Day 198 | Palm Court Backpackers: I spend the night in a bed

67 km | Heading west total: 8,747 km

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night.

Nothing unusual about that because when you generally go to bed about 8 pm by 3 30 am you’ve been laying there for 7.5 hours. I got a sense that something wasn’t quite right.

In fact there were flames on the horizon I found once I put my glasses on. When you can see individual flames the conflagration ain’t too far away. I kept my eyes on the situation for an hour or so but the wind didn’t seem to be bringing it closer. These grass fires move pretty quickly as the vegetation for a lot of the area I’ve traversed in the north section of the Territory is somewhat sparse with the trees having a lot of space between them. It’s classed as savannah landscape, quite African in some ways but without the lions and giraffes. Termites and cane toads don’t have the same romantic appeal.

In the morning I investigated and found the fire had got to within about 150 m of the tent.

I’ll have to careful about tent placement each night, I’d rather not end up barbecued on this trip.