Roadtrip - Elliott

A little town called Elliott, NT

Do you know where this is? The other Spaz had never heard of it and she is from Oz. I think we shall officially say that this is in the middle of butt fuck nowhere! So why did we stop in the middle of butt fuck nowhere??? Glad you asked as there is a story to tell…….

The calm before the storm

Since it was the start of the wet season there are hundreds of storms over the Northern Territory and many of these storms start bushfires. There are numerous safety tips when exploring central Australia but the two most important driving tips are to avoid driving at dawn and dusk as animals don’t know the road rules and secondly drive away from fires not towards them. So we broke both of these rules, dusk was settling in and the fire on the horizon looked to be getting closer to the road as we headed towards it. The other Spaz decided that the next town would be where the car was going to be parked for the evening, that town ended up being Elliott.

What a special place Elliott is. There was a pub, a gas station and a caravan park and the main street was full with ‘locals’ out for a walk. Since we had a tent we headed to the caravan park, but the poor caravan park was a dirt wasteland that hadn’t been cared for since 1970 and since our tent wasn’t stab proof or people proof we decided that it might be safer to ‘get a room’ at the pub. Well we got a room for $60, quite cheap really, that should have had the alarm bells ringing. Our room was a real treat. The door was unlocked when we got to it and the handle would have come off the door with a good twist. The entrance way was full of dust and leaves that had blown under then door, there was grass growing in the carpet and the basin in the bathroom came with a pair of eyes. Please vote on whether you think it is a frog or a lizard as we are currently split 50/50. The air-conditioner worked but we woke up in fear in the middle of the night when the ceiling fan started to rock and shake like it was going to fall off the roof.

The entrance was so very inviting

Grass on the wrong side of the door

Frog? or Lizard? either way it shouldn't be in the bathroom sink

Once we were … err … ‘settled’ in our room we headed to the bar for a well-deserved beer. The fires were pretty large and pretty close to town by this stage as the sky and air were full of smoke, even in the bar. Whilst the accommodation was a little neglected and the publican wasn’t the chattiest publican in the desert, we can recommend the food at the pub. Unfortunately they had run out of cheese so we couldn’t have the chicken parma but the chicken with mushroom sauce was still a winner.