Advertised as 500 acres on the banks of a river with camping options for all, King Ash Bay looked on paper like a good place for our next stop. This coupled with Sarah’s brother Brendon’s enthusiastic following of a you tube show that is filmed there and shows guys fishing and crabbing meant that we made our way from Limmen National park along the dirt road for about 200km before hitting the bitumen that would lead us to King Ash Bay.
On the way we stopped at Borroloola a tiny town that boasted a supermarket and a petrol station both of which we needed. The supermarket was fairly well stocked and even had a butcher so we bought a load of meat, fresh veggies and fruit which we were pretty excited about. The lady at the store almost laughed at our enthusiasm and said that if we wanted to come back the next day the range would be even better as they would receive their weekly stock delivery sometime in the early afternoon. She warned us that they shut to store to receive the delivery and then reopen it once it’s all been put out on the shelf. It is a different world out here and I am sure there are places that would think a weekly delivery a luxury!
All stocked up it was onto King Ash Bay and we were looking forward to spreading out in the 500 acres and relaxing by the river doing some fishing. On arrival though things seemed slightly different. There was an area of probably about five acres which was pretty much full of ramshackle beach shacks and caravans. Our unpowered area was down by the river bank and after a couple of drives through we found a spot in between two others that we thought looked great.
It was certainly a bit of a shock to find the place so busy and again a little bit of a change to be quite so close to our neighbours. The hum of the generators was also a constant background not just the huge ones which ran the “town” but there were a fair few running the caravans too. Still we had washing to do so decided to stay a couple of nights to start and see from there.
Our main quest of the day was to get some merchandise for Brendon from the show and after asking at the main front desk the lady got very excited and sent us off on a walk around town to meet the stars of the show. Well their mother anyway. She had the shirts and was great value for a chat. Once we bought the shirt she suggested we went and found Mad Mullet to get it signed. We agreed although had to admit that we had no idea at all about the show.
As luck would have it a couple who were having coffee with the mother offered us a lift to find Mad Mullet and as we drove around the town they merrily waved to all the locals and told us where everyone was from. The place did have a bit of a retirement community feel about it.
Having secured the signature we headed back to camp and decided to go out to the bar that night to eat at the restaurant and meet Ash who was the current chairman of the town and also a member of the show.
He was fun to have a chat with and while the guys were mainly gaining an income from catching mud crab they were thankful of the income being generated by the show as the crabbing had been particularly poor this year due to a cyclone that hit and wiped out the holes they normally stay in. Apparently the fishing was also affected too as usually loads of fish could be caught off of the banks we tried and failed to catch but to be fair we were the only people fishing off of the banks the rest were out in their boats.
We mentioned to Ash that we thought that maybe the place was getting a little too busy his attitude seemed to be to want to get more and more people to stay there to make more money. It was definitely full and there is a lot of space for them to expand so I can see the place getting bigger and bigger.
We were expecting fresh fish and crabs for dinner but instead the options were various deep fried options of frozen food which we have to admit was a little disappointing. To be fair it was all not really to our taste but I am sure if you bought a boat up here and went fishing then it might be a much better experience but we decided to up sticks and continue on to the next place choosing to head down some dirt tracks which would probably reduce the numbers quite a bit. T