After stagnating in the van yesterday, we decided that we should make an effort to get out and about again today, taking in a couple of the sights around Derby that had eluded us the other day.

Our first stop was at the local museum, for which we first had to collect a key from the visitor information centre. A trusting lot they are around here. No thick glass cases around exhibits, or surly looking security guards in every room. Nope, just a dead latch on the front door, opened with a key you retrieve from the information centre, with no questions asked and a request that the key be returned before 5:30PM.

Letting ourselves in.

So we headed down the road to where the museum sits, contained within the relocated Wharfinger House. Unlocking the door to gain admission, we became well aware why security was not so much lacking, as just not required. Spread through the half a dozen rooms was an eclectic mixture of items from Derbys past. While some of the displays were well laid out and quite interesting, I had to wonder about some of the items. It almost seemed that some of the locals had borrowed the keys and unloaded their unwanted junk from home, passing it off as historically significant.

Checking out…

…the museum.

We still spent a good while wandering about the dusty displays, reading where we were able, the placards that had been carefully typed in an age before computers. Actually, the very typewriter upon which they were composed may have even been sitting proudly on display. The aviation gallery held an ancient looking air traffic control panel that had been removed from the Derby airport when Perth control took over the traffic control duties. In the communications gallery next door, an explanation of the Telstra microwave transmission system cleared up for me, the reason behind the many dish sprouting towers we have seen as we’ve been crossing the outback. They are used rather than over ground transmission wires, creating a network that is practically immune to adverse climatic events, providing outlying towns with a reliable landline telephone system.

From the museum, after ensuring that we returned the keys for the next visitors to take advantage of, we stopped at the old Derby gaol. I have a keen interest in old penal complexes, but this must go down as one of the most basic, and savage I’ve been to. Literally a big steel cage, divided into two cells, with corrugated tin on one side and for a roof to give a modicum of shelter from prevailing weather, the steel rings were still embedded within the concrete slab, to which the prisoners were chained by neck rings and hand cuffs overnight. Designed originally to cater for the needs of about thirty inmates, it was known to hold up to 60 at a time, and for up to six months as prisoners awaited sentencing or transport south to Broome. As primitive as it seemed, it was constructed in 1906 and even more worryingly, only closed its iron cell gates to prisoners in 1975.

Bec wanted to leave me here.

Further exploration of Derby was restricted to stopping by the camping store for information on nearby hotspots to wet a line and drown some otherwise innocent bait. We have brought a couple of rods along, which have thus far done nothing more than take up valuable space in the van. We figure that we don’t want to get home to find that we took them along for a holiday, so we are planning on giving them a flick off of the wharf tomorrow morning. Now, if I could just find the energy to go for a bike ride, there will be almost nothing that we have packed that we haven’t had cause to use.

With a firm angling plan in place for the morning, we returned to the van for a bite to eat. Following lunch, I stepped out to see if the caravan park office stocked bait, and finally returned over an hour later. I had stopped on the way to say G’day to the couple camped behind us, and what can I say, but time flies. I finally returned to a semi-irate Bec, who had been busy doing the lunch time washing and tidying up. I wasn’t a popular boy for having shirked my responsibilities, although I have noticed as we’ve been travelling around that the more traditional gender lines are well and truly alive in the caravanning fraternity.

It’s nothing for all the guys, beer close to hand, to be lounging about on sorry looking canvas camp chairs that are generally sagging and straining under the weight asked of them to carry, while the fragrant aromas of dinner being prepared emanate from within the van, where the lady folk are busy cooking. Barbeques on the other hand are the sole domain of a masculine chef, as is generally the setting up of and pulling down of anything on the outside of the van. Laundry day is the same, as a fellow here and there might put his beer down for long enough to string up a makeshift clothes line, but otherwise ‘washer woman’ would be the apt description. I really must wonder what other campers say snickeringly, out of my hearing as I peg out the laundry, or get espied through the kitchen window, redolent heaven forbid, in my apron cooking up a storm in the kitchen for dinner.

In any case, I got back to the van in just enough time to gather up Bec and the babies, for a drive down to the dinner tree, in time for the sunset. It has been a much recommended spot for us to catch the setting sun, a large Boab Tree creating a strikingly photogenic silhouette in the foreground. The recommendations weren’t wrong, although the sunset didn’t generate quite the colour we had hoped for. Regardless of the lack of fiery colour sweeping across the sky, we now have almost 60 photos of a Boab Tree, showing the sun at various acute angles above the edge of the earth as it slowly dipped wholly below the horizon.

Sunset at the ‘Dinner Tree’.

Marcus has finally gone mad.

It was back to the van then, where I bucked the gender trend again, as I withstood the heat of the kitchen, and the wrath of the gender divide traditionalists, to plate up a delicious feed for us all. Hey, I figure it’s the least I can do!

Before I go, I know I might be harping on about the ‘Kilometre Challenge’, but it won’t be much fun if no one enters. To that end, I did get an enquiry from a loyal reader to try and get some inside information today. Like I replied to him, the estimated number of kilometres we are expecting to cover are between the two guesses of ‘John Smith’. Check the current tally here, and get on to sending me them emails. Remember the address for entries is: marcus@myramblingtales.com

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.