Canberra - Cont.

Tuesday brought high expectations that the fabulous gearbox would arrive at Advance Tech Automotive and then be whisked away for surgery. Sadly, it never showed but was promised by TNT for the next day. Oh, well had to amuse ourselves with luncheons and playing in the park and long walks.

Wednesday: I lasted till about then before i rang about the car; they rang TNT, they called back with the news that it was definitely in Canberra but not exactly sure which delivery truck it was on. Please wait.... Called them again at 5 and very relieved to hear that it had been delivered,taken to the hospital and was currently being minutely examined by the expert. Hooray. Russell tells us that it's all organised for the pick up and return as soon as it's finished. Coupla' days...

Caught up with Roman for lunch, dragging him away from his busy and demanding schedule.
Dinner was taken with Paul&Sue who are taking notes about outback travel - if only he could finish the blasted sewing boxes, fix the ute, restore the motorbike, move the house 6" to the left etc etc

Late news: Russell from Advanced Tech Automotive called me with the news that the gearbox has been stripped down, all problems identified and all parts ordered. He gives us a realistic estimate that it will be ready for shipping from Canberra on Tuesday. We certainly hope so!

Thursday: Bit of a quiet day; while the girls went looking at bride dresses, the boys minded the children. We had dinner with all the family at Amy&Steve's and a very pleasant evening it was.

Friday: Latish start before having a cuppa with Bev&John, saying hello to Val at the house and getting a nip from Monty who let us know he was not a happy cat (with us, otherwise he looks like he's king of the castle and loving it). All too soon it was time for a few tears and a trip to the airport for the return journey to Darwin. Canberra - Sydney is almost unnoticeable, but that 4 1/2 hour leg getting in at 2345 was just all a body could stand. There's certainly no glamour involved being jammed into a cramped seat for that length of time. I was looking froward to a nice snooze but sat bolt upright the entire way. Once we get to Darwin airport everything looked 'cool' until we walked out onto of the terminal into the carpark. Bang! Welcome back. Still 25 degs and 100% humidity. Any room left by less than 100% is taken up by smoke from the burning off, which you could see widespread from the plane.

Anyhow, we enjoyed seeing you all, big hugs and kisses to Andrew, Emily & Thomas and everyone else, of course. Big extra hugs and kisses for Amy & Steve for putting us up.

Canberra!

Up up and away on the big silver bird - from 30 to 3 degrees in a few hours. I had to find long pants, a jumper and shoes and socks!

Lauren and Daniel rugged themselves up in thick jackets, gloves and Cossack hats to pick us up and deliver us to Amy and Steves. I grabbed the new new baby and made Judy wait... she lasted 2 seconds before demanding a 'go'.

Anyhow, here we are for a few days, hoping to get to see everyone before we fly out again on Friday.

Snap of the day

Thomas Michael Harney    Photo: Kathryn Black

Kakadu

Saturday: Morning trip to Yellow Waters to do another billabong tour. This one starts at Yellow waters and goes out onto the South Alligator River. Had to meet in the Gagadju Lodge carpark as a fair bit of the driveway down to the boats was still under water. They had a late-ish wet here and its a bit slow to dry out. There were 60 on this tour, a boat-full, and they had 4 other boats for when the rush starts. The tours go 4=5 times a day, so you can see that it must get pretty busy out here. This trip was much more professional than the last; an expert boat driver and passionate about the wetlands. Apart from the usual bunch of crocs, we saw flocks of whistling ducks, magpie geese, darters, rainbow bee eaters, sacred kingfishers, jacana and chicks, white bellied sea eagles and a couple of jabirus. Highlight was when Judy spotted a snake swimming across our bows and over into the lily pads. Apparently this particular snake is one of the very few native animals that can eat a cane toad without getting poisoned.
Went round to Ubirr with a side trip to the Warradjan Cultural centre.  ... to be continued, a small break while we drive back to Darwin... please standby...
OK, made it back in one piece, so as i was saying, went to Ubirr where there are hundreds if not thousands of aboriginal rock paintings; from hands, to x-ray figures to explicit fish and wallaby. Some of them are almost completely faded, others are bright and vibrant. The main gallery is like a large blackboard: it's been used over and over again, the latest one having a quite distinct red ochre background from which other bits can still be seen protruding. As the sign says, its not the art that's important, but the act of the painting and related story telling. Further up we reach the 'lookout' where we have a 360degree view from Arnhem Land in the west, past the wetlands to the north, the eucalypt forest to the west and more stone country to the south. I forgot to mention that at two places on the way to Ubirr from the Arnhem highway turnoff, the road is cut by the still high water levels.

Snap of the day

Friday:  Lunch cruise on Corroboree Billbong on the Mary River. We made a bit of a blue in the booking which left us with a 200k drive back toward Darwin to get there, but its pretty spectacular once you get out on the water proper. Crocs are everywhere lazing about on the banks and popping their ugly snouts up from beneath the water. This place is well outside Kakadu NP and open for fishing, which they flock to do in droves. Fishing is the common language in the NT, except if you want to talk Sate of Origin football. I have no idea if they are concerned about the man-eaters all around, they still paddle about in the water at the boat ramp and hang bits over the edge while fishing. Our guide was a bit new to the area but tried hard to point out as many birds and flowers as he could. It was a cloudy day and gusty winds were making things difficult for boat handling so we forgave him and enjoyed the scenery and wildlife. There weren't as many birds as you might have been led to expect, perhaps its a bit early in the season. Lotus flowers and their big lily pads were everywhere, almost a noxious weed, and they are fascinating in the way they flower with the pad at water level, which gets left standing tall as the water drops, not floating as you might expect. They also either sprout from the roots, or produce seed pods which ripen and fall back into the water. The seeds can also be eaten and are a cross between a baked bean and a pine nut.

OK, here's your snap

Thursday: Out on the road in the Kia. First stop is Window on the wetlands an information place on top of Beatrice Hill, near the Adelaide River. It offers a range of information aboutr the land, people, flor and fauna, and a good 360 view of the wetlands. Then we keep going for another 160k to get to Jabiru itself. At this stage we are getting a bit disillusioned about the fabled Kakadu, so far its been flat and dry and hot, not unlike the last 10,000 or so kilometres. We went to book into the Crocodile Hotel but they weren't ready and advised us to go into the village and try the really nice cafe for lunch. Who are we to argue with the locals at two in the afternoon? The 'plaza' (who are these people? It's two shops and a bit of lawn) presents itself as being run down, the cafe is the pits, its run down, dirty and completely devoid of any socially redeeming features. The food is worse. We are reminded of the same dirty decrepit cafes in Rome, but then they were 2000 years old. Went back to motel, booked in before going out to Nourlangie Rocks. Perhaps we would see something special to cheer us up. And we did, this is one of the places that holds lots of aboriginal rock art in amongst the huge sandstone blocks that have tumbled down from the towering cliffs. These artworks truly are amazing in number,colour and variety, they are the ones I've been looking for for years. Certainly a world away from the ones at Middle Creek in Namadgi.
Had a swim in the pool and then over to the Golf Club for dinner. Chicken schnitzel, what else? Luckily it was tasty enough and certainly cheap enough, two for fifteen dollars, truly the food bargain of the year in the NT.

Snap of the day

Darwin to Darwin

Wednesday

Hooray, Amy was having the baby today, so we were really glad we were only going from one caravan park to another about 6 km closer to the city and had no problem with phone coverage waiting for the big event. Not long after we had settled into van park number 2, the phone call that we were waiting for came…….it’s a boy. Thomas Michael Harney all 8 pounds 11 ounces of him. Mum and bub doing well. With all that hard work over, just had to go to the shops and buy some baby boy clothes to send home. Hope it gets there before we do on Monday!

Then the serious part of the day, off to the airport to pick up the hire car and drop our car at the mechanic. We had ordered a Corolla size care but they were short of smallish cars so upgraded us to a Kia Carnivale – an 8 seater like a tarago! Who cares so long as it gets us to Kakadu and back.

Hopefully our gearbox will be out of the car and on it’s way to be rebuilt tomorrow or Friday. Fingers crossed everyone please that it will all go without any hitches.

Back to the caravan park for a swim but this pool is quite small and gets very crowded. This park is also really big but has a totally different feel to the other one. More relaxed and more shade trees here, not as upmarket and lots of backpackers. They had cane toad races tonight and I’m sure it was the same fellow that was at Arlie Beach when we were there in 1997. Just as I was about to get dinner, I turned the air conditioner on and all the power went off in the park. I’m sure it was just a coincidence but we had no power for about an hour or so…so no aircon and it’s hot,hot hot.

I’ll be glad to get to Canberra next week for a few days so I can feel cool again.

Lithcfield

Tuesday

A tour to Lichfield National Park was on the cards today. We were picked up by the tour company and with another 18 people we travelled down to the Adelaide River to do a cruise and see just how many crocs we could find. They take this croc business seriously and we could only board the boat two at a time and had to wait til the previous two were on board before the next two could go ahead. They weren’t taking any risks to make sure the crocs didn’t identify the movements and vibrations with humans and food.  I can understand why as when we boarded, there were two big old crocs just lazing along the river bank about 75 metres away. We headed down the river and it wasn’t long before the crocs were coming from everywhere. They say for every croc you see, there are at least another 10 under the water that you don’t see. Doesn’t bear thinking about. The guide hung some meat and bones over the side and it wasn’t long before those big old crocs were just a few feet away. They jumped and thrashed about for the food but seemed to be just playing with it. They obviously weren’t starving but still we were definitely keeping our arms well and truly inside our small boat. We were on the river for about an hour and saw many crocs that came from all over to check out the boat (or food)

Lichfield was the next spot with a first place being Wangi Falls. This is a delightful grassy picnic area that has just reopened for the dry. There is a very large swimming hole that is formed by two huge waterfalls crashing into the pool. It is crystal clear and you can’t help but swim towards the waterfalls. One is far too big and hard to actually swim under but the other isn’t flowing as fast and you are able to sit on a rocky ledge underneath. Apart from the small fish and freshwater shrimp trying to give you a nibble it was really nice. We also had a nice picnic lunch here and were able to dry off ready for our next stop. This was Florence Falls but was only a photo stop of lovely set of cascades culminating in a high waterfall flowing into another rockpool. We didn’t stop for a swim here as it was much more difficult to get to the swimming hole. Off to Buley Rockpool for our last swim of the day. This is a series of about 8 cascades of different depths and lengths that you could just sit under the cascade or jump into a deep pool depending on which pool you chose to hop into. The tour was definitely the best way to see Litchfield. We headed back to Darwin – Fanny Bay to be exact – to have prawns, dips and champagne to watch the sun set over Fanny Bay. A delightful way to end the tour, chatting with our fellow tourists and scoffing local prawns watching another vivid red sunset.

Monday Darwin

I don’t know what Brian has been doing to his clothes, but two pairs of shorts and his swimmers have started to fall apart. It’s still hot, hot, hot so I dragged him along to the air conditioned mall – his favourite thing in the world – to get some more clothes. This sounds simple enough but can you believe it, they have WINTER clothes in. It’s HOT here, why do they need winter clothes? We finally found some shorts in Kmart and Lowes had 1 pair of swimmers left. Luckily they were in his size. On the way back to the van park we passed a Rivers store and stopped to buy Brian a new pair of thongs. Once again the last pair in his size. I don’t think he has ever shopped successfully for so much at once. I took pity on him and we went back to the van for a rest.

This evening we were booked on a dinner cruise of Darwin Harbour. I think the boat used to be a pearl lugger or something similar. We were lucky enough to be seated upstairs under the bimini with 7 others and the foredeck must have had 20 odd people seated there. We cruised around the foreshore as the sun was setting eating seafood, steak and salads and sipping champagne. What a hard life, but someone has to do it. There has been quite a bit of burning off, so the sun setting through the smoke haze sent the sky a brilliant red reflecting off the water. You really just don’t get sick of the sunsets here. Every night is different. We cruised around for about 3 hours and it was an incredibly peaceful and relaxing way to spend an evening. Food was really good too.

Darwin...still

Saturday: The people up here really like their markets. Today was Parap Village’s turn. A lot of the stalls were at Mindil Beach markets last Thursday but the focus here seemed to be on food. The majority was cooked fare, mainly Asian in flavour with a lot of things I have never heard of let alone seen. As it was really hot, we opted for cold, peeled fresh pineapple. I bought some bananas, tomatoes, mandarins and cucumber for the grand total of $5. Really good value and good produce.  We went for a walk around the waterfront precinct where there is a swimming lagoon and a man made wave pool. There are 10 minutes phases where waves up to 1.7 metres wash over the swimmers most who have flotation rings to ride the waves. It looked like great fun but we ran out of time today to have a go but hopefully tomorrow.

Took a drive to Charles Darwin National Park that overlooks the harbour and the city. The park isn’t all that big but is still dotted with WWII bomb and munition storage bunkers in the hillsides. One was open to the public so we had a browse through and checked out the display and memorabilia. It is still mind blowing the extent Darwin and surrounds was attacked during the war, especially as we were taught so little about it at school.

Finished the touristy thing today by going to Aquascene. It is a sheltered little cove that is visited by a large number and variety of fish that can be hand fed some bread. It originally started yonks ago by a local man that threw bread to the fish and they kept coming back. It was taken over and promoted and is now a protected area for all fish. It is now a popular touristy thing to go along at high tide and feed the fish. Of course I had to have a go. There were small rays, mullet, milk fish, other smaller fish that I didn’t know and huge bat fish. They are so cute, you dip bread in the water and they come up and take it out of your fingers with a schloop, schloop sound. Brian wasn’t all that fussed so just took photos. I had a lovely time feeding all the fish but the bat fish were definitely my favourite.

Sunday: Do nothing kind of day. Wandered about the old civic centre and took some snaps. Read all about the Air raids and the Cyclone. Ended up at the Waterfront Precinct in the Wave pool, which is a nice safe place to swim, especially when the waves are turned off! The waves are just too fast and short, all they do is make it impossible to stand, walk, swim or even surf. It's kind of OK to float around on one of the blow up rings though.

Snap of several days

 

Darwin cont.

Friday 18 May
Decided we could go ahead and book the hire car for next week when the car goes in for it’s big op so went to the airport and did the deed. Avis were the cheapest so we went with them. All hire cars here only have 500 km so that should get us to Kakadu and back. We also decided to cover all options just in case we needed it, and if the car isn’t ready when we get back from home, we found out we could hire a Prado with a tow bar from Thrifty so could perhaps still take the van to Kununurra.

We wandered around looking at the coast around the different suburbs, beaches with huge expanses of sand because of the variations in the tide levels, and covered with lots of pieces of different varieties of dead coral. The water was flat but still looked very inviting but unfortunately it’s all a no go. What with crocs and stingers the beaches and the azure blue water is totally deserted

Even on holidays the bills still roll in, so this afternoon was set aside for paying the gas, water and electricity, booking tours for the next few days and booking accommodation in Kakadu seeing  the van will be left behind here in Darwin.  That done, we headed for the pool for the rest of the afternoon and got in the holiday mode swimming, relaxing and reading. 

Darwin cont.

Thursday: Look at them schnappers… Crocodylus is a crocodile farm where you can see all the crocs from tiny cute things to the big ugly bruisers. They have a tour with all the chat and Judy got to feed one a lump of meat on the end of a long string on the end of an even longer wooden pole. Later she cuddled a baby one about ½ metre long and it jaws taped shut. The farm saltwater crocs, but also had a few freshwater ones and a couple of America alligators. They separate them right after the eggs are about to hatch and then every year or two to keep them all about the same size in any given pond. One pond had 700 of the little blighters crawling around all over the place. They also have Australian and exotic animals in a zoo but the main attraction are the crocodile.

Found the shops in town at Smith St Mall, Judy resisting the pearls at Paspaley’s even though the sales ladies were very nice. Toured the Oil Storage tunnels built during WW2 but not finished in time and not ever really used. Only cost a snip over a Million Pounds Sterling and 800,000pounds over budget. Nothing ever changes. Then the biggie for the day: Mindil Beach market. It’s huge, but all the stalls look the same to me so I wandered along the beach which was deserted. Then a few people arrived, and a few more. Then the sun started to go down over the ocean. A bit of a crowd now. The sun changes colour and the mob surges out from the market. Five minutes of a truly awe inspiring spectacle and its all over and the beach is in darkness. Back to the markets. Judy, the bogan mother, got herself a tat! Well, only a henna one, but it’s ink. We grabbed a wood-fired oven baked pizza, sat on the grass and half heard some pretend songster trying over hard to be a cool American country singer rip off the music to two well-known C&W songs and put his own unintelligible words to them. Enough already; and they only had 3 more hours to go. Judy graciously took me home before I complained.

Snaps of the day

 Warning!

Children, avert your gaze!

Here we are in Darwin

Left Katherine about 8.30 and with fingers crossed we headed north for the big smoke – Darwin. The car behaved beautifully and we started questioning whether we were overreacting. We stopped for morning tea at Adelaide River where there was a lovely shady spot to sit and have a cuppa. As it happened there was also a community market being held and I just had to but some relish and jam. While we were watching the world go by, the Ghan appeared from the north wending it’s way towards Katherine. We waved enthusiastically and with a toot of it’s whistle we watched it head away. An uneventful trip into the Darwin suburbs towards our caravan park, but as soon as we hit traffic lights and we had to stop and start, the gearbox started protesting so we knew ‘the big repair job was really necessary’. After we had settled in, Brian headed for the mechanic to discuss men’s business and I headed for the pool to browse all the brochures and tours – definitely secret women’s business. He came back positive and optimistic about the impending repairs. After a swim we decided to head for the CBD to make sure we really were in Darwin. Driving down Mitchell street – I think the main st – it felt like we had come across every backpacker in Australia 30 years ago. We wandered around the foreshore precinct, found a seafood shop and bought  prawns and fish to cook for dinner and decided a coffee on the wharf was a must do. While looking over the Arafura Sea we couldn’t help ponder on our journey and pinch ourselves at where we now were and what we had seen on the way.  Holey Dooley, it’s really true, we’ve been there and done that. A quick drive around to Cullen Bay to watch a huge red sun set over the water. Wow. BTW, the fish we had for dinner was yum even if we don’t know what it was. Must have been the way I cooked it!!!

Snap of the day

Who can choose? There's a choice of two and more in Picassa:

 

Katherine....again

Brian spent some time on the phone organising as much as we can for the ‘Great gearbox Repair’ with Russell in Canberra and the man in Darwin. It all looks a little more positive and maybe even the timing will be OK for us. I have booked extra days in Darwin from 23 May and the car is supposed to go in on 24 May. So…… while the car is having it’s operation, we might hire a car and do Kakadu sans caravan leaving it safely at the van park. That should free up some time for us when we return from our trip home and hopefully with the car and it’s new gearbox we will be able to get to Kununurra. So today we cleaned the car and the caravan, did a little bit of shopping and had a caravan lunch break. As it’s our last day here, we just had to hit the hot springs again. We splashed, floated, swam against the current, washed over the weir and generally had a great hour or so. Back to the van park and the real pool so we could do a few laps before we retired to the van for champagne and nibbles.

Katherine..... still

Monday 14 May

A quiet morning to just potter around, Brian to download some photos and catch up on whatever he does on the computer and finish my book. There is a nice breeze today so it doesn’t feel quite so hot especially sitting outside under the awning in the shade of the trees. We dragged ourselves away and headed for Katherine Hot Springs. What a nice surprise. A lovely creek that meanders through the pandanus trees with at least four or five different areas of warm pools that you can float, swim or just splash about. The last pool is created by the water flowing fairly fast over a small weir and  dropping into a deepish hole that creates lots of bubbles just like in a spa. Floating around here was about as active as we got today. This evening we were booked on a sunset dinner cruise through Katherine Gorge. We basically cruised the same areas as yesterday in the first two gorges but cruising late in the afternoon with the sun setting was fantastic. Dinner was to be held when we arrived back in the first gorge but on a different boat than the one we went up on. Well I certainly wasn’t expecting white tablecloths and flowers on the table but that was what we had. There was only ten of us for dinner and we were greeted with champagne with native hibiscus and shown to our tables. We cruised to a sheltered spot for sunset and entrees. The chef cooked on a BBQ onboard and presented us with kangaroo, crocodile and fillet steak skewers and salad. Another spot for our barramundi main but first a little lemon sorbet to cleanse the pallet. The stars started to appear as the sky got darker and it is almost impossible to describe the density and volume of the stars as they appeared. You not only felt that you could touch them, they were just everywhere you looked. After a dessert of coconut and ginger Broulee, the spotlight scanned the shore but no crocs again today. The lights were turned off so we could see even more stars and hard to imagine but you could. I’m sure the southern cross is only supposed to have five stars. I’m sure there was at least seven. It was a very beautiful and peaceful way to spend an evening. We slowly cruised back to the jetty and just to add icing to the cake, when we alighted, the park was full of little wallabies grazing and being very cute.

Snap of the Day

Sunset. Katherine Gorge. Katherine, NT

Katherine, NT

Saturday: Check out the original Katherine River crossing as described in We of the never never, called Knotts Crossing. The river crossing is now just a very low level concrete crossing, currently underwater, so it probably looks a lot like t did then. Went into the museum which is on the old airstrip. Had a good collection of old photos of the town and of Elsey Station, which proved that the ‘exact replica’ they built for the movie in 1969 was rubbish. Went to the local market, which was rubbish as well. Out of town 27k to Cutta Cutta caves, which is a dry limestone cave and reasonably interesting as far as caves go. Highlight was the baby Green Python which was ‘cute’.

Sorry, best I can do, still feel kinda rubbish myself.
Sunday:An early start was required today which isn’t in the least bit difficult as the park comes alive about 6.30am. I think people want to get out and about before it gets too hot. We needed to be in Nitmiluk National Park (Katherine Gorge) for a 4 hr cruise before 9am. One of the nice things about being up early is there are lots of little wallabies about – very cute. The gorge is still very full of water so no swimming or canoeing/kayaking is allowed due to crocs! A full boat load of us headed up the first gorge (there are 13 but the tours only do 2 or 3) which is very beautiful with pandanus lined river banks and sandy beaches where the freshwater crocs are laying their eggs so no exploring there for us thank you. We didn’t actually see any crocs today but there were plenty of signs saying “keep off”. With a $40000 dollar fine we were happy to keep off. We hit some rapids so time to get off this boat and go for a 400 metre walk to the 2^nd gorge to pick up the next boat. On the way we past some very descriptive cave paintings in red, white and yellow ochre showing Jawoyn elders (the local aborigines) together with paintings indicating food sources like bush potato and wallaby. The second gorge is the picturesque gorge that you will see in all the brochures. The river meanders through towering cliffs with cabbage palms, melaleucas, pandanus and a variety of trees I didn’t know growing out of anywhere they can get a hold. There were a few cascades still flowing over the clifftops, remaining from the wet. An indication of how high and fast the water flows during the wet, there is numerous trees that lean at a 45 degree angle that are under the water when the river is higher and flowing faster and are now exposed and flourishing with the water level dropped. At the end of this gorge, there is a short walk to the next boat change for a short boat ride into the 3^rd gorge. We have been looking forward to this part of the day as it’s where we stop for swim. As all the way up the gorges, the guide has been telling us how many “salties” are still in the river, we are a little concerned exactly where and how we can swim. Well I can tell you that it was a lovely surprise. Off the boat for a short walk up the rocks to a lily pond that that we step over the rocks in the shallows and further up the hill, over more rocks. But what’s that noise. Look up and there is a waterfall cascading about 35 metres down into a large protected rock pool, too high up for crocs. It didn’t take long to shed our clothes - we did have our swimmers on- and pick our way over the rocks and take the plunge. As it was 33 degrees, the pool was very welcome and very refreshing. One of the must do things was get out and stand directly under the waterfall. Just magical. We can cross that off the bucket list. Unfortunately we could only spend 30 min there but it was just wonderful.

We had a leisurely cruise back up the 3 gorges, once again taking in the amazing scenery. The guide was on the look out for “salties” but none were visible today. He said it was too cold!!!!!

Lunch at the visitor’s centre, back to the van park, Brian had a sleep - again – then a swim and Mango daiquiris  - a new discovery – and BBQ dinner. A good day.