Sculptures By The Mud

Derby Caravan Park, Derby

Derby is one of those surprise places - we weren’t even going to come but we had an extra day up our sleeve as we don’t need to get to our next booked site for three days. So we ‘popped’ up here (about 165k each way extra) for a night. 

The town is a wee bit dodgy, although the caravan park receptionist assured me that crime had plummeted since the police have adopted a zero tolerance policy. 

Anyway after we arrived, we spent a couple of hours with Mark trying to fix the van’s air conditioner - twice giving himself an electric shock. Fortunately he survived and, quite miraculously, the air conditioner now works! Even Mark was surprised. I meanwhile did a mosaic bird. 

Then around 4pm we set off on a lovely ride. We road along the mud flats and saw truly beautiful sculptures celebrating the history of derby - eg one of stockman, one of indigenous footballers, and my favourite - one of family. Derby has the biggest tidal swings in Australia so presumably at other times the mud is replaced by water. 

Sculpture celebrating indigenous footballers 

We continued to the jetty and rode to its end to watch the sunset. 

Watching the sun set

The jetty - The tide is very much out

Awesome sunset as ever. Also just loved watching the families fishing and listening to tourists chatting to locals. 

Look at the cloud formation! 

Mark on the jetty

My favourite sculpture - family

Then we found a cute Italian cafe where I blew my carb budget but it was the cheapest meal out we’ve had ($52 - they didn’t even charge for corkage). The police kept turning up -  it wasn’t to catch criminals but to get takeaway pizza! 

Meal in a cute Italian cafe

At this point I still hadn’t photographed a boab tree, which is what Derby is most famous for. On our ride home we passed some and we will see more tomorrow. I am very inspired now to make a mosaic boab tree (for noting, their actual name is boabab) as they are very cool. 

Boab trees- hold huge amounts of water