Training Log: blairtrewin

Morning session around the Nightcliff shoreline before cutting back through the suburb. A nice setting but the run itself wasn't great, improving somewhat in the last 15 minutes which I guess is a good sign. Saw a crowd next to the path at one point and wondered if I'd stumbled across the local parkrun, but they were actually queueing for plants for sale. Probably the most humid I'll deal with running on this trip (25/15) - it looks like heating up a bit again next weekend but by then I'll be starting to head south - but managed it OK.

Left Darwin after lunch, but not before experiencing a couple of local icons - laksa at the Parap markets, and seeing a croc-related headline in the NT News (with a pointer to a UFO story for good measure). I'd been reminded of another local icon last night at drinks after the talk - I asked if the box was to collect cans for recycling and the answer was no, it was to collect cans for the Beer Can Regatta (I guess that's another form of recycling). Ended up in Katherine tonight, after going the slightly longer and more scenic way from Adelaide River to Hayes Creek and making a side trip to Edith Falls (impressive as always).

Heading west tomorrow. Suspect I won't be online a lot between now and Tuesday.

Another new venue for me (at least in the winter, I've run around the clifftops before) - the Nightcliff pool, perched on the shoreline. Thought it might be busy when the car park was quite full but most of them were there for the cafe next door - it was too cool for locals to be in the water (it dropped to 19.2 last night). Most unusual feature of this pool (apart from its location) is that it has two shallow ends and a deep middle, which I was going back and forth in. Not a bad session.

Today was the work day of the trip, going through site history files and then doing a talk later in the day. The former included the slightly disturbing discovery that Aboriginal people were being referred to as "natives" in Bureau documents as recently as 1975.

Also successfully negotiated the Casuarina shopping centre (to get a watch battery replaced), something which I'd been led to believe from some of what I've read or heard here was only marginally less perilous than a traverse of Bakhmut.

C • Two shallow ends 1

When I planned to stay at Mataranka Homestead, part of the plan was for today's run to be along the riverside path. This plan disappeared last night when I saw a sign saying that it was closed under the 'Elsey Crocodile Risk Management Plan' (in fact, having seen the Little Roper River further up at the road crossing, I suspect that bits of it were still inundated).

The only obvious alternative seemed to be to go out the access road. I'd slept sort of OK despite the room (if not the neighbours) being even worse than the previous night - I don't think it had received any maintenance this century - but my back wasn't great walking around and I didn't expect much. I was wrong - this settled well after the first few minutes and turned into one of my better runs for a while, on a very pleasant morning for it (sunglare was the only issue). Not really much traffic until the last few minutes when caravans started coming out.

Today was the final run into Darwin, easy enough with the highlight (or perhaps lowlight) being the cafe in Katherine who, not long after I entered, decided they had more customers than they could cope with and closed up for the day at 10.30 (can't imagine a place in Melbourne which did this would last very long). Headed to Mindil Beach in the evening with Susanne, Lachlan and family; there were rather more people watching sunset over the ocean than there had been in Karumba.

And today's run route isn't the only plan that's changed: my original plan to get to the Bungle Bungles was a 4WD day tour from the caravan park at the track entrance, but both caravan park and associated tours are closed until 1 July (apparently because the new owners didn't get their paperwork sorted out with the traditional owners soon enough), so I've bitten the bullet and forked out a suitably vast amount of money for a fly-in/fly-out tour (I guess you only live once). This might also advance the rest of the schedule, although that could be influenced by weekend fuel availability on the Tanami, which I have seen conflicting reports about.

Morning session in Tennant Creek, essentially a circuit of the town. Hard work in the first 10 minutes but started to settle OK after that, until I made the mistake of going into the southeast quarter of town. Tennant Creek has a sketchy reputation, but it wasn't the people which were the problem, it was the dogs - had to stop and walk a couple of times and generally try and stay out of their way, which rather made a mess of whatever rhythm I had.

Hadn't slept that well - I was staying in what appeared to be second-hand mine site accommodation, which was reasonably spartan (expected) but seemed to stop absolutely no noise coming from next door (not expected) - all I can say is that if this is typical of mine sites I'm glad I don't work in mining. Didn't seem to affect me either on the run or on the road, although in the latter case today was a somewhat more relaxed day, finishing up with some time in the Mataranka thermal springs. Declined to stop at 'Famous Fran's' purveyor of baked goods in Larrimah - Fran is famous for more than her food, having been alleged to have organised a hitman to make another local who was annoying her disappear (naturally she denies it).

And I ticked Tennant Creek off the site list today - six to go. The site itself is an easy one to find (at the entrance to the airport), but the real discovery of the day was finding what appears to be the remnants of an instrument screen stand at the old telegraph station, the site prior to 1935.

Today's route went past a lot of bores, and looking at the map revealed that the naming of some of them followed a certain theme - there's the Ian Chappell Bore, the Rod Marsh Bore, the Hadlee Bore, the Doug Walters Bore and the Bruce Laird Bore (Bill Lawry gets a tank). Personally, if I was looking for cricketers of that vintage to associate with the word "bore", I'd probably have gone with Geoff Boycott or Chris Tavare.

This morning's plan was intervals in Mount Isa alongside the racecourse, but (perhaps because of the relatively early start) my back wasn't playing ball. Not having really come prepared with a plan B I then proceeded to pick my way through various fairly random blocks of urban Mount Isa (noting in the process that the more desirable real estate seems to be on the higher ground, although the least desirable of all is probably in the northwest strip of town which can be downwind of the mine). Run improved a bit later on, as these ones sometimes do.

This set the scene for a long day on the road - I knew when my plans for yesterday changed (I'd originally planned to be in Camooweal last night) that this meant an 800+ kilometre day either today or tomorrow. Once across the NT border one can facilitate this process by adding 10% to one's speed (at the price of 10% extra fuel consumption), though I was wondering if that was going to work early on after crossing the border because parts of the first 50km in the NT were severely potholed - was much better after that though. Not the most exciting drive in Australia but no issues.

Once at Tennant Creek, my options were to go to the Devils Marbles either late today or early tomorrow. I thought I had enough time to get there and back without returning in full darkness (and had heard that they were at their best in the late afternoon light anyway) so thought I might as well go for it. The rocks themselves are not so different (apart from the red colour) from what many of us are familiar with in orienteering granite areas, the unusual thing is (a) that it appears suddenly in the middle of otherwise featureless terrain and (b) there are a lot of rocks scattered across a flat plain in addition to the low hills. Biggest surprise of the day was that I got out of the car to be greeted by the Canberra family mentioned in Saturday's entry (I didn't think they would come this far this quickly, although I guess they didn't have the side trip to Burketown), although it did mean there was someone there to take my photo...