To the North: Meentheena Veteran’s Retreat

We left the Marble Bar Caravan Park yesterday morning. After emptying the toilet and doing some shopping in the general store we headed out to Meentheena. Most of the way was on a good bitumen road though the beautiful scenery here.

Our camp hosts are lovely, very friendly and we feel well taken care of. They have rain water and solar power at the campers kitchen and accommodation, an old twin tub which we can use for $2.00 a load. There are lots of places to camp around the main section, plus a couple of bush camps near the river.

We joined the nightly gathering around the campfire last night. At 6.00 pm one of the veterans said the oath, so we felt very much part of the community.

There are some vintage car enthusiasts visiting with their beautifully restored cars. Apparently they are quite tough and able to handle difficult gravel roads. We chatted mainly with a couple whose husband was formerly a teacher and heard stories from his teaching days.

This morning we had a problem with the batteries going flat as soon as we switched on the 12volt. We had lots of water in bottles, so had to heat water on the stove for our washes as we couldn’t use the water pump. It now seems to have resolved as we are getting lots of solar, but we have booked in at a 12volt specialist in Broome to have the batteries checked. This problem started in Newman and we’ve been fine since, though the batteries really needed the good charge up we had on our last night in Marble Bar.

We have a small lithium power station we can use as backup for charging our devices, but we don’t want to have this problem with the main system for the rest of our trip.

This morning our host took us out to look at both campsites and we had a walk along the river whilst he cleaned the toilet.

We have good 3G access here at the main area, there is none at the bush camps.

Update: I’ve just removed the photos from this post so it will upload. Sorry.


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