Blogs from Northern Territory, Australia, Oceania - page 5

Up early, we hiked the Yakkula trail to catch the sunrise. Again, we weren’t disappointed. We breakfasted, and set out on the longer of the trails, the Nurrku. No one else was about. Whilst at it, Jane walked the short Karlu Karlu trail too. The area is one to be marvelled at and not one to be missed. The topography heading into Barrow Creek warmed my heart. High, red coloured, eroded hills with mesa tops and much scree. The photo does do it credit. The Barrow Creek Telegraph Station has been very well cared for. The service station is definitely ‘ancient’ but with great character befitting the owner who served Jane. It seemed that anyone who entered the bar area commented on any wall face. We were assured that the piano and fireplace were still in ... read more

Monday morning we were on the road again . We had plotted a route through the Marrakai Road which as luck would have it, cut off a big section of sealed mainroad - just to our liking. Marrakai Road was a red dirt road still with quite a few puddle & stream crossings. Even though they are into the start of the dry season there is still a lot of wet patches on the road. Takes a few months for all this to dry up. The first challenging section we encountered was a full road-width puddle allowing little room for manoeuvring. I dropped my front wheel into the mud but luckily had enough momentum to ride out the other side. Keith was not so lucky dropping his bike, fortunately away from the muddy puddle & onto ... read more

Darwin We flew from Brisbane to Darwin to spend a couple of days preparing our bikes & picking up Keith’s new bike. This has been good acclimatisation to the heat (so far over 30 each day - plenty of cooling dips in our hotel pool.) Checking all our gear that we had left here with our bikes nearly 3 years ago, has been successful with nothing missing. "The Scooter Shop" where we had stored them had serviced & carried out minor repairs and had a huge storage bill for us. However Darren, the owner gave us a very substantial discount on all of this so all parties were happy or at least only slightly unhappy. We ended up with a couple of boxes of doubled up parts & riding gear being couriered home via Whites Powersports ... read more

Remember a time, long, long ago, in far, far away lands when we were allowed to do a thing called "travel"? When state/territory borders were merely a welcome-sign photo opp and quarantine was something we only heard of watching Border Patrol on the TV? To be honest, it's a little creepy to re-read the final words of our last blog in July 2019..... "I know, this blog is a long one, thanks for reading it, and at the very least we hope the pics inspire you to explore your own back yard and beyond - it's a magical country out there." It's like some weird prediction of things to come..... Guess what bloggers - HOLIDAY HERE THIS YEAR IS ON!! (well, unless you live in Vic or NSW, that is). Sending our love to all those ... read more

Having faced unexpected trials and tribulations during my first three days on the Larapinta Trail, it was with a fair degree of trepidation that I rose to greet the day on Thursday (August 12th), knowing that - according to the map guide at least - I was about to face one of the most difficult days on the trail. Still, it also promised to be one of the most spectacular, with the route climbing up and over the Chewings Range before descending to a campsite near a picturesque waterhole. Despite wasting fifteen minutes trying to buy a lip balm from the kiosk at Standley Chasm (the less said about that the better) I managed to get going by 9am, as planned. The fact that each of the three ladies with whom I had been camped had ... read more