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Published: December 28th 2009
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We had a good 7 hour or so drive from Kununurra to Katherine although the border crossing itself was a huge anti-climax. Apparently it's much worse the other way where the WA officials are ultra careful and pull out the entire contents of your vehicle, so we were glad that the only noticeable effect on our lives was losing an hour and a half as the clocks went forward! The only other difference was that there were less boab trees and more water in NT than in WA...
We stayed the night with the Shaw family, some Christadelphians who we had been told welcomed all travellers. They were great, cooked a lovely meal and put us up for the night. Unfortunately the next morning though, Shaz Shaw accidentally backed into our pick-up (sorry, ute) when taking the kids off to school! It was only a flesh wound, which Joe was able to push out fairly well and we hadn't expected to travel around Australia without any collateral damage, nevertheless she insisted on buying us tickets for the Katherine Gorge cruise to say sorry (although they were the ones who had already provided free accommodation!) I have to confess that it
was a nice way to see the gorge and we had a beautiful trip as the photos show.
We went on to Edith Falls and had a lovely refreshing swim in the lower pool the next morning before I got nibbled by another fish! We were just getting out when a coachload of German tourists arrived - phew. We stopped at the Adelaide River Inn for lunch where Charlie the Buffalo of Crocodile Dundee fame is stuffed behind the bar. After stopping to help jump start the third car since we arrived in Oz, it was nearly 3pm before we arrived at Litchfield National Park. The Magnetic Termite Mounds were fascinating and the 4WD track down to some rock piles known as the Lost City was fun. Even in the Dry season, NT is much greener than WA. It was too late to stop at any of the waterfalls but we felt that we'd been to a few of those recently so pushed on to the Tumbling Waters Holiday Park where we were the only campers (definitely off-season). Joe and the kids saw a snake on the way to clean their teeth which over the next few days they
became convinced had to have been the most deadly type in Australia...!! (fortunately it slithered quickly away)
It was extremely humid that far north, and we found it hard to do anything quickly, and had to have several showers a day, often needing another one straight after the first!! There was an amazing amount of wildlife at the campsite though - a freshwater crocodile enclosure, loads of birds and we even saw a possum. We briefly visited Darwin, a pleasant enough city which had mostly been rebuilt since Cyclone Tracey hit in 1974. Kakadu National Park had to be fitted into half a day which was a shame, but at the end of the Dry season even the Mamukale Wetlands there were pretty parched! However Ubirr Rock with its masses of Aboriginal rock paintings and a fantastic view over the park were well worth visiting. On the long drive back south we unfortunately got stuck behind an overturned cattle truck which was quite distressing and once again impressed upon us the need to respect Australia's roads.
After a cooler night's sleep back under the Shaws' airconditioning unit we hit the road south, stopping for lunch at Daly Waters,
the site of Australia's first international airstrip and an interesting pub with travellers memorabilia from all over the world. Three Ways was a 6 hour drive so we treated ourselves to a motel room in order to leave early the next morning - another 550kms to Alice Springs, with the only point of interest along the way being the Devil's Marbles, huge boulders precariously balanced. On arriving at Uluru the following day (another 4 hours from Alice) we were pleased to discover that the temperature had dropped from 47 deg the previous week to a much pleasanter 27, although we were a bit worried about the tent it was so windy (never happy!!) Yulara Resort, the only place to stay near Uluru was pretty interesting - totally purpose built, with its own shopping centre and school.
Bella had been begging us for more lessons (!) so it was the next afternoon before we ventured to Kata Tjuta (the Olgas), a group of 36 large dome rock formations whose name means "many heads" and are as sacred to the local indigenous people (the Anangu) as Uluru itself. Bella was pretty impressed - "Wow, that's amazing", and we enjoyed the Valley
of the Winds walk which was very aptly named as at points we couldn't even hear each other talk. I also took a short walk into the Olga Gorge itself. We finally made it to Uluru the next day. I was impressed by what the guide book calls its "elemental majesty". It rises out of the surrounding landscape all on its own without anything to detract from its simple beauty with its amazing colours and smooth lines. The Anangu people request that you don't climb it, but I would have done so had it not been closed due to the wind. Nevertheless I didn't feel like I was missing out - just to be able to look at it was good! We had boked a tour with an Anangu guide, Sarah, who told us stories from their Dreamtime folklore about the python Kuniya who supposedly created one of the cracks, as well as showing examples of bush food and how it is collected. We then drove to the sunset lookout and enjoyed the strange experience of spending an hour lined up along a fence with hundreds of other people photographing a huge rock every 10 minutes!! But I was quite
pleased with the results.
Next stop was King's Canyon, several hours to the north. It was very hot again by this time and the kids were only up to a short walk through the creek which was still nice. That night we got chatting to a Belgian family who had been to Vietnam and Cambodia with their 3 young children and were off to South America next, so felt very inferior!! Two dingoes came to the site that night which was very exciting for us although they're obviously a bit of a problem.
The next morning we took the Mereenie Loop Road (154 km unsealed and bumpy) through the West MacDonnell Ranges where we saw wild horses and wild camels. Standley Chasm was the lunch stop which was quite spectacular at its narrow end but there wasn't much time to appreciate it as we had to push on - heading east on to the Outback Way, affectionately known as "Australia's longest shortcut"!!
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