Thursday 19th November - Another very early start this morning to begin our next tour. This tour takes us from Alice Springs to Darwin and takes 3 days 1700km and not really that much to see on the way.
We crossed the tropic of Capricorn on the way to Barrow Creek Telegraph Station part of the old overland telegraph network running from south to north then on towards England. Then before lunch we stopped at various wacky roadhouses, with weird memorabilia. One even names itself the UFO capital of Australia! Crazy people!
Our first proper stop was as the Devils Marbles. Amazing rock formations. We climbed them and took lots of photos. It was the middle of the day now and very hot. So in the afternoon we were able to take a dip in a Dam, it was a bit grotty and not that clean but it was cooler than the air (even if only by a little).
We arrived at our camp for the night, a cattle station called Banka Banka. It was pretty remote with lots of animals around, some wild some captive. We slept in tents this time, with mattresses.
Friday 20th November - Slept ok in our tent last night, it was pretty hot but apparently there is worse to come! We had the usual tour breakfast and packed the bus to leave and do a solid days driving on the bus. Today was never going to be the most exciting day but there were one or two highlights on the way from our campsite at Banka Banka to Katherine Gorge.
We stopped at the oldest pub in The Northern Terratory, it was built in, wait for this…… 1930!!! Ha ha ha! Funny place, called The ”Daly Waters Pub” in these pubs in the outback visitors seem to always leave souvenirs for the landlord so there is stuff all over the walls. From Bras to coins, hats and flags! These stops en route are more to laugh at the crazyness of the locals than actual “real” sightseeing. Another pointless laughable sightseeing stop was at a copy of a tree that John Mcdowel Stuart was supposed to have carved an 'S' in on his discoveries.
We then headed for Mataranka Thermal pools and spring. This was our major stop for the day. We swam in clear water amongst rainforest. The flora and fauna is now changing as we go further north towards the tropics and its getting way more humid. We saw lots of bats too, I seem to have a thing about photographing all the birds and animals I see even though I have no idea what they are!
We were treated to an extra stop this afternoon which turned out to be the highlight of the 3 day bus tour. It was a painting workshop run by a local aboriginal “blackfella” (that term is not politically incorrect over here). We were talked to about how he grew up and he taught us how to paint in his traditional style. A fantastic experience! We all made our own paintings.
I was very impressed by him and he was a genuinely nice bloke. I had been playing the tour guides didgeridoo a bit and I thought that if I was going to buy one now would be the time. Hand painted by an aboriginal that I had met and seen paint. So mum and dad be prepared to have a large package arrive in the post in a couple of weeks! Keep it safe for me for when I return! I even got video and pictures of him playing the actual one I bought! (you can probably tell that I’m quite excited by that!)
Arriving at camp this evening was hot! And there were loads more wildlife, including frogs in the toilets! We slept in pools of sweat tonight, it was gross!
Saturday 21st November - Today we headed for Katherine Gorge for a Kayak safari. Katherine gorge is actually made up of many gorges interlinked but on our kayaks we were only allowed to visit the first two of them. We paddled in our double kayak for about 45 minutes to a landing beach down the gorge seeing many crocodile nesting sites on the way! There was a fair bit of wildlife to look at, wallabies, bats and birds. We also saw what we thought was a seal but it turned out to be a log! After walking across some boulders we accessed the second gorge which was safe to swim in, so we took a bit of a dip.
A crocodile trap!!!
The trip back wasn's as exciting because we had already seen it all once, and our kayak would not go straight, but apparently as we found out later some of the kayaks are actually bent and never go straight. We had a picnic lunch in the park and spotted our first Kookaburra.
This afternoon we drove on towards Darwin stopping at a small waterfall for a swim (if you dared) and played music quiz games on the bus. having two tour guides made it quite an entertaining trip.
We checked into our hostel for just the one night as it was another early start for our Kakadu Safari in the morning. By now we were both pretty fed up with 5.30am starts but tomorrow was going to be another one!
Sunday 22nd November – Today was yet another early start, and we set off on our tour of Kakadu National park with what has to be one of the most sarcastic, tourist hating tour guides in history. This guy is definitely in the wrong job! We were also in a huge 4x4 army type truck with broken aircon and a suspension that was broken about 100,000 km ago! This all led for a distinctively uncomfortable ride!
Our first stop this morning was to learn more about Aboriginal culture. This started when we arrived in a patch of bush and had to go through a welcome ritual which turned out to involve having dirty pond water spat onto our heads. Personally I wasn’t too thrilled with this but apparently it will bring us safe travels so I suppose that is a bright side! We then got to learn about basket weaving and spear throwing which was also pretty good fun. The Aboriginal culture is still very much alive and we learnt how a lot of the Aboriginals still maintain the traditional lifestyle of hunting etc. although most do now live in houses.
Our second stop of the day was for a crocodile cruise on the Mary River. Apparently this is one of the most densely populated crocodile grounds in the world and we were told in no uncertain terms to keep arms, legs and heads inside the boat unless we wanted to lose them. Australia has two types of crocodiles, saltwater and freshwater. The freshwater crocs eat fish and are generally not considered dangerous unless you annoy them. The saltwater crocs eat anything and are not impartial to a human or two. Our tour guide told us how, unlike a shark that will just take a chunk out of you and then decide you don’t taste very good, a Crocodile will take hold of you, drag you below water to drown you, throw you about until a bite sized piece rips off and then hide the rest of you under a log for the next few weeks meals. After this all our arms and legs were firmly super glued to the inside of the boat!
We were lucky enough to see a couple of crocs out and about as it was a very hot day and crocodiles need to maintain a constant body temperature of between about 30-32 degrees As it was a good 38-39 degrees outside it was too hot for them to sunbathe and they were all in the water! We also went into a huge lotus swamp and got to see lots of birds etc and pretty flowers.
Saturday 21st November - Today we headed for Katherine Gorge for a Kayak safari. Katherine gorge is actually made up of many gorges interlinked but on our kayaks we were only allowed to visit the first two of them. We paddled in our double kayak for about 45 minutes to a landing beach down the gorge seeing many crocodile nesting sites on the way! There was a fair bit of wildlife to look at, wallabies, bats and birds. We also saw what we thought was a seal but it turned out to be a log! After walking across some boulders we accessed the second gorge which was safe to swim in, so we took a bit of a dip.
A crocodile trap!!!
The trip back wasn's as exciting because we had already seen it all once, and our kayak would not go straight, but apparently as we found out later some of the kayaks are actually bent and never go straight. We had a picnic lunch in the park and spotted our first Kookaburra.
This afternoon we drove on towards Darwin stopping at a small waterfall for a swim (if you dared) and played music quiz games on the bus. having two tour guides made it quite an entertaining trip.
We checked into our hostel for just the one night as it was another early start for our Kakadu Safari in the morning. By now we were both pretty fed up with 5.30am starts but tomorrow was going to be another one!
Sunday 22nd November – Today was yet another early start, and we set off on our tour of Kakadu National park with what has to be one of the most sarcastic, tourist hating tour guides in history. This guy is definitely in the wrong job! We were also in a huge 4x4 army type truck with broken aircon and a suspension that was broken about 100,000 km ago! This all led for a distinctively uncomfortable ride!
Our first stop this morning was to learn more about Aboriginal culture. This started when we arrived in a patch of bush and had to go through a welcome ritual which turned out to involve having dirty pond water spat onto our heads. Personally I wasn’t too thrilled with this but apparently it will bring us safe travels so I suppose that is a bright side! We then got to learn about basket weaving and spear throwing which was also pretty good fun. The Aboriginal culture is still very much alive and we learnt how a lot of the Aboriginals still maintain the traditional lifestyle of hunting etc. although most do now live in houses.
Our second stop of the day was for a crocodile cruise on the Mary River. Apparently this is one of the most densely populated crocodile grounds in the world and we were told in no uncertain terms to keep arms, legs and heads inside the boat unless we wanted to lose them. Australia has two types of crocodiles, saltwater and freshwater. The freshwater crocs eat fish and are generally not considered dangerous unless you annoy them. The saltwater crocs eat anything and are not impartial to a human or two. Our tour guide told us how, unlike a shark that will just take a chunk out of you and then decide you don’t taste very good, a Crocodile will take hold of you, drag you below water to drown you, throw you about until a bite sized piece rips off and then hide the rest of you under a log for the next few weeks meals. After this all our arms and legs were firmly super glued to the inside of the boat!
We were lucky enough to see a couple of crocs out and about as it was a very hot day and crocodiles need to maintain a constant body temperature of between about 30-32 degrees As it was a good 38-39 degrees outside it was too hot for them to sunbathe and they were all in the water! We also went into a huge lotus swamp and got to see lots of birds etc and pretty flowers.
After the croc cruise it was a quick lunch stop which was pretty unexciting and then onto a walk to some Aboriginal cave paintings which were pretty amazing as there were layers and layers of painting which could be dated by the style of it. There were also some amazing paintings incredibly high up on the overhang of the rock that are unexplained because no one knows how they got there. We then climbed up to see views over some of the national park before heading to camp for dinner.
Monday 23rd November – Up early again and off to walk to Jim Jim falls this morning. The drive there was pretty fun as it was our first bit of proper off roading and it was pretty bumpy! Its about a 40 minute trek to Jim Jim although trek probably isn’t the right word as its basically a rock scramble over huge boulders! James and I were both being bitten to pieces by March flies – huge evil things that like to suck your blood ( only the females). You can actually feel them bite you and they were literally all over the pair of us! By the time we got to Jim Jim falls we were pretty tired after the exercise and fighting off the flies! Jim Jim Falls is perhaps a bit of a misleading name as for most of the year its not actually a waterfall. In fact the waterfall is accessible to tourists for only about two weeks of the year before it becomes a big pond! The reason it is only accessible to tourists when it is a pond is that during the wet season the water levels rise and crocs can go anywhere they want, meaning that you might well get chomped if you took a trip there. Not only that but the road floods along with most of the rest of the area.
The north of Australia really only has two seasons, a wet season and a dry season. Both are hot! During the wet season huge flood plains develop and then during the dry season everything dry’s out (duh!) Tourist trips to Kakadu don’t happen during the wet season as it is virtually inaccessible. At the start of the dry season, certain areas of water become landlocked and the park rangers then clear some of these of saltwater crocs and set traps out for any they missed. After this has been done they then open these areas to the public for swimming. The traps are left out for any wandering crocs who should go for the meat in them on the way through before getting any people. All this means that in theory it is safe to swim in Jim Jim falls. However out of 12 of us none wanted to be the first in to test if any hungry crocs had made a trip in overnight which led to us all sitting, sweltering, staring at the water for about 15 minutes before heat overcame the first person and they jumped in. After that we all jumped in and had a really nice cooling swim.
In the afternoon we went up to another lookout point over a different part of the park before heading back to Darwin. We literally got back and after popping out for a quick cheap bite to eat we went to sleep
Tuesday 24th November - This morning we had to be up at stupid-o’clock again (4.30 to be precise) to catch our flight from Darwin to Cairns.
We arrived in Cairns at around 9.15am having gone forward half an hour again on the flight across leaving us well and truly confused about where we are in relation to English time! We then had to wait for an hour and a half for a shuttle to our hostel as they had forgotten about us – very unimpressed! We then got there only to find that we couldn’t check in as their power was out and everything is electronic. (grrrrr!) 4 hours later, very tired and very hot we were finally able to check into our room (we had booked a double here as it was super cheap!) We had a three hour nap to refresh and then headed into Cairns to check out the city and find some food!
We ended up eating at a $1 a plate pub bbq. For $1 you got a piece of meat about the size of a tablespoon, a slice of bread and a good spoonful of salad, which wasn’t too bad really! There was a choice of four meats, crocodile, kangaroo, buffalo and beef sausage, and so we got four plates to try all of them. It was actually a pretty good meal considering we spent $2 each!
Wednesday 25th November – Today we had a really long lay in which was amazing after all the early mornings we have had for the last two weeks! We then headed into town for a bit of tourist shopping and then had an early $5 dinner at a pub which was actually fairly decent ! We then headed to the cinema to see Twilight: New Moon which I had been wanting to see since Melbourne! It was really nice to have a relaxing day with not too much activity and to catch up on some sleep!
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