From Katherine, our next stopover was to be Adelaide River.
As normal, my friend Dave, was to be frst away, well in advance of the convoy packets, in order to recce the location of the first stop. As we got back on the Stuart Highway and left Katherine, I could see a rocky outcrop ahead just off the road.......but something did not appear right, to my eyes I could see wheels, lots of them :confused:. As we drew closer, a man was seen sitting on the side of the road.........it all became clear as we pulled up! A road train had gone off the road and overturned, its load was a new Western Star tractor unit and another semi-trailer. The driver told us it had happened a few hours before and "something had run across the road in front of him". As we spoke, a small truck arrived to assist, so we carried on.
After about 90 kms, we reached Pine Creek and whilst in a service station refuelling, an Australian Army vehicle pulled in, with four British MP's, apparantly observing the K95 exercise. I finally got my breakfast in the Hard Rock Cafe in Pine Creek......not an official Hard Rock establishment I think, although the logo was a replica! The lunch stop was at the local school, always enjoyable, with the reaction from the kids in these remote places. On of our group, Warren Brown, entertained the kids by drawing cartoons of them. He is a cartoonist for the Daily Telegraph in Sydney, doing the daily cartoon, there would be no politician who had not suffered under his pen!
On having our lunch, Dave and I left the school in advance, to check out a remote airfield about 80 kms North. Fenton Airfield was a bomber base during WW2, now part of a large cattle station, permission to visit had been made in advance. Initially the USAAF were based there with B-17 Fortresses in late 1942. Then they had B-24 Liberators there. The Japanese bombed the field on several occasions. The RAAF took over from the USAAF in August 1944 and brought their B-24 aircraft in. Operations from here were aimed at Japanese occupied islands north of Australia. Although the site is now overgrown with trees and vegitation, the runway is still in good order. Signs had been erected to show the locations of varios parts of the airfield. There was an emergency crash strip where damaged aircraft had to land so not to block the main runway, when we located it, some substantial lumps of wrecked Liberators were still there bearing paintwork and markings. Kicking through the dirt found all kinds of items, from radio bits, etc. On leaving the airfield, we had arranged to check in any other convoy vehicles that wanted to visit, to ensure no one got left behind. Whilst stopped on the side of the road, just by a working silver mine, as it happened, we were treated with suspicion by the occupants of a ute, probably locals who had been warned of an infiltration of "Orangelander" forces duing K95. Apparantly, we were reported as the "enemy"! :-D
From here we headed off for the night stop at Adelaide Creek, more to follow on that.
* As a postscript on my friend, Warren Brown, mentioned earlier, he was one of the organisers of Back To The Track. He came over to England and joined me for the MVT Normandy Tour in 2004. Here he met another Australian, Lang Kidby, they formed a plan there and then to re-enact the famous Peking to Paris Race of 1907. Within a year it was done, with cars as used originally. He is now one of the presenters on Top Gear Australia, which started this month. You never know who you might meet on these sort of events.
Photos ;
1. Part of the convoy, at Pine Creek school
2 and 3. Remains of B-24 at Fenton Airfield
4. Magnetic ant hills found in abundance in this area