Litchfield National Park and the Northern Territory to the WA border and Lake Argyle

Everyone told us we must go to Litchfield. When we got there we realised why. There is a series of waterfalls in different parks of the park, many of them with a plunge pool in which swimming is safe. Hot and sticky as we were it was a joy to swim in the cool water. We met so many young Germans still on the road. It is very quiet now as it gets close to the Wet but the only disadvantage to travelling at this time is the heat. Otherwise it is delightful to have caravan parks almost to ourselves.

Wangi Falls with their plunge pool

Buley Rockholes

Florence Falls from the lookout above ........

......... and the plunge pool below. Not so easy to get into this one.

We left the Park the way we had come in, through a little place called Batchelor. There was a little general store that we went into and were amazed to hear a lively conversation going on between the shopkeeper and some clients in Swiss German. It was the second time that day we had heard Swiss German and it sounded odd in such a lost corner of the Northern Territory!

A brief stop at Adelaide River allowed us to look at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery where, among others, the victims of the bombing of Darwin in 1942 are buried. As always, the cemetery is immaculately tended.  At Hayes Creek, in mining country, there was a constant stream of road trains passing but it was nonetheless a peaceful night in an almost empty roadhouse caravan park. There was mail waiting for us in Katherine, and also a very convenient carwash suitable for our, by this time, very dirty Winnebago. We wanted to push on so, having dealt with those, we drove on to Victoria River. It was stormy-looking and cloudy the whole day, which took a lot of the heat away, and when we arrived at the roadhouse it was clear there had been heavy rain. Again we had escaped it. The sign at the roadhouse amused us.

Typical Aussie humour

There was not much to stop for before the border, so Isobel was up early cooking the remaining vegies  for the freezer and cutting fruit to eat on the way. Quarantine restrictions are enforced between NT and WA and we knew the van would be inspected. No fresh fruit or vegetables are allowed in. There is only so much one can consume, however, so at our lunchtime picnic spot a passing nomad going in the opposite direction gladly accepted the remaining tomato, avocado and cos lettuce, while we had left a quantity of garlic at the roadhouse. (That was supposed to have been left with Patsy and Richard but the bed episode put it out of our minds.)

Even before the border, the scenery had changed to the impressive red rock formations so typical of the WA Kimberley. It can be breathtaking against a clear blue sky, which there was as the storms had passed. There are so many deep gorges and it is interesting to speculate on what the countryside must have been like in the Ord River valley before the dam was built in the '70s. Even now, the huge lake that has been formed by the dam has steep sides and cliffs. For those who are familiar with Australian history, this is Durack country, settled by the pioneering Durack family from Ireland, and described in several books by Mary Durack, notably "Kings in Grass Castles" and "Sons in the Saddle". The Argyle Downs Homestead, which was moved when the Ord dam was built, is now a museum, but it is already closed for the wet season. We have actually been there before, back in 1985.

The caravan park at Lake Argyle was also very quiet. It is a beautiful site, with an infinity pool from which there is a view over parts of the lake. A swim there at 7:30 in the morning made a great start to the day.

The infinity pool at Lake Argyle caravan park

One of the views from in the pool

Looking down on Lake Argyle from the lookout

The dam from below

The outlet valves below the dam

The Ord is still a mighty river below the dam

The road across the dam, looking down from another lookout above

Kakadu and Darwin in the pre-monsoon build-up

Kakadu is magic. Not only is it teeming with birdlife and crocs but it is steeped in Aboriginal lore as well. We were lucky to be able to visit the main rock art sites before the real heat of the day as walking becomes such an effort and it seems impossible to put water back into the system as fast as it is pouring out. After Cooinda we did spend one night bushcamping -- no power for AC therefore. Isobel thought she was going to die of heat!! We chose a caravan park in Jabiru for the next two nights. It also had a delightful swimming pool.

Now we are in Darwin with Patsy and Richard, their son Ben and his delightful Korean partner, Seonja. Warwick and Patsy grew up at opposite ends of the world and even during Warwick's visits to Australia they didn't see each other as Patsy was not in Perth, so it is fun now to get to know each other. They have a most amazing house, ideal for the tropics and there is even a resident snake in the bathroom!

He often lies right inside the jar beside the plant with just his head sticking out. Otherwise he is sometimes stretched out along the louvre windows.

Patsy is a keen gardener so one of the highlights was a visit to the Botanical Garden's annual plant sale. It was a good thing we went in the ute to bring back the spoils! Great plants, though, at very good prices. People were leaving with barrowloads. Now she has the job of planting them -- a big job in the present heat. They keep hoping for rain and several times it looked as if it could happen, but so far nothing.

My favourite part of the garden, where we had breakfast ay Patsy's mosaic table overlooking the lagoon. It is dry at the moment but will fill as the wet season starts and will have water lilies growing.

Patsy also took us to the museum, which had some interesting art and photographic displays, as well as a whole section on Cyclone Tracy, which of course devastated Darwin on Christmas Eve 1974. Sweetheart the infamous big crocodile that used to attack boats is also there. He came to a sad end by accidentally drowning while being captured. The maritime part with its collection of boats, many Indonesian, was also interesting.

Our last evening there we all had dinner out at a restaurant on the wharf and were joined by Eamonn, Warwick's cousin Robin's husband, who was passing through Darwin. Eamonn does a lot of work out in the sticks at the mines. It was great seeing him.

Our Winnebago excelled itself while parked in the driveway. For reasons best known to itself, the bed broke free from its moorings when Isobel was putting it down. (The end lifts up to offer storage space underneath and it goes up and down on gas struts.) When the hinges broke loose the bed rocketed forward under the force of the gas struts and pinned Isobel by the knees to the wall. She was alone in the van and took a few minutes to make herself heard. Her knees of course are not up to taking that kind of treatment. We are hoping that bruising is going to be the extent of the damage. The right one is OK but the left one is giving a certain amount of grief. The next Winnebago dealer is in Perth so we will have to manage with the bed loose until we get back. It is more of a nuisance than anything else as it now takes both of us to store or retrieve anything from under the bed (chairs, table, etc.) The Winnebago people were on the phone immediately they received our email account of the incident and were rather concerned about the state of the knees. Perhaps they were afraid of an impending lawsuit!

All this happened as we were preparing to leave Darwin. Patsy and Richard will not easily forget our visit as getting the Winnebago into their driveway was one thing, but getting it out was another. Richard ended up cutting down branches with an electric saw as Patsy and Isobel hauled them out of the way to let Warwick edge the Beast out. It was such a wonderful visit, though, and we are so glad we were able to keep Darwin on our itinerary.

Bugger!! It had to happen eventually

Katherine Gorge was hot, but beautiful and our tour allowed for an hour of swimming between Gorge 1 and Gorge 2. Much has been done to develop the campground and create a Visitor Centre since our last visit 26 years ago. The gorge, however, remains the same.

From Katherine, after a medical visit to get Isobel a tetanus shot after she had been bitten by a wallaby (!!), it was on to Pine Creek, which is a real haven for bird lovers. Unfortunately we did not see the elusive Hooded Parrot which is common in that area but Warwick did manage to see some Gouldian Finches.

From Pine Creek, on the advice of Warwick's cousin's husband, Richard, we set off down an unsealed road to Gunlom, apparently beautiful for swimming, waterfalls, etc. There are unsealed roads and unsealed roads, however and this was one of the rutted kind that would shake the teeth out of your head, not to mention what it does inside the van. After a while we decided to turn around and, getting back to the bitumen, after a while there was a sound like a gunshot. We stopped, checked all the tyres, but there was no sign of anything amiss. Arriving at the caravan park at Cooinda, however, someone asked if we were aware we were driving on an almost flat tyre. By the time we parked, it was completely flat  -- and destroyed! We groaned, looked at the situation, considered the temperature, which was nearer 40 than 30 and said, "This is why we have Winnebago Roadside Assistance." Within an hour we had a huge truck beside our van, with an extremely pleasant young man to fix it. We very quickly got over feeling a bit shame-faced at getting someone out to change a wheel, when it took the expert about half an hour to release the spare wheel from its hiding place under the van! It was accompanied by lots of huffing and puffing and some asides about Iveco and their methods. We were glad we had not tried ourselves. The spare wheel is now on, a new one will be ordered and probably obtained on Monday, and we will be safe to travel again. It will be an interesting conversation with Richard when we visit him in Darwin next week!

Not looking good

No wonder!

Dave, our friendly garage man doing his stuff

The spare tyre installed on the front wheel

A black day for someone

Our day started uncharacteristically early, to find us swimming in the Mataranka pool at 6:30! Wonderful! The fruit bats were back in their trees above, some settled for the day others squabbling over who knows what.

The Mataranka pool

Flying foxes in the trees above

We set off at a gentle pace as our intention was to stop at Katherine Gorge for a couple of nights and Katherine was only a little over 100km away. Suddenly we saw smoke again and thought it was another bushfire. Within minutes that smoke, which started as blue, turned black and ugly, billowing fiercely. It was clear this was no bushfire and when we caught up with it we were horrified to find it was a Winnebago, much bigger than ours, the very smart Longreach, totally engulfed in flames just off the road in a rest area. One or two vans had stopped but very few people were around. We stopped, and our main concern was whether there was anyone inside. A young couple, first on the scene, had tried all the doors and knocked and shouted but were driven back by the ferocity of the fire. Another couple of grey nomads had tried to help out with their fire extinguisher, also a lost cause in the face of it all. By the time we turned up, only minutes later, this was the scene.

A once-proud Winnebago, rapidly reduced to nothing.

This is what remained. It took all of 15 minutes.

What a scene of devastation and no sign of the owners. The one optimistic sign was that the vehicle appeared to have had an A-frame attached, which would indicate it was towing a car behind, as many do. Therefore it was possible the owners had driven off somewhere. We later met up with the couple who had tried with their fire extinguisher, who had waited until the owners were contacted by the police and returned (the young couple had had the good sense to note the rego, which allowed the police to identify the owners). They were indeed towing another vehicle and had gone into Katherine for some business. It seems they were farmers in their 60s like us, from the Townsville area who had sold up and bought this big thing. (So many people do this.) They had been on the road about a year. It was apparently heart-rending to see his reaction.


What had happened was that they had stopped for the night in this rest area. In order to put out their awning without risk of being knocked by some other vehicle arriving in the dark, they had gone onto the grass verge. For reasons unknown, a grass fire started up this morning and the grass under the Winnebago caught fire, which obviously spread to the vehicle. It was all over very quickly. Scary!!

The Stuart Highway to Mataranka

It's not just that we are pushing on further and faster to beat the Wet, the distances between places are much greater. Long straight roads seem to go forever and the price of diesel has gone up exponentially. 195.5 we paid this afternoon, having filled already this morning at 187.9. Those kilometres swallow it up and of course we are travelling faster, which makes a big difference also.

We met many of the solar-powered cars in the race from Darwin to Adelaide. Some were tootling along quite nicely, while others were struggling a bit and yet others were already being towed on trailers! It was all very interesting.

One of the earlier ones, going well

Also doing nicely

Struggling a bit, this one. Rather Heath Robinson-looking!

Going very well although a long way behind the rest

As we drove, the sky got darker and darker and yet it didn't seem like cloud. Then we got the smell and realised that it was, as we had begun to suspect, smoke. It's bad enough when you are driving through already burnt out stuff, but when you get to where it's burning just a few metres in from the road, everything has headlights on and you don't know whether you are getting further into it or passing it, you get a little edgy. Knowing that we are carrying gas and containers of fuel makes it feel like a potential bomb. There were several places like this but we got through and hope that it all came to nothing. Everything is tinder-dry.

We are now at Mataranka, which Robert, Derek and Karen will remember from 26 years ago. It is a beautiful thermal pool in what feels and looks like an oasis with palm trees hanging with flying foxes all around. When we came all those years ago there was a long hollow log submerged in the pool, which loads of kids were swimming through, to the considerable consternation of mums in particular. The log is no longer there. Those kids had such a great time swimming through it but the idea that one might get stuck inside it was a tad worrying. Of course they didn't but it was a relief to see them emerge from the other end.

As we sit with a drink at the end of the afternoon we have been joined by a small kangaroo, which has had a good feed of a bag of kangaroo pellets that have been in the van for a while. Very friendly.

This one will never carry a joey!

You dropped some on the ground

Back to Woop Woop -- on our own this time!

Travelling west from Townsville one is quickly in Woop Woop. We followed the Overlander's Way through Charters Towers, Hughenden, Richmond and Julia Creek before arriving back in Cloncurry and Mount Isa. There is much evidence of dinosaurs along this route and in Richmond in particular there was a superb museum displaying skeletons that have been found on local sheep and cattle stations.

An almost complete skeleton of a plesiosaur

What there is to see can be covered relatively quickly, however, and we did not spend the expected two nights in each place. Julia Creek was a disappointment -- Sunday and dead! We passed through Cloncurry and Mount Isa, having covered those on the safari, and carried right on to Camooweal, which is almost at the Northern Territory border. Another day of concentrated driving has brought us through very barren country, made worse by a bushfire which apparently ripped through two days ago, to the Three Ways Roadhouse.

Much of the time it was like this on both sides of the road. We assume the road would have been closed.

This is where the Barkly Highway (The Overlander's Way) meets the Stuart Highway from Darwin to Adelaide. We have just had a very refreshing swim in the roadhouse caravan park's pool. We were hoping to cross the solar powered cars which left Darwin yesterday on their race to Adelaide; as it is, we have missed the leaders, but still hope maybe to see some of the remaining contestants tomorrow.

It is a different feeling being out in such isolation without the backup of 21 other vans as we had on the safari. The roads, however, so far have been excellent, especially on the Queensland side of the border and there are plenty of road trains and other vehicles. We have conveniently missed some violent thunderstorms, and the weather does look as if we can risk doing the loop up to Kakadu and Darwin, so we will head north towards Katherine tomorrow. 

Finally -- Dingo Beach!!

Sorry for the long silence but our little Dingo Beach is out of range for our roaming broadband and mobile telephone so unless we wanted to go a kilometre up the road and sit in a hot car with the computer on our knees, we were incommunicado.

We had 10 full days there and they were emotionally charged. We had gone there firmly in the belief we were going to sell the place. Firstly, Isobel fell in love with the house all over again, and secondly the garden was such a disaster it would be unsellable at the moment. Also, the downturn in the market has caused so much property to be for sale that there is very little point in our adding to the list. So we took it off the holiday rentals list and therefore out of the hands of the real estate agent, and were very lucky to work out an arrangement with the man from whom we bought it that he will come back and live in it and put the garden back in shape. He reckons it will take about a year, but that suits his situation and since the holiday rental thing was not working anyway, we do not feel we are losing anything. The garden was beautifully landscaped and has just been allowed to go wild by the guy who was being paid to maintain it. Grrrrrr!! It does not take long in the tropics, especially after the wet season when everything takes off. If he does get it back to where it was before, we may not be so keen to sell. We will have to go through all the agonising all over again the next time we come back.

Warwick was in his element as he is becoming a real bird fanatic and we have such a huge variety of birds there. He is becoming quite expert at recognising them and has them all noted down in the bird book, where we have seen them and when. The sounds from outside each morning were fantastic.

A very friendly butcher bird

One of three blue kookaburras who visited

Blue kookaburra taking stock

It was great to catch up with the people we had got to know quite well and we were very pleased to get a really warm welcome in our own right and not just as "Karen's parents". There was one couple that we were sad to miss, as they were not in their usual place at the pub. We did finally hear she was not well. Lo and behold this morning in Townsville as we were sitting having a coffee her partner arrived at the same place. It turns out she is quite seriously not well and is in hospital here in Townsville. So we spent quite a bit of time with him catching up and we hope she will be better soon. The coincidence of meeting him like that was incredible. We also spent a lot of time with the neighbours on each side and in spite of a fair bit of necessary spring-cleaning we managed several sorties to the beach. The stingers are not yet in, so swimming was OK. Isobel did freak out on one occasion when something dark and large swam by very close to her, but was relieved when it popped its head up and she realised she was sharing her bit of sea with a green turtle! Having now heard about a 64-year-old swimmer being taken by a shark on Cottesloe Beach in Perth just a couple of days ago, one is a little wary of large dark objects in the sea at close proximity!

We would have willingly spent much more time at Dingo Beach but we are already so late we couldn't afford any more time. Since Winnebago had offered us a new sturdy tap of the kind that will now be in all new Winnebagos, we came back to Townsville to have it installed. There were inevitably other small issues to resolve, so the Beast has been with the dealer today and is now ready to tackle the Top End. We do hope the monsoon will hold off until we get across. We will set out to Charters Towers tomorrow on the first leg of the long journey across outback Queensland through the Northern Territory and back to Western Australia. It is getting quite hot now, the precursor of the monsoon, so the air-conditioning might soon be in use.