Frogdancer’s Lazy Road Trip- Days 17, 18 and 19: Lake Crackenback resort.

I was planning to take myself out to the restaurant here on the night I arrived, but once I’d unpacked the car in the rain and sat on the couch with a glass of wine, I wasn’t going to set foot outside again. I was at one with the couch.

So this shot is from lunch the next day. It was still pouring rain, so I grabbed a book I’d been saving for this moment and took myself out to the restaurant to celebrate having completed the Crazy Road Trip part of this holiday.

Now that I’ve done it – time to come clean.

Parts of me were nervous about doing this trip.

The first part, where I took the Ligas from my place to Adelaide, was no sweat. I’d done it before, after all. I was taking them to well-established places with major tourist attractions and I knew that the roads would be fine and there’d be no troubles with anything.

My kids, my family and friends were leery about the next part of the trip. The one where we head off into the Outback. We’ve all heard the warnings about travelling out there. I even had one friend, who shall remain nameless, call me and beg me not to do it after she read my itinerary on one of the blogs.

“You’ll kill yourself!!!” she said. Not really the sort of thing you want to hear when you’re days away from making a big trip. I crossed my fingers and vowed to prove her wrong.

Carry plenty of water. (The only time we used the extra water in the whole trip was to fill Liga’s water bottle before she went on her solo hike in the Grampians.)

Fill up at every petrol station you come across, in case the next one has run out of fuel and you’re stuck. (I did this because I had no intention of ruining the Ligas’ experience in Australia. I noticed some browsers with ’empty’ signs on them, but we always had enough premium petrol for my trusty little Golf.)

Take cash with you, in case you need to pay for something at a remote place with no internet. (Again, I made sure I had plenty of cash because I didn’t want to ruin the Ligas’ adventure. The only time I had to use it was when I was at Barkly Homestead, right in the middle of the Outback, when I handed over a $5 note to get coins for the washing machine.)

Lock your doors in (various places) because the crime rate is high. (This was a tough one. It was hard to convey to the girls that they had to be careful in some places without sounding like a paranoid Karen. The fact remains that some of the places we visited have high petty crime rates and I wanted to keep them safe. They went home without anything bad happening, so that was a win.)

You should only drive in the Outback with a large 4WD car. (When I was here in September, I kept an eye on the roads. Sure, most cars were big, but there were some smaller cars like mine. I figured, with a bit of luck, I’d be ok. I trust in the German workmanship of the Golf.)

Kangaroos, camels and cattle can run onto the road and wreck your car. (THIS was the one I was most afraid of. If a large animal appeared out of nowhere and there was no way to avoid hitting it, then yes. The holiday would be ruined. My beautiful little car would be ruined. And I (and the Ligas, maybe) might be ruined. This was one I had no control of and I decided to go with the odds.)

Overseas tourists can forget to drive on the left and can hit you. (This actually happened to a woman on the Simple Savings forum. She lived in the Northern Territory and a car driven by a French tourist ploughed into her. She was trapped and if it wasn’t for a truck driver who happened to come along and saw that her car was alight and pulled her out, she’d be dead. Her feet were mangled in the crash, so she has life-long consequences from that. She wrote a post warning me to think carefully about doing this trip. This shook me for a while, until I realised that the chances of something like this happening to TWO members of a small online forum were probably pretty minuscule. Still, I kept an eye on every single car or truck on the other side of the road, just in case.)

Take a first-aid kit with you. You may be a first responder in a place with no internet. (Thank goodness this didn’t happen. I bought a kit, but I forgot to put it in the car.)

So before I dived into my book, I ordered a glass of bubbly and raised it to myself. Sometimes we have to do things that scare us to grow.

I allowed myself to feel a little bit proud of myself.

I honestly don’t think the Ligas could have had a better holiday with me, apart from the weather on a few days, but that was out of my control. They saw so much, particularly the wildlife. As my sister Kate said a few days ago, not too many tourists come away from Australia having done a full-on road trip into the outback. They have seen a huge swathe of this country.

I’m also proud that, despite my qualms, I swung the wheel and turned left instead of right. I’ve booked so many tours for 2025, so it’s good to be reminded that I AM a capable traveller on my own.

Keep in mind that I still have a 6-hour drive to get back home again. So far, though, I’ve driven around 7,400 km.

It’s hard to process what that means until you see it on a map. It’s crazy.

But now I’m here on the LAZY part of the road trip.

Back in 2007, when I was just clawing my way out of poverty, dragging the kids with me, I bought into a timeshare. I wanted to guarantee that the boys and I would have at least one holiday a year.

This timeshare wasn’t tied to a single property, but instead uses points, which you can use on properties around Australia, New Zealand, Bali and other places around the world with partners of the timeshare. I used this partner feature when I took the kids to Phuket and when I went to Kangaroo Island this year.

Lake Crackenback, right from the start, has always been fully booked. People absolutely love it and as soon as time becomes available, it’s taken. It’s great for the snow season, but it has the lake and bushwalks etc in the warmer months as well.

Imagine my surprise when I logged on a few months ago, just to idly look for something that might be available in Nov/Dec, when I saw a week available right at this time. I grabbed it.

This created an endpoint after I decided to do the long, solo road trip. Instead of coming home for a few days, I’d arrive straight at the resort. Poor Scout. But from what Georgia says, she’s adjusting to life as a single dog. I can’t wait for her welcome when I get home, though!

There are a lot of people who own homes here, but these apartments over the water appear to be for people like me.

Poor people, in other words. Haha!

Look at these ducks. You know how most ducks glide across the water? These ones jerk their necks as they swim, making it obvious that they’re making an effort underneath the water. They also duck dive a lot. I like that.

I decided to keep the first 3 days as R & R days. During that time, I napped twice a day, read 4 books and learned that if I walked briskly around the lake 3 times, I could close all the rings on my Apple watch. That’s what I’ll be doing once I finish this post. I need to be a bit fitter than I am at present.

I was delighted to find that the path around the lake has sculptures along it. I was trying to work out what this one was all about until I read what it was called.

“The Bird Watchers.”

Here’s the bird.

The bird watchers were pointing their binoculars everywhere except where the bird actually was.

This was a hefty one, but when I was on my third round of the lake, it was swinging in the wind.

I liked this one. She could also move, but it must take a VERY strong wind to swing her around.

People can hire bikes, and use canoes and kayaks on the lake – there’s a gym, spa, pool and sauna.

I was so pleased to see this little fella. We don’t get rosellas where I live.

We have Little Ravens though. This one is very used to being fed by the people in these apartments. He isn’t afraid to get very close, particularly when people are feeding ducks and he swoops in for a share.

I love all the different shades on his feathers. His eyes also reminded me of the Bald eagles that I saw in Canada and Alaska.

I felt bad when I walked around a corner and the ducks all scuttled straight into the water. They looked as if they were getting warm, sunning themselves on the path.

If I was in England, I would’ve thought this was meant to be a mole. Maybe it’s a platypus?

Finally, do you remember the bear scat I saw on the path when I was walking on my own in Canada?

Here’s some kangaroo scat. Not nearly as fearsome, I know, but I liked how it flew my mind back to a place so far away. How incredibly lucky am I to have visited both places within 5 months of each other?

Here’s how I’m choosing to eat a meal a day. A fellow forum member from Simple Savings who does a lot of caravanning with her husband put me onto this. A toasty maker. I love a baked bean toasty. Or a cheese and ham one.

A week before I left on this trip, I saw a handy hint to help with cleaning it – to use baking paper. OMG. Game changer!

Well HOLY SHIT!!!!!

I went for that walk.

I was walking around the lake, minding my own business, when I LITERALLY almost stepped on a Red Bellied Black Snake.

My foot was millimetres from landing on it when it suddenly started moving.

I desperately tried my best to hover in mid-air while it wended its way of the way of my feet.

Honestly, it scared the living daylights out of me.

Locals said, “Yeah, it’ll kill you, but they’re very non-aggressive. “

Seems typical though. I do my best to avoid being out of doors, then when I do, it tries to kill me!!

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