August 2014 - South Bound on the Stuart Hwy

Katherine is right on the junction of the Victoria Highway which comes through from Western Australia, and the Stuart Highway which goes south through Alice Springs to Adelaide.
We stayed a few nights in Katherine on our way to Darwin and saw most of the sites, but when we found out that the local rodeo was on the following weekend, we decided to stay for the week.

The Boab Caravan Park has good concrete slabs to park the van on as well as a concrete slab under the awning, then the rest of the area is all manicured grass. It was a very pleasant place to stay for a week and catch up on a few small maintenance items.  Another good thing is that the Mitre 10 and the Toyworld shop that sells bike parts give 10% discount if you have a Seniors card.  They actually ask you at the checkout if you have a Seniors card which I think is jolly decent of them.

Mataranka is only just over 100 kilometres south of Katherine and is best known for it’s hot springs, but there is so much more to this little one horse town as we found out.  We booked into Mataranka Cabins and Camping for 2 nights, but we found a really good shady, secluded site that we ended up staying 5.  Mataranka is known as the “Capital of the Never Never”, and is the gateway to Elsey National Park which is one of the smallest national parks that we have visited.

This area was home to Jeannie Gunn who wrote the famous book about life on Elsey Station entitled “We of the Never Never”, and the replica home that was built for the film of the same name, is still on display at the Mataranka Homestead.

Bitter Springs is in a very quiet bush setting and a lot more room to get away from the crowd

Bitter Springs is the lesser known of the 2 hot springs in this area, but as it was only a short bike ride from where we stayed, we spent most of our time there.

Mataranka Hot Springs has beautiful clear water but we found it very crowded

  After visiting the more well known springs on the south side of Mataranka, we voted Bitter Springs the best by far.  A beautiful natural bush setting surrounded by River Pandanus, Cabbage Palms and Broardleaf Paperbark, with crystal clear water at a constant temperature of 34 degrees makes it easy floating around for a couple of hours.  Thirty and a half million litres of water per day flowing through here makes quite a strong current that carries you down stream, where you can either swim back upstream against the current, or get out and walk back along the path beside the stream.

The closest I got to a big barramundi was at the Barra Feeding tour at Territory Manor.  They have a big dam, stocked with wild barra which are all around 1 metre in length, that have been trained to come to the surface to take pilchards from visitors standing on a submerged jetty.  The fish sit just below the surface of the water and you hold the pilchard above their eyes where they just size it up for a second then bang, they grab it and are gone before you see them move.  We were told that they don’t have teeth so they suck their food in and swallow it whole, no wonder they are a good fighting fish to catch on a line.

Mataranka Museum has a collection of historic information from the early days of the township, railway line construction and the soldiers camped here during the second world war.  It’s amazing how things come the full circle. They have an “antbed” oven which is constructed of a 44 gallon drum sitting on a bed of rocks and then the whole thing covered with crushed antbed, (termite mound) which was mixed with water to make a mud.  Due to the additives that the termites mix with the soil, the mud makes a good insulation as well as a good base for flooring.  And we thought the wood fired pizza oven was a modern day invention!

With our time up in Mataranka, we moved on further south and stopped for lunch at another unique place called Larrimah.  What a dag of a place.  The pub was originally the WW2 Officers Mess, but today features a free entry zoo with dozens of different local birds, animals, snakes and even a salt water crocodile.  The pink panther features on his gyro copter out the front and the whole place is painted pink to match.  You certainly can’t miss this place as you travel along the road.  After a look through the zoo and a nice toasted chicken sandwich for lunch, we continued on to Daly Waters which is further south and has the distinction of being Australia’s first international airfield.

Daly Waters Pub

  It was first used for flying mail into Northern Territory from Queensland before it became a staging and refueling point for Qantas international flights flying through Darwin and on to Singapore.

Daly Waters Service Station

  We had heard about the “Beef and Barra” meal from far and wide that they serve in the evenings at the Daly Waters pub, so we decided to stay in that vicinity so we could sample if for ourselves, and we weren’t disappointed. We didn’t know the drill for ordering so we were on the last serving for the evening as they only cook 50 serves at a time on the BBQ out in the beer garden.  From about 120 diners,105 would have had the beef and barra and the remaining few had meals picked from the restaurant menu.

In the bar of the Daly Waters pub

The salads from the help yourself salad bar were freshly made with their own home made dressings, and it was all topped off with freshly baked crusty bread cut into slabs with real butter.  The whole time we were there, their was a one man band called Stevie Still Rocks playing 50’s, 60’s and 70’s music which was very entertaining and easy to listen to.

Entertainment in the beer garden at Daly Waters pub

It’s now a toss up between the chicken parmy at Adelaide River or the beef and barra at Daly Waters as to which is the best pub meal we have had.  Judy tends to think that Adelaide River’s parmy still tops her list but I think if it came to a choice side by side, I would go the beef and barra.  The only disadvantage of this pub being so popular is that the caravan park attached to it is packed with 120 caravans every night during the dry season, so it soon becomes very claustrophobic.

We took the advice of some other travelers and stayed at the Highway Inn, only about 6 kilometres away, it has lovely grassy sites and only about 30 caravans per night in the same sized area. With not much to see at Daly Waters, we set off for Renner Spring.

Pool at Renner Springs

Now we thought that Point Stuart was the worst caravan park we have stayed in, bit this one leaves all other bad caravan parks for dead. Nice friendly staff in the pub to book you in and take your money, but that was the end of the good about it.  The rudest park manager we have ever met, who was a good 10 years past his “best before date”, gave us orders as to where and how to back into a very cramped space.  When I questioned the fact that I couldn’t get the awning out, he promptly told me than in another couple of hours I wouldn’t need it as the sun would go down behind the donga that we were jammed up behind. The toilet block was way around the other end of the park and the floor felt as though it had rotted out and you were just walking on the bit of old lino which had been nailed across the old floor boards to spread the weight of people walking on it.  What a dump!!  The park manager also assembled the ladies together to tell them that the white goose down on the spring hated women, so if it attacked them they should stand their ground and shoo it away, because if they turned around to walk away it would bite them.  I think it is about time they “cooked their goose”. Never mind, we survived the night even though the international visitors jammed in beside us in their rental motor home decided to get up at 4.00 am and take the high powered torch to try to photograph nocturnal animals.

Three Ways Roadhouse mural north of Tennant Creek

Tennant Creek, which is the 5th largest town in the Northern Territory was a welcome relief from all the goings on of the previous night, but for us there wasn’t a lot of interest. 

The Overland Telegraph line which was completed in 1872, put the town on the map and now has a collection of historic stone buildings that functioned to support workers and maintenance on the line.

Gold was also discovered in the region and the 12 stamp battery and some old mining equipment are on display at the visitor information centre. We also saw the biggest display of flowering Sturt Desert Pea growing around Lake Mary Ann which is a man-made lake only 5 kilometres north of the town, purpose built to help soften the harsh outback conditions of the area.

The trip south from Tennant Creek is a gradual 300 metre uphill climb all the way to the top of the Davenport Ranges about 350 kilometres away.  Wouldn’t you know it, we had a howling side wind for 2 days while we tackled this part of our trip, which shot our fuel consumption up to 28.9 litres per hundred kilometres.  This could only happen in the most expensive place on our journey with fuel being at $2.12 per litre at our next stop.

Along the way we came across an area about 1,820 hectares in size, that is covered with unusual rock formations called “The Devils Marbles”, or Karlu Karlu as they are known by the local Warumungu Aboriginals.  This a collection of huge, red, rounded granite boulders that vary in size from 50 cm up to six metres across, and they are strewn right across a area.  Many of them seem impossibly balanced on top of each other, just like the two marbles in the picture above .

The Devils Marbles started out, many million years ago, when an upsurge of molten rock reached the surface, spread out and settled into a solid layer.  That one block of granite then developed horizontal and vertical cracks and split into many rectangular blocks.  Over the following millions of years, erosion did what it always does and wore away the edges.  You can see the later stages of that process on rocks all across the reserve.  Some parts still hint at the original rectangular shapes while some blocks have their corners worn of and some are totally rounded.  Every marble looks different.  You can walk around for ages and find new and interesting views at every turn.

Wycliffe Well, which is known as Australia’s UFO capital due to the hundreds of UFO sightings that have occurred there since WWII, was a good overnight stop to get out of the wind.  What an awesome little place, miles from nowhere, but with great hospitality and clean amenities and ablution blocks.  They really take the UFO thing to the max with aliens and space ships all round the place.  I had a good chat with the owner and he said there are good documented sightings of many UFO’s since WW2, and believes that sightings are so regular because they are situated under the crossing of the magnetic Ley Lines that UFO’s use as highways.

He also believes that as they are right on the edge of the Tanami Desert, all the rain that falls over the north side of the Davenport Ranges seeps down through the sand and there is a huge underground lake just 30 metres below them which is about 60 kilometres in diameter.  This huge expanse of water together with the magnetic Ley Lines possibly has something to do with the UFO’s navigation equipment.  Hmmm, I wonder. We didn’t see any UFO’s but we only had one drink with our meal!

At last the wind had died down a bit and the down hill run off the top of the Davenport Range to Barrow Creek was much more pleasant.

Barrow Creek was one of the original overland telegraph repeater stations built in 1872 to service the phone line that connected Australia to England.  The buildings are still in good condition and now under the care of the Parks and Wildlife as Historic Reserves.

Aileron is another of those quirky little roadhouses right alongside the Stuart Highway about 135 kilometres north of Alice Springs.  As you turn into their service road the first thing that hits you in the eyes is a 17 m sculpture of Charlie Portpot up on the hill behind the roadhouse.

Charlie was the local rainmaker who lived around this area over 100 years ago with his wife Matilda and their children.  The statue of Matilda with one of their children and a large goanna beside the aboriginal arts centre is just as imposing.

Love the outback humor

What better place for an overnight stop with friendly staff and excellent meals in the pub.

Tropic of Capricorn marker

About 30 kilometres north of Alice Springs, we crossed back over the Tropic of Capricorn which is the marker between the “tropical” zone and the “temperate” zone, even though the monsoonal weather pattern peters out about 800 kilometres north of here at Newcastle Water.

Another 10 kilometres on further south we found the reason why we had used so much fuel since we left Mataranka.

Cairn marking the highest point on the highway between
 Darwin and Adelaide

Here is the marker for the highest point on the Stuart Highway which is 727 metres above sea level, so we have been gradually climbing for the last 1,000 kilometres, but now it should be all down hill from here back to Adelaide.

We visited Alice Springs briefly back in 2006 and it sure has grown a lot since then.  Now it has traffic lights, new caravan parks and a whole new shopping plaza.

August 2014 - Kakadu

Heading east from Darwin we got onto the Arnhem Highway towards Kakadu National Park.

The Bark Hut Inn was a couple of hours drive from Darwin so we stopped over for lunch.  These old pubs have great character and serve their communities as a pub, general store, fuel stop, meeting place and quite often the post office and newsagent.  This one also has a little caravan park out the back.

The food is always good and the atmosphere created by their unique outback decor makes it well worth the stop. Buffalo hamburger with bush relish, chips and salad was on the menu and it was absolutely delicious.  

After leaving Darwin I was looking forward to a spot of fishing again, and as we had picked up a great brochure in Darwin on the Point Stuart Wilderness Lodge, we headed down a dusty gravel road with great anticipation. Unfortunately, I think the brochure was printed many years ago as the caravan park section was nothing like what it showed in the brochure.The place was all closed up and looked deserted which put us off from the beginning, the fishing spot was another 20 kilometres further along the dusty gravel road and the caravan was already filthy from the trip in.  We stayed one night, but only because it was too late in the day to continue onto somewhere else.

The next day we continued on to Kakadu which is a world heritage listed national park that covers almost 20,000 square kilometres, and for the sake of visitors it is divided up into 6 main regions.  The regions are, East Alligator, South Alligator, Nourlangie, Yellow Water, Mary River and Jabiru which is the only white settlement within the park.

We based ourselves at the Jabiru Lodge and Caravan Park which is the same place that we stayed 22 years ago when we were here with the kids.  Back then, I was happy to tell everyone that I thought it was the best caravan park in Australia, but it has aged a bit since then but still very clean with nice spacious sites and a great swimming pool.

East Alligator River at low tide

The East Alligator region is to the north east of Jabiru and the river is the dividing line between Kakadu and Arnhem Land.

Cahills Crossing at low tide - note direction of flow

  There is a causeway across the river called Cahills Crossing, and although it is some 50 odd kilometres from the sea at Alligator Head, it is greatly affected by the rise and fall of the tide.  When the high tide at Alligator Head is greater than 6.3 metres, the water backs up and the river actually starts running backwards.

Cahills Crossing at high tide - note direction of flow

  This brings many fish up the river and the crocodiles line up on both sides of the causeway for a feeding frenzy.  The crocs just lay in the water facing into the oncoming water with their front legs spread wide out and as soon as a fish comes into their waiting trap "snap" and the fish is lunch.

It’s amazing to stand on the bank and watch the water running down stream, and then about half an hour before high tide, the low side of the causeway backs up with water, and everything goes dead quiet for a few minutes once both sides of the river are at the same level, before the river starts flowing backwards.

Another 3 or 4 kilometres further on from Cahills Crossing is the aboriginal rock art site of Ubirr (Oo-beerr) where there are many paintings showing the different types of food that can be found around this area.  These paintings are said to be 4000 years old and tell the history and culture of the aboriginal people who lived in this area.

There is a painting of some stick figures underneath a ledge some 15 metres off the ground with no access to the area at all.  Aboriginal people believe Mimi spirits painted these sorcery figures.  Mimi spirits are so tall and thin they can put paintings in unlikely places. They simply lift the rocks down, paint them, then put them back into place.  Although Mimi spirits are invisible to most people, they taught Aboriginal people to paint many of the traditional designs.

A moderately steep, 250 metre climb from here takes you to the top of a rocky lookout that gives a fantastic view out over the Nadab floodplain.  This is another of those “WOW” moments when you reach the top and the floodplain unfolds before you.  Four panoramic photos just covers the 270 degree view that you get from here, even the photos don’t do it justice.

Cooinda is fifty kilometres south of Jabiru and sits on the edge of the Yellow Water Billabong which is a permanent billabong fed from the South Alligator River.

We took the sunset cruise around the billabong and out into the river where there was an abundance of wildlife, whistling ducks, big crocodiles, kingfishers, white belly sea eagles and the icon of Kakadu, the black neck stork or Jabiru as it is locally known.  These are beautiful birds with their bright pink legs and long black necks that forage around in the wetlands looking for fish and frogs to eat.

The guide told us that this one was a male who had a giant 2 metre diameter nest high up in a tree about half a kilometre away with a female and 3 young which had only just been hatched out.  The parents take it in turn to catch fish and then fly back to the nest and regurgitate the food for the young while the other adult bird goes off foraging for food.

The river is full of Lotus Flower water lilies with a beautiful large pink flowers and a leaf up to 450 mm in diameter which is completely water proof so the indigenous people use them for carrying water from the river back to their camp.

Sunset across the billabong brought a whole different light and feeling to the place.  Mamukala (Mar-moo-car-lar) wetlands has a bird hide and viewing platform which allows visitors to view the bird life on the wetlands. We visited this place 22 years ago with the kids and the wetlands were full of magpie geese and the noise was deafening.

This time we were about 6 to 8 weeks too early in the season as the geese don’t visit this area until towards the end of September, however the view is still awesome as there are always pelicans, shags and many other water birds foraging for food amongst the lotus flower water lilies.

The last place we visited on our way out of Kakadu was Bukbukluk lookout which has a short walk from the car park to the lookout across the old Goodparla Station.

The local aboriginal people recognise that Kakadu has 6 different seasons and each season brings different food sources into the area.  We visited in the middle of the dry season and found that the area wasn't as abundant with birds and animals as we had remembered from our previous visit.

A lot of visitors say that it is not worth the effort coming to Kakadu, and we found that we had to work a bit harder and walk a bit further to get to see what was on display, where as in Litchfield, we could drive almost up to all the attractions.

August 2014 - Darwin

Darwin is the capital city of the Northern Territory with a population of around 136,500 living in the greater Darwin area.  Driving into the CBD from the outer suburbs is like driving on the Princes Highway between Werribee and Geelong at 2 am, yet we still hear on the news of various efforts that are being made to ease congestion.  They don’t even know what congestion is.  They have duplicated the Stuart Highway with a parallel road about 2 kilometres apart and both take you to within 2 kilometres of the CBD at 80 KPH at peak hour.  Anywhere is only within 10 kilometres of anywhere else and all the connecting roads are either dual or triple carriageway, it’s great.  The Royal Darwin Show was on during the week we stayed there and we drove past the show grounds on various occasions and the speed didn't drop below 60 KPH, what a dream run.

The fishing in the territory has been a bit scarce so I decided to take a half day fishing tour to see if my luck would change with some expert tuition.  The tour left the ferry terminal at Cullen Bay at 6 am and we sailed for an hour across Beagle Gulf to Charles Point.  There were 12 people fishing from the boat and the first 15 minutes only produced a few small fish and one good size blue fin salmon.  The skipper moved to another location and the next drop didn't produce anything any better so another shift was on.  The skipper said that the tide was flat but he could see fish on the sounder so he anchored and we sat until the tide turned.  The fish started biting and I actually caught a rock cod but it turned out to be the smallest fish caught all day.  One of the guys on the other side of the boat brought in a beautiful West Australian Dhufish (dhuie) that measured 786 mm long.

We sat on that spot for an hour and 4 other smaller dhuie’s were caught, along with some smaller fish and a lemon shark which they estimated to weigh 200 kilograms and would have been 6 feet long.  They decided not to bring it on board after it took the guy 30 minutes to bring it to the surface for a photo.

Just as the skipper called time to leave one of the girls hooked into something big which took her 10 minutes to bring it onto the boat.  It turned out to be the biggest dhuie of the day which measured 980 mm long. Her partner wasn't happy as he was like me and hadn't caught anything worth talking about all day.

My day turned out great even though I hadn't caught that “photo fish”, as I had a great time trying, learnt a few things from the professionals, and ended up bringing home the first dhuie caught, as the guy who caught it only wanted the photo and not the fish.

Our oldest daughter Leann had a birthday while we were in Darwin and her husband Clayton bought her a surprise air ticket to Darwin for her to visit us for an extended weekend. Not only was it a surprise for Leann but it was also a great surprise for us, so we put the caravan into storage and moved into a tropical villa at the caravan park for a few days while Leann was here.  So what do visitors do when they come to Darwin?  Firstly, jump on the “on and off” double decker open top bus for a tour around the city to see the sights.

Cullen Bay is “the “ place to live, it is on a canal system connected to Darwin Harbour by a system of 8 gates in a lock to protect the canals from the big tides and the high waves swept up by the monsoons in the wet season.

Secondly, the biggest attraction in Darwin is the Thursday night Mindil Beach Sunset Market. This market attracts up to 20,000 visitors each week and supports 200 small businesses employing 1,000 people and contributes significantly to the economy of the territory.  The market offers stalls with art and craft, fresh fruit and vegies as well as free family entertainment and over 1,200 different food items, so it is a great night out on Thursday night to grab something to eat and go and sit on the beach to eat it while watching the sun go down.

Thirdly was Crocodylus Park Zoo which features many crocodiles over 4.5 metres (14 feet) long, as well as lagoons full of juvenile crocs being bred up for their meat and skins.

The reptile display has 2 very large pythons, one of which weighs over 90 kilograms, so it is a big snake. They also have 2 anaconda’s which the keepers have out in the yard and those who are game enough can have them around their neck, not for me but Leann enjoyed it.

We enjoyed the boat cruise around their man made lagoon and river system where we saw many crocodiles in a more natural environment.

The tour guide pointed out various birds, trees and palms and explained a bit about each as we meandered around the system.  He pointed out some pandanus trees and explained the difference between male and female pandanus.  Pandanas have long leaves with small spikes that grow on a spiral around the stem, the male leaves spiral to the left where as the female’s spiral to the right.  He said that this is easy to remember as the “female is always right”.

They run a guided tour where they feed the crocodiles meat hanging from a stick above them which makes the crocodiles “jump” up to grab the meat. This is normal behaviour for crocs in the wild as they will often jump out of the water to catch birds and bats sitting in low hanging tree branches.

It really highlights the power of these creatures which can get well over half their body length out of the water from a standing start.  The park also has a collection of lions, tigers, baboon and various other primates on display in a nice shady area down the back.  This park is a private business funded by tourism and the sale of crocodile products and meats, we had a very enjoyable freshly made crocodile burger for lunch from their onsite kiosk.

Who could visit the top end and not swim in one of the many water falls, so a trip down to Wangi Falls in Litchfield National Park rewarded us with a very cooling swim amongst some of the nicest scenery imaginable.

Leann has always been a water baby and we were all water logged after an hour or so floating around the pool with our “noodles”.

Crocodiles are a part of life around these parts so if you see one in the garden, why wouldn't you jump on it’s back just like the “crocodile hunter”.

It was fantastic to have Leann visit us in Darwin and it was a bit sad to put her on the plane and send her back from Darwin’s temperature of 32 degrees to Melbourne temperature of 2 degrees.