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We spent a week in Alice Springs. Not so much because of its charms but because we were looking for work. We were staying on a crap campsite. No camp kitchen - not even a fridge. The upside was that there were these Rock Wallabies which would descend from the rock outcrop at the edge of the site every dusk to get fed and generally bicker amongst themselves. They were very cute, tiny little furry things.
Although Alice seemed like a haven in the desert at first, we soon tired of it. It’s not a pretty place and there are lots of dodgy looking vagrant types wandering around. We didn’t really do anything in Alice besides watch Prison Break on our laptop (rented from the DVD store). It’s quite addictive. We met up with a girl from the VisitOz course while we were there and it was good to catch up. We also paid a visit to a well recommended nature park, but it was remarkably dull and we didn’t see much you don’t see just driving down the road. I earned my first Australian dollars delivering junk mail one afternoon. I won’t be doing that again. Needless to say
we didn’t find any proper work so we continued on our journey north.
Leaving Alice we crossed the marker for the tropic of Capricorn! Quite exciting, although it wasn’t marked with palm trees or any such like. The next stop up the Stuart Highway was a place called Banka Banka station. It was lovely and had actual grass, but a stopover non-the-less. Next stop was a place called Mataranka where they have thermal pools! We were so taken we stayed two nights. The campsite had a pub which may have swayed our decision. One pool was 100m from our site, and was open all night making it rather excellent for late night dips when everyone else had gone home. The other was a little drive away but was a section of river, so you hop in one end, float down to the other, climb out and do it again! I had a bit of a snorkel and spotted a pretty big turtle. Surrounding the pools were towering palm trees and dense vegetation. It really felt like we’d arrived in the tropics in Mataranka. It was still the middle of nowhere really, so the next day we drove all the
way to Darwin!
Darwin has incredibly hot. Through the day it was 40, overnight it was 30 and the humidity was intense. Lifting an arm would cause you to break a sweat. We checked-in with the Visitor Information Centre, looking for a self-contained apartment as my birthday was coming up and it was too hot to camp anyway. They practically laughed at us - everything was booked well in advance so we set off to the campsites. Unfortunately they were over-priced and over-crowded. We had to stay anyway. They gave us a pitch that was too small and on a slope. We still stayed 3 nights. We spent most of the first day taking cold showers and submerging ourselves in the pool just to keep from expiring. At night we slept under a damp sheet.
In the evening we went out to the Mindil Sunset Markets which are just back from the beach over a little sand dune and were really great! It was predominantly a food market which is our favourite kind! There were bands performing and a long grassy area running parallel to the market, shaded by palm trees where people sat with their picnic blankets,
camp chairs etc. and kids ran about. The colours of the sunset over the see were spectacular and very popular - crowds of people flocking the few metres to the beach to watch. Mike & I enjoyed perusing the stalls eating different bits of world cuisine.
My 26th birthday arrived on schedule. We packed ourselves a picnic and headed off to the free water park. The park is provided by the government because you can’t swim in the sea due to the box jellyfish! Unfortunately it was closed, so we altered our plans and instead headed to the public wave pool, which isn’t free. It was still pretty nice though - especially the cheese & wine picnic!
In the evening we went out for a steak in town. We picked a nice looking steakhouse and sat outside in the courtyard. They were a bit expensive, but when they arrived we knew why: they were as big as your head! I had to take half of mine home in a doggy bag and it fed us well again the next day. After steaks we took a stroll around town to walk off dinner. Along the way we stopped for
ice-cream. Sometimes being in a freakishly hot place has its benefits.
We decided to move to a different campsite a bit further out of town and heaps cheaper. At this time I came down with an ear infection with which I was laid up for about a week. We spent the time reclining in our hammocks, reading books/playing guitar and generally trying to keep cool.
At the end of the week when I was feeling mostly better we decided to go on one of those croc jumping tours! Not encouraged by environmentalist groups because it involves feeding wild animals, we thought ‘bugger it, it looks cool’ and headed further out of town in the direction of Kakadu. Here we unwillingly drove down several kilometres of dirt road and booked ourselves on the next tour! We boarded the little tin boat with the rest of the tourists and headed off up the river with our guide. The guide knows where each croc hangs out, so he stops the boat at these points and hangs a chunk of buffalo meat on a stick off the side of the boat. Very sensible practise, I know. Almost immediately you can see the
beady eyes swimming towards you then at the last moment it leaps out of the water and propels itself up towards the meat. The guide doesn’t let it get it at first, but makes it leap a few times for its dinner. When he has a croc amenable to his games, the guide would hold the meat just over the edge of the boat so that the croc bashes against the sides when it jumps, to the delight of the waiting tourists, snapping away.
The same evening we ventured out into Darwin to attend the Deckchair Cinema. It is essentially as you would imagine - an outdoor cinema viewed from deckchairs. Unfortunately the deckchairs weren’t really deckchairs at all, rather a long row of joined deckchair-style seats constructed of metal not wood, i.e. each row was one piece, not separate chairs. Still pretty cool, and being right by the sea was probably the best way to stay cool on a sweltering Darwin evening. We watched “Australia”. It was very long and tried to tell too many stories, but essentially not as bad as it was made out.
Our time in Darwin was about up and we decided to
drive out to Kakadu national park. We were in two minds whether to go. We’re seen our fair share of national parks and done our fair share of bush walking (and didn’t intend on doing any more in the tropical heat!). Nevertheless, we decided it would be disgraceful to skip this world-renound park. After a visit to the fairly useless visitor centre, we headed to a bush camp site in the north of the park. It was pretty good - enough bush to not see your neighbours and feel like you were properly bush camping but with showers hidden somewhere in that bush! We pitched the tent, sans outer layer (too hot and no-one around to see in anyway). Unfortunately the mosquitoes were horrendous in this part of the park and would go for any exposed skin.
Kakadu was noticeably less humid than Darwin, so by dusk it was just possible to go for a small stroll. We did just that - heading a short distance to an Aboriginal rock art site complete with sunset viewing area! After perusing the rock art we climbed up the plateau (along with the rest of the hordes) to see the sunset. The
view from the top was good: below was a vast floodplain on one side, the hills of Arnhem Land in the distance and woodland in the other direction.
Next day we drove to the southern part of the park to an area called Gunlom. It had been described to us as ‘down a gravel track’ but was in fact down a long and painful dirt road. Again, we feared for our car and it bumped and rattled its way along in a cloud of dust. We were pleased to make it because Gunlom was nice. Near the campsite there was a little waterfall from a big height, and at the bottom there was a plunge pool in which you could swim, but which you were warned there may be crocs. Actually, you were assured there WOULD be freshies but warned there MIGHT be salties. We went for it anyway, but nervously stuck near the shore of the murky water. The next morning we rose bright and early to climb up to the top of the waterfall. Up there it was lovely. There were two very still crystal clear pools overlooking the top off the edge and the flat landscape
below. It was tempting to take a swim, but we hadn’t brought swimmers so we gave it a miss.
Leaving Kakadu the next day we drove about 300km south to Katherine. After chilling out a little, we went out to the Katherine Gorge for a spot of kayaking. We hired the bloody expensive thing for the afternoon and paddled down the gorge. It was pretty, and you could swim. There were freshwater crocs, but if you stayed away from their nesting areas it was ok. You could see where they nested from the tracks up the in the sand up the banks. And also from the big signs.
After Katherine, we decided it was time to get to the coast: a proper coast where you can swim in the water, so we set off on a mission to Broome in WA. It took us 3 days with stops in Kununurra and Fitzroy Crossing. It was about 1,500km in total. The outback highway across The Kimberleys was much more interesting than the Stuart highway (up the middle). For a start, there were bends in the roads and trees to look at. There were rocky outcrops on every corner, making
us wonder why we went to all the effort of going to see The Breakaways. The Kimberleys are supposed to be quite spectacular, but you can only see them if you have a 4x4 or can pay for scenic flights, so they were out of our grasp.
We had visions of Broome as the promised land; the savious of our trip. Everything we had seen and heard of its turquoise waters and white sand beaches sounded like paradise. We were expecting a laid-back beach town where we could settle and look for work: get out of the tent and live a normal life for a few months. I hate to say it but Broome was rather a disappointment. When we rolled in we saw a flat, sparse, red dusty outback town. Exactly what we were trying to escape. Tourist Information was unhelpful. Not a great welcome. The first campsite we tried was over-priced and looked like a refugee camp. We were horrified and quickly moved on to the next one which was even more overpriced at $40 a night! So were the next three and even more worryingly many had no sites left. Eventually we stopped at ‘the cheaper
option’ of a $30 a night place. They didn’t have any sites the first night so squeezed us onto a small patch of grass before moving onto an actual site the second night. This campsite was very basic. We’d become accustomed to swimming pools and camp kitchens for much less money, but this one didn’t have so much as a fridge.
Around this time we completely ran out of our savings and began spending the money we had put away to buy flights home, re-assured by the receptionist’s confident claim that the resorts over the road were always looking for staff.
Of course they weren’t, and neither were any of the other hotels in Broome. And Broome is covered in expensive resorts. We tried them all. They all said no. Some took our CVs or got us to fill in extensive application forms. On those occasions, there was always a group of French backpackers doing the exact same thing at the exact same time.
Broome did have its perks, however. The beach was indeed very nice, and when the sun shone just right the water looked very turquoise. Being on the west coast, the sun set over the
sea which is always nice. There was just the one beach though. From what I’d read I thought there were several, but the other two ‘beaches’ were just mud flats.
We stayed a week then reluctantly headed south; away from our dashed dream that was Broome. We drove first to the industrial town of Port Headland for an overnight stop and then to Karijinii National Park - a little way inland. We had read that you could go canyoneering which from the description sounded awesome. As we neared the park we saw something we hadn’t seen in the last 7 weeks: rain. And lots of it. For about 5 minutes it was exciting, then depressing. We asked in the visitor centre about canyoneering but they didn’t seem to understand us, so we drove to the nearest town - Tom Price - and they eventually understood us (just) and handed us a flyer. I wish Visitor Information centres would employ people who speak English. Not wanting to camp in the rain, we checked out the accommodation options at the caravan park. Their cheapest room was over $100 and it was a porta-cabin. As we were umming and ahhing someone took
the last one so taking the decision away from us. Other accommodation options were infinitely more expensive and equally depressing. The canyoneering company were not sure when they would next be going out (due to weather), charged $215 and were located up a dirt road, which we had promised ourselves (and our car) never to tackle again. We left Karijinii and Tom Price immediately.
The next day we arrived in the peninsular town of Exmouth. As we were checking into the caravan park (which was already heaps cheaper than Broome at $26 a night or $23.40 with our BIG4 members’ discount) we were discussing with the receptionist how we were looking for work. For the first time in a long time, good luck was granted us and they were looking for cleaners. They gave us a mountain of paperwork to fill in and expensive police checks to complete but when we handed it in they asked if we could start tomorrow! We couldn’t believe our luck. It pays a normal cleaner’s wage for Australia, but that’s more than either Mike or I earned in the UK with our proper jobs! We get a discount on our accommodation too which
for the minute is still unpowered camping, but after the impending school holidays pass might be something better.
So it looks like we will be in Exmouth for a while. There’s not much here. Worst of all no Woolworths or Coles for about 7 hours in either direction, which means we have to shop at the expensive IGA. But the campsite has a really good camp kitchen with decent fridges and freezers, even ovens! We haven’t had much time to explore but the beach seemed really crap. And the sun doesn’t set over the sea because Exmouth is on the east side of the peninsular. Typical. It is a popular holiday spot because of its proximity to the Cape Range national park and Ningaloo Marine Park which currently has Whale Sharks, the world’s biggest fish, in its waters. Tour companies abound in Exmouth; all charging an absolutely extortionate amount for go out snorkelling with the creatures (between $360-390 per person!!). You can’t go diving with them because it’s illegal in Australia (another respect in which our book has mislead us - there’s a big picture of someone diving with one!)
Nevertheless, we figured its one of those once-in-a-lifetime
things and we begrudgingly coughed up the dough. We go on our day off on Friday.
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Gary
non-member comment
Exmouth
Head up North to the tip. There is a fairly good beach, the Lighthouse, some interesting info on Turtles. And a lot more if you drive around to the ocean side opposite Exmouth. The sunset up there is pretty good, too.