Don got up early and set both his and myTrangias going for tea and for Porridge. Quick packup and I was gone by 8am, very little wind but breeze from all over the place.
In Fitzroy Crossing Lodge by 13:00. Don had about few rests en route and got in around 14:30. A light truck in the check-in queue was a mobile clothing op shop providing cheap clothing to the outback communities. Although set up for camping the driver apparently thought a night with showers and restaurant beat another night in the bush.
The Lodge combines fancy restaurant and rooms with large caravan park and big unpowered tenting area. All permanent buildings and shower blocks are on stilts or earth mounds at least 3m high. Presumably to get above the floods. Some aboriginal people behind the reception counter and the bar but all the grounds and cleaners seemed to be Torres Strait and Pacific Islanders.
The Fitzroy Crossing Hotel is still not open after the floods two years ago so the locals are all in the front bar at the Lodge. Strict security so no bad behaviour.
At night the grounds are patrolled by a roving security van and I swear at about 2am by a woman with a guard dog wandered around the tent lines making sure all was well.
The Fitzroy Crossing bridge washed away in the flood but has been replaced, nearly a metre higher and with shear-bolts allowing the guard rails to collapse instead of catching debris and acting as a dam next time it floods.
