My world walk blog -Australia 75 - The Three Ways Roadhouse

The Three Ways Roadhouse.

The man called Rossi that I mentioned last week who is a gas companies Cultural Affairs Officer stopped to check on me last Monday. He said that over the weekend that he had driven my route as far as the Three Ways Roadhouse and he had kindly left water for me at intervals of between twenty and thirty kilometres along the roadside. This was a massive help as there was no other water source and Karma was not able to carry all of the water along with my food supply that I needed. Thanks so much Rossi, and as a result I was bloated on water!

He works alongside Aboroginal elders to say what can be done and what can't be done with the pipelines which criss-cross their land. The people he works with are referred to as 'bushies' as they live in remote and dry communities. Maturity and the difficulty in obtaining alcohol means so-called bushies are generally not burdened by addiction problems as in other areas. This is such a complex problem and indeed a sensitive subject in Australia. The whole city of Tennant Creek is a dry city. Recently I read in a newspaper article that there are many  people driving to Mount Isa to sell alcohol in large quantities to smuggle back to Tennant Creek to sell at a vast profit to people who are on a banned from drinking alcohol list. The authorities have hit back and anyone caught smuggling will be themselves put on the banned alcohol list.

I picked up my first phone signal in almost a week twelve kilometres from the Three-Ways Roadhouse.
It had been a quiet and uneventful week with so little to write about! Almost 190 km from the Barkly roadhouse, I walked along a road that changed so little. Just bush, bush and yet more bush. There were nights when I camped down bush tracks and one or two other nights at rest areas. 

One night I met three couples, all from Walsha, New South Wales. They have been travelling around together for a few months. I have fond memories of Walsha, that's the town where the mayor, a man called Clint allowed me to stay in an apartment adjoining his butchers shop for a couple of days. His staff fed me with so many steaks until I pleaded for mercy. Staked down so much until I finally escaped my beef shackles one morning with a hearty sausage breakfast and eventually hit the road.

Back here at the Northern Territories  roadside rest area we also talked about the lovely homely cafe in their town called Marthas Kitchen. I guess I know Australia better than most Australians, at least that's what I've often been told.

So, on I walked west on route 66, clicking along and wearing the same pair of walking sandals that I have been walking in since about 200 km west of Toowomba, 2,300 km ago. I love the sandals more than any other footwear that I have worn in my total footfall of over 72,600 km on both my world run and this world walk. Strangely when I mentioned this to the company they told me that they get too many people like me asking for their magnicifient walking sandals

Eight kilometres before the Three Ways roadhouse a snake which was about a metre long slittered across the road just in front of me. Inside the roadhouse a man called Gary insisted that I take his spare snake kit. Well, I guess after him buying me three beers I couldn't refuse the kit! 

Just two hundred metres from the roadhouse and for the first time on my world walk my footsteps joined my steps on my world run. This happened when I turned the corner at a T-junction  just before the Three Ways when I left the Barkly highway and joined the Stuart highway towards  Darwin. My Australian world run route back then was  from Melbourne to Darwin (Mar 13 to May 26 2013.)

 Inside the roadhouse a cool husky dog called 'Oi'  greeted me as he sat in the beer cooler at the Three Ways. What a greeting and that greeting could only be toppled by Dale the manager who gave me a cabin for the night. What a lovely break from lying on my air mattress on so much hard gravel! He then followed that up with an offer of a rest day which I gleefully accepted.  Eric, from the Netherlands took delivery of my third (of five) food and supply packages. Thanks also to Kim-Maree Burton for sending this on from Mt Isa and of course to the driver who kindly obliged to take it from the Townview hotel where she works

Outside the Three Ways I asked a man called Tony to drop a ten litre slab of water 130 kilometres down the road. That was the last water drop from my friend Rossi who I mentioned earlier. That will be just over  halfway to the next roadhouse in Elliot. I will be there next weekend.

I made friends with one of the workers at the roadhouse, a woman called Lucy from Leeds, UK. She said that she would send some of my water bottles with drivers along my route for the following week towards Elliot, some 230 kilometres away.