Big Horse Creek / Timber Creek

We stopped off for a couple of nights at Timber Creek, staying at the Big Horse Creek campsite.

Barb and Lou tried fishing in the nearby Victoria River and once again, the fish were elusive.  There are saltwater crocs in this river so they were being extra careful, fishing at the boat ramp and not standing too close to the banks. Although there were no fish to be found, there were plenty of laughs.  At one stage, Barb's lure got snagged on a submerged rock and as she stood tugging and jiggling it trying to get it loose, Lou decided to give her last cast a bit of extra effort to get it further out into the river.  Every so often a cast goes awry and unfortunately this was one of those times.  Lou was standing next to a row of trees and her cast flew up and over a branch, ending its journey with the lure hanging 10 feet above the water.  Lou and Barb looked around, glad they were the only people there and hoping nobody turned up to witness their amusing predicament.  Lou realised that pulling the lure back up through the branch would be impossible so she let out enough line to have the lure floating on top of the water, line trailing up and through the foliage before making its was down and back to the end of her rod.  In any other body of water she would have waded the 10 feet into the water and retrieved it but that was not an option here.  No lure is worth losing a leg over and she could visualise the headline "Idiot eaten by crocodile trying to rescue $7 fishing lure".  Luckily Barb soon freed her line and was able to bring her rod over and try to try to hook Lou's line and drag it into shore.  Unfortunately, it was a couple of feet short.  As a last resort, Lou cast Barb's line in and around her own hanging line and slowly reeled it in, catching her lure and finally bringing it to shore.  She cut the lure off and was able to reel in the line in through the branches and saunter up the boat ramp nonchalantly, seconds before someone walked down towards the water.

Timber Creek is a very small town with an IGA that sells the worst hot chips in the galaxy and frightfully expensive mops.  There is a Police Museum and the boys had a great time locking each other (and us) up in a makeshift cell out the front.  They also have a huge croc's head.

Locking up the children.

Crocodile head at the Police Museum

We also went to a military memorial commemorating 'The Nackeroos', formally known as the North Australia Observer Unit  - an outback army regiment that patrolled the bush during WW2.  The plaque has a great poem:

Impossibly hard conditions.