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Published: April 16th 2006
Day Nine: Halls Creek We headed on up WA to Halls Creek, to give you an idea of what this town is like, it was charmingly referred to as Hells Crack by the attendant at the petrol station at Fitzroy Crossing. With hindsight I have to say that I think this is very rich coming from a Fitzroy Crossmeister...even if I was living with George Michael I would be unhappy residing there. The only thing I can say about Fitzroy Crossing is that it is where the Great Northern Highway crosses the Fitzroy River. As we stopped at the petrol station there were people just hanging around the town passed out in the park or looking at strangers with contempt.
We made it up to Halls Creek (situated right in the heart of The Kimberley’s and the home of the first gold rush in WA) and made our way to Halls Creek Caravan Park where we were admirably looked after by Adrian, a French guy who had emigrated over to Australia and had bizarrely found himself in Halls Creek....He seemed a bit coy about how he ended up in such a remote town in the middle of nowhere, a place
One big Crater
Can you see the road leading up to the crater??just to give you an idea of how big it is...where no one would know you were there, a great place to escape to, the end of the world if you like ....so I pressed no further. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.
We were fortunate because the caravan park had a swimming pool which was kept under lock and key for residents and there was an eating area too so we just all just jumped in the pool and had a bite to eat, followed by a game of Oh Hell! A very civilised evening it turned out to be, despite the setting being not quite so.
Day Ten: Timber Creek We had decided to get a flight over The Bungle Bungles and over The Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater, this is a good way to see both sites especially the former because the park is so vast. So the next morning we all got in the tiny propeller plane - I have never been in a small plane, it seated five people including the pilot and it was an experience in itself.
Wolfe Creek is 835 metres wide and 50 m deep and is the second largest crater in the world where
The Smallest Plane in the World
Our plane for our flight over the creek and the Bungle Bungles meteorite fragments have been found. The local Aborigines believe that it marks the area where a large snake crawled out of the ground. Wolfe Creek is also the setting for a very gory Australian film about a group of young travellers whose car breaks down whilst they are visiting the creek. NB: if you are travelling around Australia don’t watch this film until you have finished your travels!
The Bungle Bungles were an amazing sight too and because it was so early when we were up there you could see the sunlight creeping through and shining off the black and orange(beehive like) rocks.
We moved further up north and into the Northern Territory and got to see the most amazing sunset- the sky was filed with fuchsia pink and burnt orange-Andy woke us up in the back to see it (you couldn’t help but fall asleep in the van because of the motion of the car and the temperature) but it was well worth it.
We crossed into the Northern Territory and got to the worst campsite yet...It was dark, unfriendly and had, shall we say a fair amount of undesirables. We got stuck in a bit
of mud trying to find where we could park up and basically lost our way round the site a bit, it was dark and we were tired...the reaction we got from some of the other residents though was almost like we’d pitched our tent inside theirs and had burnt their book of campfire songs whilst chewing on their last pink marshmallow.
Once we were sorted I braved it and went and asked someone what time it was. We all had the feeling that actually the Northern Territory was ahead in time and a fellow camper (hi-de-hi campers!) confirmed this. Suddenly we had lost an hour and a half of our lives, this was fine with me-time couldn’t go quick enough in this place and I wanted my bed.
* ONE STAR AT BEST
Day Eleven: Katherine I was lucky enough to not be on the early co-pilot shift and so I could sleep in, but the first thing I knew was that we were at a garage. Seemingly we had an ‘issue’ with the car but the mechanic at the garage managed to fix it albeit temporarily until we got to Katherine. And so we spent an
afternoon in Katherine getting the car fixed, well actually the boys went and sorted out the car and so Trish and I wandered around Katherine for the afternoon. There isn’t a great deal you can say about Katherine, The Lonely Planet informs its readers that its a great place to buy a didgeridoo...worrying when that is the best thing that you can say about a place. We did stay at a wonderful campsite though: it had a swimming pool allowing Andy to work on his buoyancy level: something which he had become obsessed with since he learnt to dive!! (Isn’t that right Andy! Love Marsland!!!x)
Katherine is also notable because it sits on its namesake river which is the first permanent water source north of Alice Springs. The car was sorted luckily, but at this point I was leaving my fellow campervanners...Katherine is about 200km south of Darwin and where Andy, Trish and Rich needed to turn right and I needed to turn left.. We had a box of wine, a barby and a game of cards for old time sake as our last supper to mark the occasion.
The next day we had a quick dip in
Katherine’s Hot Springs which were wonderful and refreshing, this was before I said goodbye to the crew and departed on a big shiny train - The Ghan. This is a huge train that travels between Adelaide and Darwin and takes two days to cross the country but obviously I was just doing a fraction of this mamoth journey and was only on it for the afternoon. I have looked on the net to try and find out exactly how long this train is but can't seem to find it out-just believe me, its one big shiny train.
On the train I couldn’t help but reflect on the last ten days events and was feeling sad that my camping days were put to bed for now, leaving me with very fond memories and a subscription bill to Camperfan Weekly*.
*Made up publication, other Campervanning Publications are available. Darwin (Population 87,000) People had warned me how humid Darwin was going to be, it was just the beginning of the Wet Season when I reached there and yes it was hot and sticky but I think I had acclimatised to these sorts of conditions with four months in Asia.
It’s never the heat that gets you anyway-it’s the humidity that makes you want to find a cold dark room to pass out in.
I stayed in Darwin for a few days and met some really lovely people at my hostel: Shu from Japan, this guys life had been recently transformed as he had read a book about how you can condition your body to have just four hours sleep (on the basis you waste so much time of your life asleep) so he would be found at 4 a.m. reading outside, needless to say he didn’t convert many of us! A wonderful Korean chap called Jihan, what a lovely guy- he cooked us a Korean dish one night and it was so wonderful, I have made it several times since but never ever as good as him. I did return the favour by cooking a traditional British meal: Pork sausages with Apple Sauce, Mash potato, Carrots and Onion Gravy, not really what I wanted to cook or eat in sweltering heat but it was worth it. There was also a lovely Italian guy: Gianfranco, who spoilt us all one night with Italian chocolates and wine. There was also
three German girls too so a really good mix of nationalities-it was nice as for once the Brits were in the definite minority in the hostel. All of their English was excellent and you felt very embarrassed that you couldn’t converse in their native tongue, even for just a few minutes. The language barrier was a bit more evident though when we played Monopoly and I had to attempt to explain what some of the Community Chest/Chance cards meant!
I’m not sure whether it’s because of its remoteness but Darwin has a very laid back air about it, very relaxed and I found it nicely quiet. I walked from the supermarket back to my hostel: The Frogshollow Backpackers and passed two people and three cars. There was a park opposite my hostel and it was deserted, Australia’s size in relative terms to its population means that there is so much more wide open space to roam in.
Because of its geographical placement Darwin is a melting pot of culture and races- many of the Asian population being fourth generation Australians: it’s even had a couple of Chinese Lord Mayors. No great surprise when you consider that Darwin is
closer to many parts of SE Asia than it is to areas of its own country- only a hot skip and a jump across the water to Indonesia.
Darwin gained prominence during World War 2 when it became a significant base for Allied combat against the Japanese in the Pacific. During the conflict Darwin was the only place in Australia which was subject to prolonged attack-attacked 64 times, 243 people loosing their lives.
It was back on the map on Christmas Eve 1974 when Cyclone Tracy hit the town-it’s thought that the winds went up to 175 miles an hour but by that point the Airports anemometer (instrument to measure wind pressure) had failed. Out of Darwin’s 11,200 houses only 400 of them survived relatively intact and 66 people lost their lives. The remains of what was the town hall at the time stay in testament to what the storms did to the town.
Kakadu National Park Most people that go to Darwin visit Kakadu: one of Australia’s natural wonders: A lot of Kakadu is actually Aboriginal land and is leased to the government for National Park usage, it truly is stunning. Kakadu’s famous Jim Jim falls
Charlie the Buffalo
Resides at The Adelaide River Pub...Please do not be alarmed. He is stuffed. (a sheer 215m drop) were actually closed because of the Wet Season (there are some walks and falls that are inaccessible during the wet season but likewise some you are unable to visit during the dry) but we still managed to see some beautiful falls and stunning scenery. Unfortunately some people go for a day trip to Kakadu which seems pretty pointless as it takes almost half a day to get to and there is so much to see once you are there, I was lucky enough to be on a 3 day/2 night camping trip which was great as I was having Sleeping Bag withdrawal symptoms!
En route to Kakadu our guide stopped at a Crocodile Farm where our guide, a regular Crocodile Dundee himself showed us Snappy, the baby croc. I was feeling massive peer pressure because everyone had held the reptile and not wanting to let the team down I reluctantly held him for a second. Even though he had a rubber band around its snout (for obvious reasons) I was still rather nervous: I was surprised how soft his skin was on his underside but despite this I was very happy to hand him back...You
Kakadu waterfalls
Another beautiful sight... can see in the photo that I am smiling through gritted teeth and not actually wanting to have eye contact with Snappy!
Our guide also stopped at a bar for us to see Charlie the Buffalo. He is the Buffalo that is featured in Crocodile Dundee, where Paul Hogan tames him with his hypnotic hand- in fact a lot of Crocodile Dundee was filmed in and around Kakadu. You will be pleased to know that the Buffalo wasn’t running around the bar but was actually stuffed. A few facts about him: his given name was Nick, his stage name was Charlie, he lived for 30 years, the width of his horns were 2.25 metres and he weighed 1000kg.
And so on to Kakadu....Kakadu National Park is full of wonderful walks and you are rewarded at the end of them all by a bathe in a waterfall-such a treat when you have walked for ages in the sun, just to be able to collapse into the water, swim over to the waterfall and just sit under it. I loved it! We did a fair amount of walking over the days, some of the walks were quite hard as it
was a case of climbing over rocks and sometimes these were quite steep, but it was all worth it to see the views at the end of it.
There was also wonderful wildlife that we saw: our guide had an amazing eye, we would be driving along happily to our next stop when the brakes would slam, car come to a halt and Steve (the guide) would run across the road Steve Irwin style-about ten metres into the bush and come back with some camouflaged creature that he spotted when he was driving at 50 mph-he was incredible.
There are over 5000 sites of aboriginal art rock collections and we were lucky enough to see some at the end of one of our walks. Some pieces of art, our guide informed us, were over 10,000 years’ old- they had been painted with ochre and really were quite amazing to see. Aborigines believe that the older paintings were produced by spirit people and that the paintings depict stories which fables and aboriginal law are derived from.
Croc watch It took me a while to feel confident about swimming in the waters of Kakadu as there were signposts everywhere
with ‘Warning Crocodiles’ but Steve rest assured us that in the lakes we were swimming in would be perfectly safe: “Don’t worry because the crocs don’t come down here”...First time for everything though I thought. Most of the time I would be ok but then I would be swimming a fair distance back from a waterfall in order to get out and the thought would cross my mind that a saltie was near me and I would panic and swim like my life depended on it.
There are two types of crocodiles-‘crocs’ (the Australians are obsessed with abbreviating everything) in Australia: freshwater ‘freshies’ or saltwaters ‘salties’. Freshies don’t actually pose a threat, the ones that you need to be concerned about are the Salties-if you see one of these don’t play any long playing records (my dads joke). In all seriousness, attacks in Kakadu are very few and far between but not altogether unheard of; one of the most recent tales being of a girl that survived the Bali bombing and went to Kakadu to chill out. She went swimming in an area where there were crocodiles and they did what comes naturally to them.
At the end
of both days we went back to our campsite and the guide got a camp fire going. On the first evening we were all sat round and about twenty metres away we could see a dog jumping up and down like he was playing with something, we went over to investigate and it was the much poisonous Brown Snake that he was messing with. The guide shooed the dog away from the snake and picked it up for us all to have a good look at.
As we were right at the start of the wet season it was likely that we were going to encounter some stormy weather...We weren’t let down: there was an enormous storm whilst I was in Kakadu which made conditions very slippy and I did trip over a few times- I was feeling particularly sorry for myself at one time and have to be a brave girl and hold back the tears. Pathetic I know! But all in all I had a wonderful time, saw some amazing wildlife and just breathtaking scenery.
And so I returned to Darwin and the next day caught a flight to Sydney where my fun was to end
and work was to begin......
It’s a shame that the majority of travellers leave out WA and the Top End-they are missing out on such much beautiful scenery, wildlife and culture. The masses tend to do the East Coast, sad in a way, however long may it continue I say-I would hate for NT and WA to get to the stage that East Coast has got to: a drink fuelled, club 18-30 esc experience. As the advert says the real Australia is Western Australia....and the Northern Territory too.
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Adam Brack
non-member comment
Hey Marsie! Thanks for your write up. I am quite fond of the areas you just traveled through and I am impressed with how you've talked about them. I agree with you in a lot of ways too (especially Timber Creek!) Let me know if your coming to Tasmania. Cheers, Adam http://www.geocities.com/roaming_refugee/