Take eight - Australiana

It was mid-June at the ‘Top End’, the sun was shining and the campervan was just a twinkle in a credit card’s eye. Darwin is a nice place and although being the largest city in the Northern Territory it still has a small town feel to it. Its highlight is definitely the Mindil Beach Sunset Market, where you can listen to live music, buy some food and watch the sun go down. We also enjoyed sitting on the dock of the bay eating Barramundi and chips after a walk around the museum and art gallery. We flew here though because this was the starting point for our drive down the west coast of Australia. So the next morning with ‘sweet’ and ‘dude’ tattooed on our backs we jumped on a bus heading for an Industrial Estate to pick up the campervan, which was to be our home for the next six weeks. We were off in to ‘The Bush’ for our Roooooaaaaaaaad Triiiiiiiiiiiip!!!

Now I’ll tell you a news story that lingered in the back of my mind while we were travelling through the ‘Outback’. In May of this year a backpacker was busting to go to the toilet while in a remote part of Australia. They pulled up on the side of the road so the guy could jump out and squat down behind a bush. Just as he was making himself comfortable a Brown Snake jumped up and bit him on his willy!…Now you can’t blame the Snake, who wouldn’t have done the same if you were woken up by a man taking a dump on your head, but it really makes you think about what is out there waiting to pounce when you’re least expecting it. There really are just too many things in Australia that can kill you, it’s quite unnerving. There are Jellyfish and the Spiders and the Snakes and the Sharks, but up here there is the daddy of them all, the Saltwater Crocodile. As the Kakadu National Park leaflet says: “Estuarine Crocodiles are dangerous and aggressive. They have attacked and killed people…Keep away from the waters edge.” You don‘t have to tell us twice! The Backpacker survived the snake bite if you were wondering, but later sadly died of embarrassment.

On our first day we drove 140km east from Darwin, passing hundreds of Termite mounds of different shapes and sizes, Eucalyptus trees, scrub fires and dead Kangaroo’s in various degrees of decay, on the way in to Australia’s largest National Park, Kakadu du du push pineapple shake the tree, ka-ka-du du du push pineapple grind coffee, to the left, to the right, jump up and down and to the knees, come and dance every night, sing with a hula melody…right that‘s enough of that. The landscape here is fantastic and it’s coincidently where they filmed Crocodile Dundee, so if there was any doubt in your minds, this really is Croc country. As it was getting late we booked ourselves in to a campsite for the night and drove to Woolworths to stock up on food and ice. Now I know what you’re thinking, but honestly Woolies is a proper supermarket here, we didn’t just buy two ton of Pick n Mix and a Lionel Richie CD.
After a pasta dinner and getting some friendly old guys to check our gas bottle (we didn’t want to blow up the campsite or gas ourselves on the first night) we turned in for a surprisingly comfy sleep in the back of our Mitsubishi ‘Breezer’ van.

Kakadu is 20,000 square km of parkland, jointly owned by the local Aboriginal clans and the Government Parks office. Our morning stop was up at Ubirr to see the fantastic rock art painted by some talented aboriginal folk a few thousands of years ago using red ochre and animals blood. While there we climbed up some rocks for a great 360 degree view of the Arnhem land that Mick Dundee called the “Land of the Never-Never” and also spotted our 4th snake of the trip. After a quick browse of the cultural and tourist centre we finished the day with a brilliant Yellow River boat cruise along the Kakadu wetlands. We saw Sea Eagles, Kites, Cormorants, massive Jaribu’s and many other birds I can’t remember the name of as well as turtles, our 5th Snake of the trip and what we were all really there to see, plenty of Crocodiles.

After another night in one of the campsites we left early for the long drive via Pine Creek to Katherine and Nitmiluk Gorge. Now I have to sadly report that while driving through the last of the National Park we hit a Parrot. The stupid bird shouldn’t have been sat in the middle of the road in the first place, but it’s weird seeing them ten-a-penny in the trees when we’re used to them being an exotic pet locked up in a cage…It’s horrible thinking we just killed something that would fetch us a princely sum back home! Actually it’s weird seeing many of the animals and birds around here. On one particular stretch of freeway there was a ridiculous amount of road kill. It was strewn with dead and rotting Kangaroos’s, Wallabies, birds, rodents, snakes, lizards, cows and even a Water Buffalo. I’m sure the irony wasn’t lost on anyone when they built the Darwin University Campus at the end of the road! Anyway after driving for 211km we found ourselves in Pine Creek, a small mining town with a population of 500 and three petrol stations. We didn’t stop long, just enough to fill up on petrol (yes I did drive around all three to find the cheapest one!) and chocolate milkshake before driving off for another 284km to Katherine. Its population of 8000 (the third largest town in a state that’s five times the size of Britain!) is made up with a large proportion of Indigenous inhabitants and Cletus from The Simpsons Australian cousins. This place had a bit of a Hicksville feel to it and the local Woolworths smelt of serious BO. It was so bad it brought tears to our eyes and we had to shop like contestants on Supermarket Sweep. While the Cletus’s drove around in their pick up trucks listening to the duelling banjo’s cd on repeat the Indigenous folks seemed happy enough to sit around on the floor in the shade not doing very much…although to be fair it’s probably what they would have been doing 100 years ago before the ‘Whiteman’ came along and with no bye or leave built a town on top of them! There’s not much else to say about Katherine, we had a nice walk around the outback heritage museum reading about the harsh old country life and the Russian Peanut Farmers from the 1920’s. But we weren’t there for the town anyway, rather the spectacular Nitmiluk Gorge just down the road.

Now if you’ve ever want to test the strength of a relationship come up here and hire a two man canoe for the day. The gorge echoed with shouts of “left!, left! for f#*k sake paddle LEFT!!!!” and “why have you stopped paddling? keep paddling dammit!” and that was just from our canoe! But once we got the bloody thing to go in a straight line and ignored the crocodile traps set up on the banks of the river it was a great way to experience it all. We stopped for a bit of lunch by a trickle of a waterfall just soaking up the views and we surprised ourselves with how far we managed to go, even if on the return leg I had to paddle the last of the four Gorges on my own!

The next day, after an early morning visit from a mechanic to jump start our battery (by the time we had reached Fremantle five weeks later the third mechanic called out finally replaced it) we were off for Timber Creek, a grazing township, population 100. Before leaving Katherine we went to a music store and bought the cheapest pop compilation cd we could find. Listening to ABC Darwin with its phone-ins about country life and farming had started to grate a little so we thought singing along to ‘China in your hand’ by T’Pau would be a saner option instead. Anyway, Timber Creek is a funny little place, it’s a rest stop, a pub and a petrol station and that’s about it. Wolfe Creek is just down the road so if you’ve seen that film you can imagine what Timber Creek is like. In the afternoon they had a fun wild Croc feeding show, although all I could think about was the meat they were using and wondered if it was chopped up Backpackers who had stayed there the night before. We had a few beers in the pub and with all the scary movies ever made flashing through our minds we slept the night with half an eye open. We weren’t woken by any cross burning locals rocking the van, but Rachel did stumble upon a crazy lady pacing up and down in a pitch black toilet block, who then ran and hid in the cubicle when Rachel turned the light on.

The next day we were off again for the drive across the border. After stopping to look a pointless piece of scrap metal called the ‘Beef Road Monument‘ we drove up to boarder control for a van frisk. After a quick check for cane toads and fruit ‘n’ veg we found ourselves in Western Australia on our way to Kununurra, population 5000.

…And this is where this Blog entry abruptly ends for no apparent reason. Tune in next time for the Western Australia leg.

Here is a link to the photo’s again:
http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii40/rachelandjoseph/

Right I’m off to set some Parrot traps. Get your orders in now, I’ve just seen a lovely red one in the garden.
See you later. Joe. And Rachel.x.x.x