Darwin and Beyond

G'day! I planned to dispense with lengthy introductions this time, and just get on with the story... but lack of planning shows in the end and I find myself in a dilemma. Should I continue as planned, and launch straight into the promised Alice Springs/Ayers Rock/Olgas adventure? Or would it be more appropriate to keep things a bit more chronological, and tell you first about the Katherine Gorge where I swam across a river? That was where someone kindly informed me of the presence of crocodiles, just before I had to swim back to the other side again!

Another option is to scrap the whole thing and start again - why did I start at Darwin anyway? Isn't Adelaide much more logical considering the fact that I live there? Or what about New Zealand? Now that was an amazing place. I could tell you some interesting stories about a town where it smells like rotten egg gas, and the toilets use hot thermal water and you get a wet backside from the steam.

But I did promise to go on with Darwin to Adelaide, didn't I? And a promise is a promise.

OK, well, before I do I feel I must rectify an omission. You need a map. I know some of you are far too busy to do any map hunting for yourselves, so for those who can view graphics correctly I will put in a map of the Northern territory so you can get your bearings. I'll also point out Adelaide while I'm at it, to give you an idea of where I live in relation to the story.

       

Now that we have that sorted out, lets get on with it!

I left you last time stranded on the highway somewhere between Darwin and who-knows-where... which is just where we will stay for a little while because we have a problem. Remember what I said about lack of planning earlier? Well it applies just as well to travel in the Northern Territory - it shows in the end. We didn't get petrol at the last town and looking at the map it has suddenly occurred to us that we haven't got enough petrol to get to the next one! Dilemma... shall we turn back? Ah, what's this? A sign indicating an aboriginal settlement 20 kilometres off the beaten track. We use metric measures over here, because we aren't as good at maths as you and we like everything to divide by 10 nice and neatly.  (A kilometre is about .6 of a mile, so 20km is around 12 miles). They might sell us a bit of petrol, don't ya reckon? (That's Aussie for don't you think so?)
Of course they do, and we supply the local children with a bit of excitement for 20 minutes or so, as they gawk at us, and giggle, with their runny noses streaming, and beautiful smiles beaming.

Back to the highway. It really is a pity we haven't got time to go east now, and drive into Kakadu National Park. Now that is a treat! Y'all know it - it was used in the filming of Crocodile Dundee!  

It is a bird lover's paradise, with a third of Australia's birds being found in Kakadu, including the elegant Jabiru stork, the similarly large brolga, with its curious courting dance, lily-hopping jacanas, white-breasted sea eagles, which build lifelong nests from heavy sticks, as well as galahs and magpie geese by the thousand. Something you may not know is that this wonderland is continually under threat. Maintaining the park's natural balance is a full-time job. Water buffalo, brought in from Timor early in the last century and one of ten feral species found in the park, proliferated so successfully that its wallowing behaviour soon turned the fragile wetlands into saltwater mudbaths. Concerted eradication programmes in the Top End have left other problems in their wake, not least the salvinia molesta weed. With no buffaloes to eat it, the exotic weed has invaded vast areas of the wetlands, creating a thick, sunlight- and oxygen-depleting mat that chokes all other plant and fish life. The disastrous effect that Queensland's poison-army of cane toads might have on Kakadu's precious ecology doesn't even bear thinking about. The other ever-present danger is fire. Burning off has long been recognised as a technique of land management by Aborigines who lit small, controllable fires as an aid to hunting and to stimulate new plant growth. Today, rangers imitate age-old Aboriginal practice, burning off the drying speargrass during June to preclude bushfires at the end of the Dry, when the desiccated countryside could be devastated by an early electrical storm. (I shamelessly plagiarised some of that from somewhere, and can't remember where now... sorry).

We haven't gone far yet, have we? Well that's the way to see the Northern Territory. Don't go rushing here and there, just slow down and take your time - because everyone else will be. Locals don't think much of tourists who want to rush them. Ask any Territorian when the best time to visit is and invariably they'll say the wet season (October to March) - most of the comfort-loving tourists have gone home. We're there in late November/early December - we're tough!

We won't be coming back here so I'll just tell you what is further east from Kakadu - on the map it is marked Nhulunbuy, the name of the only major settlement, but it is called Arnhemland and is home to 3000 aboriginals. It is Aboriginal-owned land. In 1963 the Yirrkala of northwestern Arnhemland appealed against the proposed mining of bauxite on their land. It was the first such protest of its kind, and included the presentation of sacred artefacts as well as a petition in the form of a bark painting to the government in Canberra. Although unsuccessful on this occasion, their actions brought the issue of Aboriginal land rights to the public eye and paved the way for subsequent successful land claims. (Guess what? That was copied from an unknown source - word for word! When someone has said it that well, why rewrite it.  I just wish I'd known I was going to need to give credit to the author when I saved it... Let me know if you find out!)

I think I'd better leave it there 'til next time. You can see this is going to take a lot longer than I first anticipated. It must be something to do with the incredibly long distances we need to travel between places of interest. Hours and hours and hours of driving. It could all get a bit tedious, except that it is such an incredible view. Somehow the wide open spaces have a soothing effect on the brain.

Can you stick with me, do you think? Believe me, it will be worth it. Apart from the stuff I've already used to whet your appetite, there's still the Mataranka thermal pools to tell you about, where you carefully push aside huge, thick spider webs so you can get to the water for a dip, and then scream in horror as you realise that the trees are literally crawling with fruit bats all around you. Later, as you walk back to the campervan with me at dusk, you'll see the fruit bats become a swarming black cloud as they screech and claw their way to their cave for the night. It's exciting isn't it? Well, if that sort of thing doesn't grab you, there's always .... but you'll really have to let me go now... so 'til next time, it's Ooroo Cobbers! 

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