Our time in the campervan is now down to three weeks and we have one third of mainland Australia to explore. Leaving Batchelor we drove south to Katherine to fuel up and stock up on groceries before turning west on the Victoria Highway toward Broome, Western Australia. Western Australia (WA) would be our eighth and final state in Australia to visit. Australia has eight states so we will have seen something of each of them before we conclude our trip. From Batchelor we will go 235 kilometers south and then turn west traveling another 285 kilometers to Timber Creek and we still won’t be to Western Australia until the next day.

Keeping a promise to Louise, we stopped for lunch at the Lazy Lizard. We wanted to spend the night but the timing from the day before didn’t work out and this was the next best thing. We ordered up a pizza and had a delicious lunch. We were through Katherine by 2:00 and into the park in Timber Creek by 6:00 p.m. just before sunset.

The last 90 kilometers were the hardest, traveling west into the sunset. Once we left Katherine, we drove for over an hour and only one car passed us. We met a few cars and some road trains but the highway was very quiet. The road was generally good but had little or no shoulder most of the time. We stopped at the Victoria River Roadhouse to top off the fuel tank then drove the final leg to Timber Creek.

The campground at Timber Creek was along a tributary of the Victoria River. We parked and could look out at the river from the rear window of the campervan. There was no internet and no television so we got to bed early for an early start the next morning. We still had almost 200 kilometers to the Western Australia border.