June 2006
After an emotional 2 weeks in NZ we arrived back to Ayers Rock Airport just before 1pm after leaving Auckland for Sydney at 6.10am. The views on our flight from Sydney to Ayers Rock were fantastic as we flew over a lot of the area we’d previously driven through. The pilot kept the plane low to avoid strong head winds which was a bonus for us.
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| A valuable water hole for the Aborigines |
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| The view of Uluru (Ayers Rock) from our camp site in Yulara 25km away |
Next day we visited Ayers Rock and walked around part of it and drove the rest of the way around - 9.4km. It certainly is impressive. |
| Interesting the nooks and crannies around the 'rock' |
A lot of people were climbing it although the Aborigines prefer you not to. It takes about 2 hours and is quite a steep climb and a lot of people came down on their behinds. Also some people become “frozen” with the height and steepness of it. We decided to respect the wishes of the Aboriginal people.
We then drove about 50km to Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) which are a group of 36 impressive rocks.
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| Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) |
Then we drove about 300km to KINGS CANYON for a couple of nights. We did the 3 hour ‘rim walk’ around the canyon which was amazing scenery.
Then another 470km to ALICE SPRINGS. We are staying 8 nights here and have done some amazing off road driving. We visited Palm Valley which has some palms which are only grown in this area but the road in was quite a challenge. In fact we walked the last km in case we did any damage. But it was a good day out and a very pretty area.
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| Alice Springs |
Free pancakes every Sunday morning at the caravan park we stayed in, complete with all the different fillings - amazing how quickly they fed everybody - no limit on quantity either.
Jim and Carol, whom we met at Kings Canyon, asked us if we’d like to do a 2 day desert 4 X 4 track in tandem with them around the Simpson and Old South Road Loop. Too right we would so packed up all our gear and headed off. We did 790km over all kinds of roads, good and bad gravel, dirt, bulldust, sand, corrugations - a bit of everything except we didn’t have to lower the tyre pressures to cross sand hills which we were hoping to encounter.
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| Camels |
At times driving through the bulldust the ‘cruiser had a mind of it’s own and just seemed to float through the tracks but it’s always a worry that a large rock may be hiding waiting to do some damage to the vehicle. But these Landcruisers are amazing vehicles - they really come into their own on these roads.
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| Old Andado homestead |
We visited the Heritage Listed Old Andado Homestead, the home of Molly Clark, an extraordinary woman and were welcome to go through the house. A very old corrugated iron rambling house which now has caretakers who maintain it and also have overnight guests or campers.
An interesting website can be seen here
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| Our overnight campsite |
Called at the Mt Dare Hotel in the morning and were surprised to see 7 small planes parked on the runway - boys and their toys from Brisbane doing their 34th annual tour around the outback.
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| Boys and their Toys do an outback tour landing at various outback stations |
A great couple of days and we were lucky to have such competent and fun leaders in Jim and Carol to teach us about desert life.
From Alice Springs we drove north to Darwin staying at TI-TREE, BANKA BANKA cattle station and MATARANKA for 2 nights. A journey of 1552 km.
We drove through a couple of Aboriginal communities, Santa Theresa and Finke. Not a pretty sight. We didn’t stop.
Got back to Alice Springs and went straight to the car wash where, as well as giving the ‘cruiser a high pressure soap and rinse hose down, also emptied out the rims of dust. In fact the dust in the rims had caused a nasty wobble in the steering wheel once we were back on the bitumen - thought we needed to have the wheels balanced but it was only the dust.
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| Banka Banka Station |
Temperatures have increased dramatically and I actually put shorts on at Daly Waters and showed off my lily white legs. Daly Waters is Northern Territory’s best known pub where we had the biggest hamburger for lunch. It is a true outback hotel with a great atmosphere. There are collections of just about everything hanging in the bar, from paper money, to knickers, to hats, you name it, it’s probably there.
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| Daly Waters pub |
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| Inside Daly Waters pub |
Mataranka has thermal springs which were lovely to soak in, temp 34 deg.
Although a long journey the scenery changed from barren desert to small shrubs to small trees to taller trees, some undulations, some distant views where the land is so flat you can see forever.
There were lots of yellow flowering trees, small pink flowers and lovely coloured grasses along the road sides. A lot of the verges were mown I guess as a fire break but it made the landscape look very tidy.
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| Darwin Harbour |
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| Mindel market has great food stalls |
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| Bombing of Darwin |
We stayed 10 days and while there had the Landcruiser 40,000km service done for $980. Ouch! We are paying around $1.50 - $1.60 for diesel at present which we think is quite good. Last year when we had to pay $1.46 in the outback we thought that was terrible! Just shows how we can become accustomed to prices.
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| Wangi Falls |
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| Bats ..... are protected |
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| A large Termite Cathedral Mound |
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| Florence Falls |
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| Colourful rocks at Mandorah Beach |
We did the round trip and visited Mandorah which is across the harbour to Darwin. Only a hotel and a few houses there but now the road is sealed it’ll probably become more populated. The rocks on the beach had magnificent colouring. Unfortunately there is no swimming at these beautiful beaches because of the likelihood of crocodiles and also stingers which can be present even during the winter months. These stingers can also be fatal.
July 2006
KAKADU - World Heritage listed National Park. The waterways, rock escarpments, cultural history, wildlife make this a very special place. But to see and understand it one must do some of the side trips and walks otherwise it's pretty boring.
It's late June now and the authorities are doing a lot of controlled burning of the undergrowth so it's not very pretty just driving through it. Because of the late ''wet season'' rain and cyclone Monica they had in April a lot of trees are blown over and there's still a lot of water in the flood plains. This means crocodiles can be anywhere so some of the roads and walking tracks were closed. I didn't fancy walking through rainforest areas close to water not knowing what was lurking under the weed anyway!
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| Aboriginal shelter at Nourlangie Rock |
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| Aboriginal Rock Art |
The Yellow Water late afternoon cruise from Cooinda was just superb. Highlights were
a. getting close to a very large crocodile,
b. watching a couple of crocs have a confrontation,
c. the wildlife
d. the tranquillity of the area
e. the sunset
The 3 visitor centres we visited in Kakadu are very informative with very good displays.
The traditional Aboriginal owners are working with Parks Australia to care for the 20,000 sq km park in the traditional manner. It's great that this Aboriginal area is being preserved in it's natural state. Throughout Australia so many Aborigines just sit around the city / town streets smoking, sniffing petrol, unwashed and without hope in their eyes. A lost race, it seems. The children do not have to go to school so one wonders if and when those that don't will ever become part of modern Australia.
A lot of money has and is being spent by the Australian Government, which annoys a lot of Aust taxpayers, but doesn't seem to be doing a lot of good. Although on our flight back to NZ from Ayers Rock in May we met a football team of Aborigine school boys who were on a week’s trip to Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide but only the ones who went to school and weren't disruptive in class were on the trip. Some of the better players were left behind.
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| Brahman bulls |
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| Our rig parked beside a cattle road train .........and we thought we were big |
We stayed a night at LAKE ARGYLE and did an extensive cruise on the lake.
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| Lake Argyle in the evening |
It was created by damming the mighty Ord River to form a storage reservoir to supply year round water to horticultural and agricultural farms in the area. What was once “Argyle Downs” a million acre cattle station, is now an immense body of water.
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| A fresh water crocodile (narrow snout) we are assured are not dangerous |
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| Lake Argyle |
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| Lake Argyle dam |
Building the dam commenced in April 1969 and took 2 1/2 years to complete because they had to work around the “wet” season. At normal supply level the lake has a capacity of 11,000 million cubic metres (about 20 times the volume of Sydney Harbour).
It is a beautiful lake with lots of freshwater crocodiles and catfish which they now market as “Silver Cobbler” as nobody would buy catfish!
When we crossed the Northern Territory / Western Australia border we had a quarantine inspection for any fresh fruit or vegetables. We had made sure we’d eaten or cooked these but did have to hand over our unopened jar of honey.
Also had to put our clocks back one and a half hours so now it gets dark by about 5.30pm.
