After a very windy night (not Jen for once), much of Monday morning at Lawn Hill was spent on some running repairs. Jen spent the morning fixing our little temperature gauge (still going mum!) while I sat up in the tent stitching the canvas back together in the corner where the wind had done its worst.
Late morning we went and picked up a canoe and paddled up Lawn Hill Gorge and had a little swim in the water there before canoeing back at speed (well, as speedy as we get) to avoid incurring a charge for an extra hour, getting back with mere seconds to spare.
In the afternoon we explored the Wild Dog Dreaming walk to see the aboriginal art hidden in the rocks. We had a much calmer night that night thankfully, so the next day there was no need for further repairs. We had decided to head to a free camp at Gregory Downs, which had been recommended by a quite a few people on our travels, and took the scenic route down an unpleasantly rough and corrugated track to see the Riversleigh section of the park, a reputedly amazing fossil site. As we were in the area, we thought we'd call in. We hadn't expected the rough ride, and rather stupidly, had expected to see fossils that actually looked like the creatures they came from.
Save to say we were a little disappointed to be told that this....
was a crocodile....
You see?
Nice little walk though, and some good views
We pushed onto Gregory Downs along my favourite type of road – a red one.
Seeing some real life jackeroos at work on route.
Then we saw a car broken down ahead of us and reluctantly stopped to see if they needed help, past experiences of trying to help not having worked out so well. We saw two men at first, and slowed down, then stopped happily when we saw a pregnant lady with them! Their ute had broken down, not entirely unexpectedly it seemed, and they wanted to cadge a lift into Gregory Downs to call for help. Instead we gave them a tow the 15kms into Gregory Downs, then set off to find our free camp for the night. Lots of people had told us that this spot was nice, and they were right. Its right next to the fast flowing Gregory River, very pretty, and free!
We bumped into Clare and Frank, a couple we'd met in Lawn Hill earlier in the week who also had an ARB rooftop tent, and pooled our food together to cook a lovely roast beef on the campfire, followed by Clare's extraordinarily naughty, but equally lovely treacle dumplings with cream – yum!
On Wednesday we bid our farewells to Clare and Frank and set off for Normanton via Burketown, some 350 kms away. We stopped off to see the sights, such as they were, in Burketown and Normanton. At Normanton the red road finished, and we were back onto tarmac, a relief tinged with sadness! We had thought of staying at Normanton, and stopped to get photos of the large croc monument there (this is the largest croc known to have been shot in Australia – meet Krys, he was 8.63 metres long!)
Normanton didn't have a good vibe, so we pushed onto Croydon another 155kms down the road. Arriving a little late and tired, we decided to head to the local pub for a beer and an all too average dinner. By the time we left the rain had started to fall heavily, and Jen found a little friend in the laundry room...it was love at first sight...
On Thursday we kept heading east, stopping in Georgetown for lunch where we met a random lady with her husband and baby, a large long-haired Afghan hound, really not the kind of dog you expect to find in Australia. Some bizarre conversations ensued, but we got a good recommendation for a camp-site at Mount Surprise called the Bedrock Caravan Park, a really lovely spot for us to clean up and feel less dusty after the long trip across the Top. Here we also helped the environment by partaking in a free under-body car wash... Its to stop the spread of seed weed, we're environmental warriors, ok?
After a lovely stop in Mount Surprise, we set off on Friday for the Undara Lava Tubes. We'd been debating whether or not we needed to spend the $46 entry fees to see these for some time, and decided we would stop. On reflection, I'm not sure we needed to bother, but perhaps we're just being a bit tight! It was interesting, if more for the concept than the actual sight of them. The Undara Tubes are the longest lava tubes in the world, formed when there was significant volcanic activity in the area around 190,000 years ago. To form the tubes, the lava had to flow at the right angle and speed through a natural depression. As the outer edge of the lava cooled, it solidified but the molten lava within it kept flowing, creating an underground labyrinth of huge tunnels. Lots of little bats live there now, and you have to pay a large fee to get in as the owner of the land managed to do a deal with the National Park to preserve the right to deliver tours himself – quite canny!
We also climbed up to the top of the Kalkani Crater, an “extinct” volcano, for some good views of the area and a bit of exercise! That night we camped at Archer River Rest Area, a free stop close to the Millstream Falls, which we visited the next morning on our way through to Ravenshoe. The Millstream Falls are Australia's widest falls.
We spent the rest of the day pottering around Ravenshoe, a cute little town at the beginning of the Atherton Tablelands, before exploring the tablelands themselves, visiting various waterfalls on the waterfall circuit around Millaa Millaa, and detouring briefly into the Misty Mountains. We spent about 2 hours driving around, constantly saying banal things to each other like “look how green it is!” “look at those beautiful rolling hills”! “look at the fat cows”! To be fair, we had come from this
to this
We headed back to Ravenshoe on Saturday afternoon to watch the AFL football final between St Kilda and Collingwood. It was a good game, ending in a draw, requiring a replay! Draws are very rare in a game with common scores of over 100 for each team, and it seemed no-one was prepared for this to occur in the final – its only the second time in the history of the game it has occurred in the Grand Final. Both teams left the pitch despondent, St Kilda with it all against them to pull out another performance to match the Collingwood favourites – sure enough, Collingwood won the replay the following week.
We camped the night at the local free campground next to the steam-train museum and awoke in the morning to explore the small market established next to us. We drove through the pretty Atherton Tablelands of Herberton, Atherton, Tolga and the not so pretty Mareeba, before making the steep climb up to Karunda, where we stopped for a bit more tourism at the various market stalls there. Then we headed down the steep steep slope to Cairns, and full civilisation. Well, a large population – their civility is a matter for individual opinion.
More of which next week, Love Claire, of Jen and Claire Fame
We had almost persuaded Keith and Pauline to join us for a day or two, but sadly they had to stay close to Darwin because Keith was on call for work. As per usual, we set off later than planned on Monday as we had to go shopping for food and alcohol for the next week, very important job! The plan was to get to Mataranka Springs that day, a drive of 426km's south of Darwin. We made it there a little late so set up camp in the unpowered section and decided to enjoy the springs the next morning. Sadly, a group of hoons decided the best way to enjoy them was to get blotto down there and then come back to the camping area and shout pointless crap to each other until 1am even though they were stood next to each other! Rant!! (I have officially become old and enjoy quiet time these days, that means no noise after 9pm...)
We woke up feeling bleary eyed and quite pissed off at our neighbours, even more annoying as they packed up and left before 7am!! Do they not suffer hangovers -swines!
We sauntered down to the hot springs for a very pleasant dip in the 34 ° water, Claire even managed to do an impression of titanic underwater!!
We had a lazy day in the area as we decided to camp at the Elsey National Park close by on the Tuesday evening. We stopped off at the Territory Manor Motel at 11am to watch the free Barramundi feeding show, it was quite amazing, this fella had trained the fish to eat out of his hand and they also allowed him to pick them out of the water! Most amusing though was watching a woman drop her camcorder into the water...then proclaim it will be ok, she'd done it before!!!!
Later, we enjoyed a short walk along the river, but only Claire braved it into the water as the possibility of crocs was still present in my mind (despite the rangers telling us it was perfectly safe to swim) and I ain't taking that risk. She did only dunk herself between some rocks though....
We then collected firewood and treated ourselves to a very scrumptious roast dinner of chicken this time. We managed to find the smallest chicken in the world, but it still touched all the sides of our petite camp oven. We cooked it perfectly though and it was another roaring success.
Wednesday we set off east along the Roper Highway towards Roper Bar, most of which was on red dirt. Roper Bar seemingly only exists for fishing. You are very close to the Gulf of Carpenteria here and the majority of people in the campsite were there for that one reason only. The campsite was ok and the best thing was talking to a funny German guy who had just been up Cape York in his Suzuki Jimny (a very small 4wd!), he was really kind and gave us all the diesel prices along the highway so we could judge how much to fill up at certain stations! He also gave us advice on the river crossings we were going to do in the next few days.
Thursday we set off south east along the old Savannah Highway through the (proposed) Limmen National Park with it's multiple river crossings and empty roads. It was a wonderful drive through some very pretty landscapes.
We cracked on and got to Butterfly Gorge for a swim, quite nice but sadly the mozzies were out and we decided we couldn't hack it so we carried on to the Lost City National Park campsite for the night. As this is still only a proposed National Park it was free! And we had nice new toilets all to ourselves as no-one else camped here the night. We got up Friday and did the small walk around the lost cities (there are loads of these around) we found them to be very lovely!!
We hit the red dirt again and had a very picturesque drive all the way into Borroloola, some 238km's. We wouldn't normally have stopped at Borroloola, but we had met this bloke in a pub (heard this before perchance?) in Alice Springs who gave us a number of a friend of his (Glen) who teaches the young Aboriginal kids to play football (English Football that is, none of this squashed ball rubbish). So we called Glen a few days before we got into the town to see if he would mind us watching a game, he was the most friendly and welcoming guy! He was delighted that we wanted to watch the kids play so we arranged to go watch on Saturday morning at the local cricket ground.
We set up camp at the caravan site and chilled for the afternoon. Next morning we were a little late for kick off, but when we arrived he had 2 games going! We were thoroughly impressed by the skill and commitment showed by the kids, it was great to watch and you could tell they loved playing it! Even the girls played with the lads and no prisoners were taken, it was like watching Leeds of the 70's! Most of the kids preferred to play barefoot, but this caused a few grazed toes! Glen later told us that the kids take part in competitions and he has to get them to play in boots and shin pads, but cannot give them out until the day or they go missing! Also, they take some time to get used to playing in boots, starting off kicking the ground too much!
After the fun of some English football we got on the road at about midday, drove all day and only just got to Hell's Gate roadhouse by dusk. Passing through some very pretty rivers on the way, most of the river crossings were easy, all but one of them actually. We were warned about the Calvert River all the way back at Lake Argyle by a lady with a brand new Travelander (automatic rooftop tent-come-trailer tent with all mod-cons, our dream set-up...!) She said people were wrecking their cars at that crossing on big boulders that you cannot see. This obviously worried us and we asked everyone we met how this particular river was. Most responses were baffled and said it was bumpy but fine and this is how we found it too (I think they must have been new to 4wding! And didn't want to damage their new purchase!) Hell's Gate was not as bad as it might sound, they had an ok shower and decent enough toilets for $20 a night, they also had some cute frogs near the leaky taps!
Sunday we had another off road trek ahead, east along the Savannah Way then we go south in towards Lawn Hill National Park, stopping off at Kingfisher Camp for a nosey first (it would have been a lovely place to stay, but we got there too early in the day!) The track in was very sandy in places, we almost got bogged, but Priscilla tackled it with ease! We got to Lawn Hill at about lunchtime and set up camp. It was a nice campsite right next to the gorge. Sadly we had a very windy night (not me this time) and the tent managed to get a small rip in the corner!! Time for Claire's handy work....
That's all for now folks, Jen, of Jen and Claire Fame xx
This week's blog is brought to you by me, Adam D'Andreti. I had the pleasure of spending a week in Priscilla with Claire and Jen as we toured Kakadu National Park which is in the 20 million odd square kilometres between Darwin and Arnhem Land. I was lucky enough to get the call up because I kept Claire entertained during her last few months at Mallesons with witty repartee and incisive social commentary and happened to have September off between jobs. Well, at least the last part is true.
Anyway.
Claire and Jen had been in Darwin for a couple of days by the time I arrived so they were already getting used to the steamy weather (it had dumped with rain the day prior to my arrival to such an extent that Monday's NT News (Darwin's answer to the Daily Telegraph and the News of the World rolled into one) was calling it the earliest start to the wet season since whenever.)
Luckily by the time I rolled in the sky had cleared and apart from some relatively mild humidity (98.5% by 9am) things were shaping up well. I got some early tastes of Claire and Jen's English heritage ("We aren't seriously going to do anything today are we, the weather is oppressively hot and absolutely beastly!") but luckily we were able to overcome those congenital character flaws to get ourselves to the servo to have the brakes of Priscilla fixed and for me to gain a valuable opportunity to pick up a $6 camping chair from Bunnings Warehouse (I can hear C and J singing the theme song now (if you have been living under a pleasant rock and have no clue what I am talking about, you can hear the tune at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbDUOTASJvQ&p=010F50C5D72C7804&playnext=1&index=39)). That done, we were all set to tackle Kakadu - or Kakadon't as all the locals kept telling us. A total misnomer - the park is excellent (in spite of the apparently "outrageous" $25 cover charge).
Given the time of day, we thought it was best to spend another night in Darwin. After all, we still hadn't caught up with Keith and Pauline Beaty, a fantastic couple who live in Darwin that Claire and Jen had met someplace whose name I can't now recall (Halls Creek?) [William Creek on the Oodnadatta Track, Ed], but which sounded inhospitable - in a "40 flies are trying to enter my mouth at once" kind of way.
So after an impromptu walking tour around the NT government district and harbour we found ourselves whisked away by Keith and Pauline in (what Claire reliably informs me was) a totally dominant 4WD, a toyota landcruiser, [Ed - dominant, yet subservient still to the mighty Nissan Patrol, obviously] to their local. The local turned out to be a sailing club at Fannie Bay (yes, that name is for real) which was perfect in every respect (beautiful location and sunset viewing,
[Courtesy of A.D'Andreti Photography]
[Courtesy of A.D'Andreti Photography]
and nicely chilled beer glasses, a Top End standard) save that like every other place in Darwin I needed to take off my hat. It struck me as somewhat ridiculous that in the most sun-affected part of the country you are frequently asked to remove your hat when entering public bars which inevitably are full of large sun-drenched beer gardens. Go figure. Fast forward a significant number of drinks, we found ourselves at one of the finer drinking holes Darwin has to offer - The Tap - where their speciality is cocktails in "fish bowls". Seriously. For $20 (and half that price again in glass deposit) you could get yourself a glass bigger than the average human head full of lurid coloured cocktails. We took the beer.
Good thing we did too as Claire and Jen (now seasoned soft-drinkers due to their unofficial "2 tinnys of beer a day" limit) claimed to have the worst hangovers in recorded history the day after (Jen even suggesting she still felt the effects of it at 5.30pm...). I think there is a lesson in cost-saving for all of us here.
Thankfully, these not insignificant health issues didn't prevent us from heading out to Kakadu. But before we even reached the park itself there were some good times to be had.
In particular, a crocodile tour on the Adelaide River. Apparently there's only 3 guys in the whole of the Kakadu National Park who have been licensed by the government to "interfere with protected species". Having seen the actual licence (it was hanging on the wall of the tour guide's hut) I can confirm that is precisely what the government had mandated the guide to do. Personally, I couldn't think of anything I'd rather less do with a salt water crocodile than "interfere" with it (to my mind interfering with animals just elicits all sorts of uncomfortable images than merely throwing slabs of buffalo meat into the water, which is what it turned out to be). I digress. So we pile into this little glorified tinny of a boat and are told in no uncertain terms to keep all body parts within the confines of the boat lest a croc find our limbs to be a better offering than the buffalo meat. Judging by what we saw, this was a fair warning.
[Courtesy of A.D'Andreti Photography]
[Courtesy of A.D'Andreti Photography]
They are truly amazing animals salt water crocs - apparently only 2% of eggs laid by female crocs end up surviving - through a mixture of stupidity (crocodiles have brains about the size of a golf ball and they are known to lay their eggs in sand which becomes overcome with wet season water within days) and bad luck (even though they're tough, baby crocs can sometimes fall victim to all sorts of other predators, including other crocodiles - apparently the males like to eat the young to avoid future competitors. Talk about forward planning). [Sounds rather like a large commercial law firm, Ed] They are probably the most pervasive image from the park itself - we sure saw a lot of them and there are signs up all over the place warning us about them (basically, ever since a poor German girl was eaten by one back in 2002, the government has whacked up warning signs on all waterways and waterholes near walking tracks making it very difficult to know where it is still safe to swim and where it isn't. In truth, no one really knows, so as soon as there is a bit of water in the park, making travel relatively easy for crocs, you probably just need to assume they could be anywhere). My favourite fact about salt water crocs is that in the local Aboriginal language, salt water croc is referred to by the name "ginga" - which just goes to prove that everyone hates a ginga.
We saw some crocs later on in the trip at the river crossing into Arnhem land too - there were about 3 just laying in the middle of the crossing - the cars beeped them to get them out of the way. Hilarious.
[Ed - one of the funniest quips I think I've heard from our fellow European travellers as we were discussing what on earth the croc below was doing with its front paws (do crocs have paws?!) was the guy next to us suggesting that it "had just had its French manicure"!]
[Courtesy of A.D'Andreti Photography]
Once we got into the park itself, we checked out the sunset at Ubirr - which was pretty special
[Courtesy of A.D'Andreti Photography]
and then spent the night fighting off crowds of mosquitoes at the Merl Campground which backed onto a flood plain. You know that buzzing in your ear you normally get at 3am when there's a mozzie in your room - imagine that noise amplified a 1000 times over and lasting all night, no matter where you walked. Crazy stuff. Personally, I think Claire and Jen were just conspiring to give me a "true" camping experience...though I suspect they got more than they bargained for with that campground..
[Ed: you forgot to mention you baked your first damper bread!]
Mosquitoes having had their way with us, we fortified ourselves with some breakfast pancakes (once a treat, these have now apparently become standard fare for Claire and Jen at brekky) and then we ventured out to check out Aboriginal rock art at Ubirr and Nourlangie.
[Courtesy of A.D'Andreti Photography]
This was definitely the most detailed aboriginal art I'd ever seen though it transpires that some of it was comparatively recent in origin having been added by an Aboriginal elder in the 50s before Kakadu was heritage listed. Seems like the elder decided that some of the stories and teachings in his head needed to be preserved and so he went about doing that. The thing I love about the art is that it is basically meaningless unless you know the story it is meant to depict (the aboriginals used the art primarily as a teaching/propaganda tool). This is fine in theory but the problem is that there is a very limited western (as in white Australian) knowledge of what those stories are. We went on these great guided tours run by the Kakadu Park Rangers where they talked about how we came to know what the pictures meant and frankly, there's not a lot of knowledge there. This is totally unsurprising when you consider one anecdote that a ranger relayed. One of the most important elders from the region where Nourlangie Rock is located was about to die. He had a grown up son in his 40s with whom the elder had deliberately refrained from sharing all his stories for some unknown reason. Talk about rejection. Anyway, before he died, the elder sat down with some (white) researchers and recorded very basic info on tape. Great stuff. Not sure how the son would have taken it...
[Ed: on the way out of Nourlangie, Adam and I sprinted into a wetland area to see the Nourlangie escarpment from a distance which was lovely.]
[Courtesy of A.D'Andreti Photography]
That evening, I finally stepped up to the plate (so to speak) and prepared dinner for the girls. I was slightly intimidated by the chicken fajitas Jen had done the night before and so it was steaks and potatoes on the bbq for us. Which I proceeded to under-cook, in what was to become an all too frequent masterclass in cooking ineptitude.
Not to worry, we enjoyed a pleasant night under the stars in Cooinda listening to the soothing sounds of a drunk tour leader a few tents away drinking well into the night with one or two (we suspect) female members of his group. I'd never seen Claire and Jen so ropeable the next morning for our 6.00am start for the Yellow Water Billabong cruise. If they'd have had time for their usual early morning cup of nescafe [Its Mocccona! Ed, Jen], I reckon they'd both have been needing doubles. Anyway, the foul mouthed bogan was quickly forgotten as we spent a couple of hours cruising the billabong looking at loads of wildlife. More crocs, some egrets, kingfishers, sea eagles, darter-birds and my favourite, the ballsy fishermen, in a tinny, standing up trying to catch some barramundi whilst being stalked at a distance of 4 metres by a massive croc. Loved it.
[Courtesy of A.D'Andreti Photography]
[Ed: sorry, we went a bit crazy with the long lens on the Yellow Waters trip!]
Horses in the mist
Brolgas (try as we would, they wouldn't dance for us)
Darter bird drying its wings
Lillies
Jabiru
Anyone for fishing?
Another croc
Another croc!
Priscilla got to dust off her 4WD boots later in the day as we checked out the Twin Falls and Jim Jim Falls - both of which were only accessible via a sandy track. It was pretty awesome. You spend the whole time being jolted up and down as the car bounces along the track - sort of like sitting on a waterbed being jumped on by a sumo wrestler. Priscilla took it all in her stride though and delivered us to the two sets of falls which are at the end of some amazing gorges. Even though one of the falls was dry and the other close to it, we were still able to get a sense of how immense they must be at their peak. Finally we got to swim at Jim Jim and the experience of having fish peck at your feet was pretty odd (and on one level sort of disconcerting as it's hard not to spend the entire time wondering what else is in the water!). Turns out that in addition to human skin, those fish quite like Coles Chocolate Rolls with Cream. Not sure how those made it into the water...
[Courtesy of A.D'Andreti Photography]
The rest of the week comprised a waterhole tour of Kakadu (and a little bit at Litchfield, where Claire and Jen had been the week before). We started out at Maguk Waterhole where we'd camped the night before and then on to Gunlom Falls. It turns out that infinity pools have been around for ages - check out the pic of Claire from Gunlom Falls.
[Courtesy of A.D'Andreti Photography]
Gunlom was probably my highlight; not just because of the amazing views from the pools on top of the falls but also for the amazing rendition of the Priscilla Queen of the Desert Soundtrack that the girls provided when leaving it.
Our week ended at Litchfield National Park, south of Darwin where we stayed at the Buley Rockpools. These are a series of pools; each of which is lower than the one before it, so there is a strong flow of water running through the pools. We camped about 150m away from the pools, which was quite a stroke of luck I think, since Claire and Jen were both adamant that on a Friday night these pools would be the place to be for those in Darwin. Luckily for us this turned out not to be the case and apart from some crusty European backpackers and some drink driving locals clad in your standard Australian flag board shorts and wife beater singlet, all was quiet. Finishing the week off with a big hunk of pork roasted in the camp stove was pretty magic - I knew then that I was in the presence of camping greatness! Thanks Claire and Jen and good luck with the rest of your travels. See you at Longrain in December!
PS In between all of the above, Claire and Jen managed to create a short film to send to their mate back home, Harn Crumbly, who was getting married. And yes, that's her new married name. Great isn't it! See the video here:
[Ed - Thanks Adam, it was great to have you along for a week, and lovely to have someone write one of our blogs for us!! Hope you enjoyed KakaDO as much as we did! Claire, of Jen and Claire fame]
