61°

Temperature - day (minimum):
16° degrees

Latitude:
21°55'22.4"

Longitude:
146°45'46.2"

Cassiopeia Camp – 12.12.2002

We were spared the unpleasant heat again this night. Invigorated by a good night’s sleep, we set off early and take long strides towards Cassiopeia Station. If we are lucky, we can stay there for a few days to organize the rest of the route. Above all, we are now thinking more and more about where we can set up our base camp to break up the expedition. We are still in the dark and don’t know where the expedition will end. Due to the dramatic drought, it is not easy to find a suitable base camp for us. The station managers and owners are juggling with the lack of rain just short of total ruin. During this time, every stalk is needed to feed the animals. An expedition with six camels is not exactly convenient. Despite this, all the people in the outback have so far been very helpful and have hardly noticed the disaster, which is getting worse by the day.

But of course it’s not just about finding a place for us to stay, it’s mainly about finding a nice person who treats our boys very well. We keep getting a few strange offers that we have had to turn down and if this continues, we may well be stuck for weeks after the expedition trying to find this nice person. This is precisely why we urgently need a station that can accept six hungry camel mouths despite the drought. Tanja and I now often discuss this major challenge. We now have an advertisement in a daily newspaper and on our English website, continue to talk about the sale in Australian interviews and a few days ago one of the best known auctioneers included our caravan in his sales program. We have now done everything that can be done. Now it’s time to put into practice the sentence that Mother Earth has told me time and again. “Let it flow Denis and be patient.”

On the way to Moray Downs Station, we once again get lost in a terrible maze of fences. Behind a tall line of trees, just a few hundred meters away from us, we discover the radio antennas of the Homestead. “If we take the shortcut and cross the dry bed of the Belyando River, we’ll save ourselves at least two to three kilometers,” I say, looking at the map and pondering. Only moments later, the decision is made. I carefully pull our boys through the steep riverbed, which is teeming with birds. Parrots squawk loudly and cooling shadows arch over our heads. On the other side of the Belyando, we manage to work our way through many fence gates and through several cattle enclosures with hundreds of young cows. Then, about 50 meters before the magnificent farmhouse, we finally come up against an insurmountable obstacle. There are perhaps a hundred small calves in one enclosure. It is not possible for us to walk through there with our 18 to 20 meter long caravan without causing chaos among the calves. “Let’s go back,” says Tanja, whereupon I slump my shoulders in discouragement and pull Sebastian into a bow. We follow a fence in the wrong direction. He takes us back to exactly where we were half an hour ago and follows the dirt road to the homestead.

Wendy, the manager’s wife, welcomes us with a warm smile. She immediately offers us mangoes, cake, tea or coffee and cool water. “Thank you very much, but we can’t leave the camels alone,” I reply. “I’ll take it to the camels, then we can sit in the shade under the tree and talk a little about your fantastic journey,” she replies.

It doesn’t take long for them, the helicopter pilot Rob, his wife and some other station staff to gather around us. We chat in an extremely pleasant atmosphere until it’s time to leave the people again. We walk towards our weekly destination, Cassiopeia Station, with a box full of fresh, delicious mangoes.

“Can I buy you lunch?” asks a truck driver who stops next to us. We chat for a while and when it turns out that the driver, named Bart, is the young owner of Cassiopeia, we happily accept his invitation.

Bart and his wife Tegan offer us an enclosure not far from the farmhouse for the next few days. “Your camels should find enough to eat there and if you like you can move into the air-conditioned hut next to the barn,” he says. We thank you very much and set up camp in the offered enclosure. As it would be a lot of work for us to transport the equipment to the hut and we have become so accustomed to the starry sky over the last few months, we stay next to our camels.