Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Another ridiculously early morning, and we set off again, this time back in the direction of Darwin. We saw an extremely scrawny dingo by the side of the road, I had never seen one in the wild before, I don't think he was going to be in the wild for much longer either.
There was a point around here where I think the funniest thing occurred, but I am not quite sure what day it happened, so my touring buddies may have to correct me on this one. So we are driving along a we spot a donkey and it darts out into the road and we nearly hit it, and it wouldn't get out of the way! So we slowed down, and followed the donkey on the road who slowly galloped along for a quite distance before suddenly darting back into the scrub again. It was an exciting event indeed!
We headed off onto a little rocky road where it was quite flooded and rocky, the 4WD kicked in and we bounced around like a frog in a sock and held on for dear life! Pulling up to what I think was called Daralei Falls, I realised I hadn't put my cossies (swimmers/bathers) on, so had a quick towel change and used the first bush toilet (i.e. squat in the bush) for the trip, and took the easy but slippery when wet, 100m walk down to the pool, and we jumped into the cold but refreshing waters under the falls. It was gorgeous and a brilliant way to start the day. Jordan kept telling us to be careful because fresh water crocodiles could potentially be around. We didn't see any luckily, but I had a moment of pure terror when someone grabbed my leg.
Joshua scared us when he showed us all for the first time that he was actually a mountain goat, by scaling the face of the cliff. Luckily no one was hurt, except maybe his ego when Jordan insisted he get down.
Another quick change into dry clothes and we head for the fantastic Robin Falls. Stopped at the Mary River Roadhouse for coffee for those who needed the hit. Along the way, we passed the Adelaide River Railway Station which was opened in 1889, after the completion of the Adelaide River bridge the year before. It is now a museum and there are some trains and other memorabilia sitting by the station.
I recommend good shoes for this one! This is not an easily accessible place. After wearing my hiking shoes every day so far and not needing them, I decided to wear my thongs (flip flops) as Joshua had been getting by just fine with his for the past two days, but this was not a time to do it. Very rocky, not so much a track but just sort of find your way along the side of the creeks until you end up at the pool of the falls. At the falls, one of the ladies on the tour took a nasty slip and fell quite some way head first onto some rocks. Very luckily she was relatively uninjured, but very shaken up, It was a fair height she fell from.
Another bush toilet and change later, I'm darting up the rocks with the aid of a tree, to the top pool to sit under the rushing water with my new German friends and a goanna who happened to wander down to see what all the commotion was about. We had a lovely morning splashing about and laughing like children. Back down the treacherous mountain (not recommended for non climbers or non adventurous people) to the truck. We got slightly bogged at one point trying to get out of there and Jordan had to get out and sort that out.
Stopped by the Adelaide River for a picnic lunch of hamburgers and the standard Gaytime ice cream from the servo - aussie slang for service station. Massive road trains with cattle on them were passing us, with some stopped and parked right next to us, proving entertainment for some. I was thankful the parked ones didn't have any cattle, or I would have been rather upset.
After lunch we jumped back in the truck and headed back to Darwin we had great fun taking photos of the exhausted company. We passed some back burning and there were a whole swarm of birds of prey circling the fires. We were told some of the birds are very intelligent, picking up burning sticks and dropping them a distance away and starting their own controlled fires and rounding up the animals that come running out of the fire. Clever clogs.
Just outside of Darwin, we stopped at a local Aboriginal art gallery, which was fascinating. The art work ranged from some simple tiny pieces to massive wall long sheets of canvas with millions of precisely placed dots. Incredible. There were some animals out the front including a black cockatoo, galah and king parrots which provided most of our entertainment.
Arriving back in Darwin, we parted ways to check into our hostels, with the plan to meet up for dinner and drinks later in the evening. Our accommodation for the night was to be the Youth Shack hostel, which is just across the road from Melaleuca on Mitchell hostel. It was very clean and had working air conditioning, a really nice change after the last hostel. The bathrooms and dorms were very crisp and clean. I would definitely stay here again over the Melaleuca. We had a room with Hannah and Lia, as we were all checking out at 4:30am or something horrendous like that in the morning.
I went and found myself a little Darwin souvenir in the form of a lovely beachy dress, and spruced up, we went out to meet the gang at Monsoons on Mitchell. After pizza and drinks we had a bit of a dance to the band that I vaguely remember playing good music. It was so much fun! We exchanged facebook details and email addresses with everyone, as this was one section of the tour over and not everyone would be joining us on the next leg. We ended the night relatively early as we had to get up at stupid o'clock again.
Videos:
- comments