Crossing Arnhem Land

Crossing the little Goyder River (much shallower thankfully)

After delays of nearly 3 weeks (where we went to Darwin and Kakadu) we still couldn’t get permission to travel across Arnhem Land as the road is classified as “impassable” due to the Goyder River being flooded. We decided to take a chance and travel anyway. The 2 worst things that can happen is that a) if we haven’t arrived by nightfall then Allan would have to come out to the Goyder River the next morning. (We would just sleep in the back of the car by the river side). And/or b) we could get fined for travelling without a permit. Even a $1,000 fine would be cheaper than going back to Darwin and flying across.
Now the fun & games started, 300km of rough dirt road. Some sightings of wild buffalo and wandering stock, some back burning in patches and then we reach the Goyder River. It was a metre under water. Bob was a little concerned as he had never driven in water that deep and it was flowing faster than expected too! I was too busy praying and watching anxiously to think of taking any photos of the crossing. The water came up to the top of the bull bar near the bonnet, none got inside the car though the door interiors were pouring water out when we opened them up on the far bank. We had a few more smaller crossing to go through but they were no problems. Bob soon noticed that the motor sounded rough but couldn’t work out what was going on so he proceeded with one ear on the motor and an eye on the gauges. We arrived at Allan’s around 5.30pm – 10 hours from when we left Katherine. It is a LONG time to be on the road. By the way I didn’t take any crafts with me at all so no crafts on the road.

Selective backburing off and on all along the road

Local animals on the road - we also saw a single dingo and horses