The road trip from Alice Springs to Darwin

OK after over a week on the road and internet-less I can finally catch up on this blog. After our day at Alice Springs we headed off on a fairly epic overland trip to Darwin taking three days and about 1500km.

The trip was basically very long periods on the road with the occasional break for some kind of 'thing'. However between Alice and Darwin the attractions are spread very thinly indeed and because of the long distances to be covered we often didn't stay at them for very long anyway. My itinerary mentions a stop at Ti Tree to look at/ buy Aboriginal Art- my memory however is drawing a blank! Oh well. Lunch was at Aileron, where I actually did get to see some of the artwork of Albert Namatjira (mentioned in a previous post), as well as Charlie the Anmatjere man, a giant statue of an Aborigine, and also got to to eat some extremely dodgy chicken.

We did make a stop at Barrow Creek Telegraph Station, one of a series constructed in the mid-19th Century across the middle of Australia (and from there across the world to London) in a bid to make the continent less isolated from everywhere else. Barrow Creek was notable as the site of a bit of a battle between the Telegraph workers and a local Aboriginal tribe, again my week-old memory fails as to the specific reason and the Lonely Planet guide is silent on the subject.

The highlight of the first day was definitely the Devil's Marbles- an group of large rounded granite boulders perched in various seemingly precarious positions. I wonder if I missed my calling as a geologist since the things I seem to be most enjoying on this trip are all the oddities of landscape such as these and the Remarkable Rocks on Kangaroo Island. I really enjoyed walking around them and trying (and mostly failing) to climb on them. I really wish I were a better climber. In my opinion we spent far too little time here, but we hurried on to have dinner at Banka Banka cattle station before bed.

The next day we continued heading north through the nowhere town of Tennant Creek (I say nowhere but it's the largest community for quite a distance) and onto the Daly waters Pub for lunch. This pub is great! I had a couple of pints of NT Draught rather earlier than I would normally drink alcohol but in such a nice pub it was hard to resist. It was just a really quirky place with the walls festooned in random stuff left by travellers over the years- bank notes from all over the world, t-shirts, underwear (!) and almost anything els you can think of. Nearby is also the site of the Australia's first international airport, which is a slightly surreal place to have it. We had a quick drive-by look at the by now run-down and barely-used airstrip and hangar, but didn't really get a proper look, which I think is a pity.

Next stop was Mataranka. It was around here that things started to feel properly tropical and we walked via some boardwalks from the car park through a small patch of rainforest teeming with flying foxes to the Rainbow Springs thermal pool. This was a lovely little pool; some kind of cross between a concreted swimming pool and a natural pool with roots from the poolside trees reaching into the water, and water temperatures almost the same as the air temperature. It was like having a warm bath except it was naturally that way. I also popped off to the river for a swim- this was almost properly natural (I think there are crocodile traps to reduce the likelihood of people running into any freshwater crocs), although I did have a habit of bashing my legs on underwater branches.

From Mataranka we continued through ever greener countryside to end the day at Katherine Gorge.

The next day we went straight to Katherine Gorge, the nights accommodation being handily nearby. From a variety of choices, Agnes and myself decided to do the canoeing and set off on an hour each way paddling session through some really nice scenery. Agnes declared this to be her favourite part of the trip (I liked the Devil's Marbles more). To break up the canoeing we had a bit of a swim. Agnes somehow managed to nearly drown in about two inches of water whilst I swam over to a cave and was stuck in it as a cruise boat went past; all the passengers staring at me like I was some kind of performing cave goblin put there for their entertainment.

The initial plan after Katherine Gorge was to go to the 'idyllic' Edith Falls. Unfortunately we never got the chance to see how idyllic it really was, as a couple of the group had found out they had been the victims of credit card fraud and needed to get to Darwin ASAP to try and sort it out. We therefore made all haste to Darwin, with a brief petrol/ leg stretch stop at Adelaide River. This was a pleasant town, with a strong WW2 heritage, being a staging post for troops coming from the south to get to Darwin and on to the front lines against the Japanese in SE Asia. Yet again, a place I would have been happy to stay at for much longer.

So after that we rushed on to Darwin, arriving much earlier than originally planned. Overall this was a trip I have mixed feelings about. It was mostly just lots of driving with short periods of entertainment every now and then. I think it may have been a bit too much of a compromise- it may have been better to either:

1. Save a couple of days and just catch a flight from Alice to Darwin
2. Spend about twice as long doing the trip, and see things properly. I could happily have stayed the night at Daly Waters and Adelaide River, and spent a bit longer at various other places such as the Devil's Marbles.

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