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Noy's 4th Walkabout
Day 112/137. Monday 26th June, - 29,550 miles on the clock (means total miles travelled since we left the UK - NOT what we've driven or what the clock in the van actually says!). Apologies too for the long time since we last updated this site. No chance to make internet connections in the outback!
Our arrival in Darwin marks the end of our campervan escapades (70 nights in all)..."hooray", says Jill, dreaming of returning to her comfortable little pad in the UK!
Last Saturday we had an easy day, just a Willie Creek Pearl Farm tour in the afternoon and then a meal out with four Kiwi friends who we have picked up along the way. We were to have gone to the best food house in Broome (Café Carlotta) but the older members of the party wanted to eat earlier so we acquiesced and went BACK to The Mangrove Hotel for a second meal! Then up early, on Sunday, for the dash to Fitzroy River where campsites are scarce and the natives more than a little restless! Actually the drive was a doddle and the resort (for that was what it was!) very comfortable for somewhere in the middle of nowhere! We arrived in time to get ourselves on the afternoon tour of the Geike River Gorge and "town" tour. Our guide took us through the community of Fitzroy Crossing and explained its significance. The new bridge was only opened in 1974 and before that the ford (for that was all it was!) had to suffice. This, for most of the wet season the road was impassable! Richard's camera was too full so you don't have a shot of this...sorry! 95% of the population is aborigine and they have a hospital fully equipped with scanners, 3 doctors and all sorts of other leading technology (soon to be renewed - the building, that is!), school and college, recreation centre, Aerodrome, Police Station with 8 full-time officers.......population?..........3,000!!!
It was Father's Day in the UK so we spoke to the family and it all seemed so unreal with us in the outback talking to folks back home as if they were just round the corner! We even had a Sunday roast in the evening with some very amenable Aussies who kept ribbing Richard about Father's Day and put everyone up to coming over to our table and wishing him "Happy Father's Day"!! Pat and Ross, who are parked next door to us, insist they're coming to the UK in 2008. Heaven help us! (Lovely couple really - it was Pat who came after us, when we arrived, to say that there was some shade by them and she'd move the car so we could park next to them!).
Monday, we just travelled S L O W! Could actually have made Kununurra in one day but planned to stop in Halls Creek...so we did! Then, Tuesday, on to K...quite an easy drive but we put in a few extra miles to go up to Wyndham (the most Northerly town in Western Australia) and to look out from the "Five River Lookout". What we saw was a massive convergence of waterways, in the middle of which sits the inactive port of Wyndham. It's another mainly aboriginal community which appears to be very run down. Back at K, we settled for a very pleasant bistro meal in the town and bedded down early, ready for the exciting day ahead.
Most of you know that one of our reasons for the Australian journey was to improve our experience of this vast country and, in particular, to see the iconic Bungle Bungles (placed second only to Ayers Rock in terms of their cultural and geographic significance to Oz). Wednesday was to be that day! We were picked up at 08.30 and bussed to the airport (which, bizarrely, is the second busiest in Western Australia although they're all Cessnas and Pipers, nothing big!) where we were introduced to Ian, our pilot for the day. He flew us down (over Lake Argyle, the biggest man-made lake in the Southern Hemisphere) to the Bungles and the flight path in took us over the "beehive domes" before landing. From the air they're amazing, on the ground next to them was even more astounding. These are not "a few quirky shaped and coloured rocks in the outback"...there's a whole park FULL of them! Hopefully the photos we've uploaded will give you some idea of their difference and beauty. Their shapes are caused by erosion over millions of years, their colour from the layers of iron-bearing rock and sandstone. The sandstone would be white but algae attach themselves in the wet season (when that layer goes a dark green) and then the dry comes and the baking hot sun turns the dead algae black. We walked about a kilometre into Cathedral Gorge and had a picnic lunch there...joined by a minute frog which Jill found by a rock; later we were taken to a pool where loads of them were clinging to the side of a rock just above the water line. The 4x4 bus then took some of the party back to the airfield for them to buzz around in a helicopter but we didn't need to go to that expense because our flight out and back covered the whole site. We then went for afternoon tea in the bush camp nearby, before flying home over other parts of the park and the Argyle Diamond Mine. The latter produces 2/3rds of the world's champagne and pink diamonds and is currently the top producer in the world too. The chunk they've hacked out of the mountain is astonishingly big, even from the air.
We now get up early, awoken not so much by the light of the sun as its heat! By 07.30 the van's warming up and by 09.00 it's positively unbearable. [The temperature climbs quickly into the late 20's (early 30's on Friday!) and stays until an hour before sunset when it quickly cools to a usually pleasant mid-teens]. Jill's morning didn't start well as her trusty hair drier blew up - the girl's reading this will know how serious this is! We had time to go into town to find a replacement (without success) before being picked up by coach and taken out to the edge of Lake Argyle for the trip of a lifetime back down 55kms of the Ord River. Despite the fact that we'd not heard of this river before, it's the second longest in Australia and it's annual water flow rate is beaten by only one river IN THE WORLD....the mighty Amazon! Before the trip we received a few statistics about Lake Argyle, whose capacity is normally about 20 Sydney Harbours but rises to 35-40 during the flood season! It provides irrigation to land which would otherwise be barren and which grows several interesting crops. There is NO water shortage up here! The river trip gave us a glimpse of otherwise unreachable countryside and gorges as well as crocodiles (freshwater), fruit bats, rare birds and some unforgettable reflections in the still waters of the creeks. We also had another sunset to endure before being taken home; whereupon our Kiwi friends from earlier had caught up with us again and we went down to the bistro in town for a meal together.
Friday was a travel day the last long leg was accomplished without any drama. We "lost" 1½ hours due to the crazy time difference between Western Australia and Northern Territories! Try explaining that to anyone! Now we had arrived in Katherine and booked ourselves on a tour of the gorge ("not another one" - we hear you cry!) for Saturday; then we went off to a down-market country club where we heard news of Australia's progress into the next round of the Soccer World Cup and had a distinctly average meal!
So, on to ANOTHER Saturday (my, it's a long time since we last found an internet connection!) and this time up a gorge once more - this time the Katherine Gorge which is the most dramatic one we have visited. The rock here is a different type of sandstone and has "fractures" which always occur at right angles. The result is a gorge through which the river zigzags, always at 90 to its last direction! It was all about rock formations and the drama of the chasm and we saw few signs of wildlife and when we did we'd already seen them somewhere else. After that we journeyed out into the bush to see Edith Falls...except that she doesn't do it very much in the dry season! It was quite pretty scene with water cascading (not very far) into a large pool in which young people were swimming. Whether it was worth driving 60kms each way to see is another matter! We drove back to camp and washed down the van ready for returning to Maui; then chilled out with biscuits and cheese in the cool of our air-con. See? It's not all "high life" on this trip!
Yesterday was another Sunday and we did our last "hop" from Katherine into Darwin, via Litchfield Park - a lovely expanse of rich bush interspersed with waterfalls flowing off the escarpment (or table-top) into the plains lower down. We also found rather large termite mounds and learnt the behaviour of "magnetic termites" which build tall structures, like a panel, with the thin edge facing North (ish!). Originally it was thought that they knew where North is; now it's realised that they're behaving in a very practical manner to the intense heat up here. Their thin edge faces North (where the sun is at its hottest) and the flat, broad, sides face the sun when he's cooler. Hence they keep to their favoured temperature of 30 inside the mound! The "Free Spirit" camp at Darwin welcomed us with some of the best facilities we've seen anywhere - lovely pool, TWO restaurants (most don't even have ONE!). We took a cabin so that we could unpack the van and repack the cases over night, which we did while devouring all the left-over food from the van....and a bottle of wine (Capel Vale Kinnaird Shiraz - their very best!). Jill found another frog in the toilet to greet her in the morning - they MUST come in round the u-bend because he'd have had to lift the lid up to hop in(!)...and he wouldn't flush away either (no, it's NOT cruel, they LIKE water!!)!!
We're now moving into the LAST month of our trip. Those who were saying how long it was at the beginning must surely now be saying how time has flown and "do they really have to come back yet?"!! In answer to little George's question to his Mummy "will Grandma EVER come back?" ...yes, dear, she's on her way! Love to you all from hot (and quite steamy!) Darwin; Richard & Jill xx
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