On our way to Tennant Creek we turned right off the Stuart Highway into a town called Newcastle Waters. It is completely disused except for a few heritage buildings, an old school building and church, a restored post office building where a few young guys live (may be station hands for the nearby Newcastle Station) and a magnificent brass statue of a drover - a reminder of the meeting place Newcastle Waters was for all passing drovers. It was the evening and we needed to stop. Hoping we hadn't found ourselves in a real life Steven King novel we asked the only person we saw if it would be OK to spend the night on a perfectly mowed piece of lawn near the church. His answer was, "I never saw you!" - so we set up home. We both revelled in being 2 of the only people in a whole town. We had escaped the grey nomads and all the families in their motor homes! (A nearby rest area on the main highway was packed when we passed by the next morning.)
We rode around on our bikes, stopping to walk through all the old heritage, corrugated iron buildings. Nearby was an amazing wetland filled with beautiful waterbirds - pelicans, egrets and others. We watched the sun go down and then, as the dawn broke, went on our bikes to watch the water birds swarm onto the wetland and the sun rise.
That evening and early morning was a rare treat to have been completely alone. The only noise was from the odd road trains carrying cattle from the station.
The one thing about traveling like gypseys is that we never know what's around the corner!
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