Day 44 06/05/2011 Devil’s Marble – Banka Banka Station

Day 44 06/05/2011 Devil’s Marble – Banka Banka Station



The kids climbed to the top of this rock formation!!



Before we left Devil’s Marbles I went for one file walk around.  Now I can tick the tourist boxes see Devil’s Marbles at sunset – tick, and see Devil’s Marbles at sunrise - tick!! What a great way to start the day!!

The trip today took us through Tennant Creek…there is not much to say about the Tennant Creek township or even the surrounding area.  We called into the visitor information centre and had a quick look around the old gold mining machinery, we headed up to the lookout that took in the sights of Tennant Creek and then we left.

We stopped for lunch just out of Tennant Creek and May Ann Dam, here the kids got to fish and threw the yabbie trap in – all with the hope of catching something…anything….but alas we were unsuccessful.



It was hard to know when to stop taking photos!!



Heading out of town we intended to go to the Little Pebbles but after looking at the 6km of fine red dirt that lead to the site we chickened out, I just didn’t have another big caravan clean in me tonight.

We then set about choosing our camp for the night, initially we decided on a road side stop but then realised we would be settling in for the night at about 2.30pm and that was a little early with the kids in a roadside stop!! Playing chicken with road trains was not a suitable form of entertainment!! So we decided to head to Banka Banka Station, the attraction was the opportunity to show the kids a working cattle station and the marketing brochure described an entertaining evening that included a slide show on the station’s history – I was really only thinking of this as an educational opportunity!!  We arrived at Banka Banka at about 3.30pm and whilst the station did have a beautiful green lawn for us to park on and clean showers, the marketing that we read was out of date, they did not do slide shows anymore!! Thankfully just after we arrived another family arrived and the kids spent a few hours happily playing with other kids!!

Pete and I settled in to trying to remove the bindi’s and burs from our rubber matt but I have to confess the only way we could do it was with tweezers and after about 30 minutes we realised that the job was beyond us!! The mat is about 5 metres by 3 metres and the bindi’s were embedded on both sides!! We had though learnt a very valuable lesson….don’t just put a mat out … check out for bindis and burs first!! Luckily by now the kids are well trained to keep their shoes on!!

The overnight stay may not have been as educational as we had hoped but the kids fell asleep early after an energetic afternoon of play!! This was almost as satisfying…