Lorella Springs Station

For the first few kms out of Borroloola we had the luxury of a sealed road - the last we would see for a few days.  We drove through flat savannah country and through the southern section of the Limmen National Park before turning north-east to our destination.  The understory of the gulf savannah country is managed by fire - and the annual floods.  There are really 3 seasons in this country - wet, dry and underwater!

Lorella Springs Station is an oasis in this dry, dusty country.  We had 30km of narrow corrugated access road - there's a sign that indicates "1,000,000 corrugations to go", not strictly correct, but it feels like it - and it was graded only a couple of weeks ago.  When Cherryl got out of the car to open a gate a couple of kms from the station she noticed water pouring out of one of our water tanks, and something hanging ominously loose.  Not much we could do here on the side of the road so we drove the few kms we had to go and booked in and found a site.  Robert climbed under the caravan to inspect and found that several of the bolts holding a watertank were non-existent and the tank had fallen down, severing the inlet pipe.  We were able to get some bolts from the station mechanic and we'll operate on 2 non-potable tanks until we get to Katherine in about a week.

Lorella Springs Station is 4,000sq kms/1,000,000 acres and stretches 60 km to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north.  It's bounded by the Limmen National Park to the west and aboriginal land to the east and south.  It's a popular holiday destination with visitors from all over Australia staying for anything from 1 night to a few months.  There are many camping areas on the station land and plenty to do.  On our drive around we saw plenty of flowers.  The orange grevillea was dripping with nectar.  We also saw a bat-wing coral tree and purple kimberley heather/turkey bush (calytrix).

Many of the billabongs and creeks have a small tinny available for use - just tie it up and leave it how you found it when you've finished paddling around.  This one was at Crocodile Springs and while we didn't see any crocodiles here, there are billabongs with plenty of the fish eating "freshies" around.  

We paddled around for about half an hour under the trees, trying to catch some fish (not even a nibble).

There are plenty of swimming holes and we stopped off to look at Inkspot Pool.  We could see the sandy bottom and could see plenty of small fish swimming around in the crystal clear water.






Back at the main camp is Lorella Spring with a wonderful clear swimming hole with water at a very comfortable 34C - just what we needed every day.  Some of the pools are much hotter, up to 52C.  Another highlight here is the on-site bakery.  Crusty Dick bakes bread every afternoon - order by noon, pick up after 5pm.  Beautiful fresh, crusty bread.  A change from the shop bought frozen bread we've been having since we left the Atherton Tablelands a few weeks ago.