Smithton To Marrawah

Leaving Smithton the partial plan was to head to Montagu to check it out, maybe to camp there, very nice place but only 18 km up the road and unless you have a fishing boat then not a huge amount to do.

We carried on down the road lured by the wild west which lead us to Marrawah, the camping spot was an instant yes from both of us and we had the place to ourselves….for 2 minutes.

A camper trailer and ute rocked up and we had a chat, the fello was interested in the bike having not seen one so it was a good chat on Russian kit and how it was unlikely he would see another one.

The next day they left their van parked to do an inland drive, Ellen and I were just setting up for a coffee and I was going to adjust the sidecar brakes to balance them…. we heard a bike, turned around….no way, another Ural, no less than the same model but in flat metallic orange. 

We chatted with interest to the owners Wayne and Kirsty and they decided to stay pitching up along side us.

Even a local farmer came down to see our rig having spotted us earlier in the day and to his surprise (and ours) we had doubled in numbers.

Ol mate and his good lady in the camper back from their inland drive to see 2 of these bloody things (oh yes they are rare 😊), so ol mate asks me if I was joking the day prior about seeing another 1 let alone 2 now in 1 camp, he said they appear to grow quickly when planted 😁.

A great walk along the beach jellyfish spotting (actually I think they were small UFOs that crash landed while trying to get the technical details of the Ural for their space ship) and a relaxing time I managed to establish why I could not balance the sidecar brake with the bike as our brake level system had be mucked around with by the previous owner and was all wrong which I have since corrected having viewed Waynes side by side with ours, I thought that was good of them to come to our camp to help me 😂.

Marrawah, it is a beautiful spot, there seemed to be some sort of competition between locals for the coolest Christmas display, some going to pretty good lengths to outcompete the neighbours. 

 

Next up Mc Arthur River.