Kakadu & Litchfield.

Warning this is a long one......

I came across an old travel blog from a NY writer who travelled around the world for a year without flying (Except for one or two emergencies). Reading her old blog and its actual description of her travels has guilted me into making more of an effort in my own words. I am by no means a writer and so I apologise in advance but I will do my best to make this blog more than just a list of places I have been.

Here goes...

After 4 days living in a very nice apartment in Perth attending a traning course for supervisors I was ready to head north to some warmth and start my 5 days away from work.

I pakced up the hire car with my bag and my new guitar (I bought a acousitc guitar on my first day in Perth) and headed to the airport. The one advantage of FIFO is I get access to the Qantas club so I checked in and headed up the escalator to my free breakfast.

When I landed in Darwin I jumped into a taxi and headed to Harvey Norman. The male half of couple I had left my car with while I was away worked as a delivery driver at Harvey Norman and had obvioulsy driven it to work that morning. I felt a little out of place as I stepped out of the taxi with a Guitar, Backpack, Laptop and Bag infront of a department store in the middle of suburban Darwin (Which is a long way from the city). I wandered around the back of the store and tracked down a guy called Ray (Well ray wasnt there but I was shown to his office) who had my car keys. I rearranged all my stuff and headed up to the beachfront for a wander.

I pulled into a carpark full of backacker vans and sat in the car enjoying the airconditioning for a while. Once the day cooled off a bit I went for a wander along the beach and around the headland. After strolling along for about half an hour I found myself in a nice little secluded beach where I could go no further, so I perched myself on a nice little rock ledge in the shade and sat there watching the world go by for an hour or so. After a while (and a little nap) I wandered back to the carpark and pulled all my gear out of the car and set up the bed.

I left the backpackers in their little circle and headed to Jeffress' in the suburbs of Darwin (Suburbs much closer to the city this time). James Jeffress is an old school friend that I hadn't seen since highschool (8 years ago now) and yet within 10 minutes it felt like we had seen each other last week. We headed down to the only pub on the foreshore and caught up on everything that had happened over the last 8 years. We stayed at the same table going rounds for quite a while and a couple of Jeffress' friends (Who were on a bicycle pub crawl) turned up. Fairly late in the night everyone decided to call it a night and we headed off. One of the girls tried to ride home and rode straight into the gutter and landed on her face in the grass... It was one of those funniest home video moments that dont seem real at the time. We put her (and her friend) in a cab and Jeffro and I rode their bikes back to their place.

After a lazy breakfast at the local cafe and a bit of sitting around on the couch I drove over to Jill's Sisters house. Jill is a woman who I worked with in Sydney, she had just finished a project in Manilla and was coming back through Darwin so we agreed to head down to Kakadu together.

A significant shopping ordeal where neither of us made any decisions later and we had a car full of food as we headed out of Darwin.

Of course everytime you tell anyone in Darwin that you are heading to Kakadu they always rapidly throw place names at you, most of which are indigenous names so don't mean anything to those who aren't locals. To remedy this I had decided in the pub the night before that everytime someone suggested a place I would put it in my phone, as a result I had a list of places and no idea who told me to go where... anyway one of those places was point stuart which is about 50km before the entrance to Kakadu. We pulled off the highway and the first thing we saw was a triple road train sitting in the middle of the road with a cop car pulled off to the side. Having no idea what to do I just sat there behind the truck expecting it to start moving in some direction. The cop lazily stepped out of his vehicle and waved us around the truck. Confused I slowly edged my way around the side until I could see why the truck wasn't moving... The entire Cab of the truck was a smoldering peice of rubble. I still have no idea what happened but there was no ambulance, or coroner or anything so I assume the driver made it out alive. Once we were waved through we headed up to point stuart and started our search for a place to swim... At this point we had no idea that there are no swimming holes in the northern half of Kakadu. Point stuart was a very inauspicious start to the trip. There was something resembling a car park and then a bit of a walk along a dried out waterhole until we spotted a beautiful wetland through the trees. However there was no way either of us were going near the water (It looked like the perfect Croc hiding spot). Throughly dissapointed that we couldnt swim we had lunch and then headed onwards.

The first night we camped at a random campsite behind a truckstop. A nice enough spot except for the creepy guy who sat at a fire about 30m from where we camped who started yelling random sentences at us... We decided not to socalise with the locals and hit the sack early that night.

After a slow holiday style start we headed across to Ubir Rock to watch the sunset. Absolutely stunning spot and would very much recommend a visit to anyone in the area. Ubir Rock is a large rock outcrop that sits above a huge flat wetland that stretches across to the horizon. The only negative is the ridiculous swarm of insects that attack as soon as the sun has dipped below the horizon. Luckily we had been prior warned, so with a liberal slathering of bushmans we could sit up and watch the light fade until everyone else had left. A very serene place to be when no one else is around.

The main ring road around Kakadu could almost be considered a highway (its much better than most of the highways in Nth Qld at least). However the road down to Twin Falls and Jim Jim Falls is about as far from a highway as you can get. As wide as the road is there is not a single section that is not heavily corrugated. Having recently flaoted along the gibb river road I was supremely confident in the curiser's ability to handle the road. A few Kms in we saw three sorry looking backpackers pulled over on the side of the road looking sullen. In the spirit of travellers we pulled over to see what was wrong. There was nothing wrong with the car they just weren't confident of their little sedan making it in and back again ( I wouldn't have been confident either). With a few quick packing rearrangements we managed to squeeze the three of them in the back seat and headed off to the falls.

Twin falls was the further of the two so we skipped Jim Jim and headed straight through to Twin. very much a 4wd track leading down to the falls and then a short little dingy ride to get up the river to the falls. Pretty stunning falls and the water was freezing (and supposedly not croc safe) so I didnt stay in for long.

On the way back we stopped off at Jim Jim and had a quick swim there. Completely forgetting that not all foreigners are taught to swim in school we peer pressured one of the backpackers (An italian bloke) into swimming out to the water fall. It was only about 50m so we didnt even think about it until we all got out there and looked back and here was this sodden looking italian bloke splashing his way along. We sat there on a ledge under the water fall for a few minutes to give him a rest then swam beside him on the way back (Just in case he started to drown, I didnt want that on my concience).

That night we stayed at Cooinda campgrounds so we could get up for a cruise of the yellow water billabong. Stunning cruise with the boat leaving just on sunrise so the colours over the billabong were stunning. A few monster crocs around were so used to the boats every day that they didnt even bother about them.

Next stop was Gunlom Falls. A fair trek up to the top but definitely worth it when you got up there. the water fall was about 80m high with swimming holes right at the top... It was a natural infinity pool. Looking out over the water fall the land was flat until the horizon... similar to Ubir Rock... but with a waterfall.

Heading out of Kakadu we stopped at a random campground at Pine Creek... Nothing exciting to report.

Heading north from Pine creek we swung west and came up into Litchfield National Park from the southern end. Not much of an enterance and we would have completely missed it had we not beed told what to look for. The road from the southern tip of Litchfield is rarely used and is little more than a 4wd track through the bush.

We decided to pull off at a place called surprise creek falls, as with my of the falls in the NT the carpark was a fair walk from the falls. When we walked around the corner to see the falls the first thing I see is two bare asses scrambling up the falls and over the top into a swiming hole.

Sitting at the bottom of the falls intentionally taking our time to get ready we were not sure how to approach the situation. Then a guys head popped around the corner of the falls and asked if he could come get their clothes. Relieved we didnt have to interupt them we turned around while he ran down grabbed his (and his partners) clothes and scrambled back up the rocks.

Once clothed the nude couple were obviously embarassed because they dissapeared pretty quickly. The falls weren't as impressive as the Kakadu falls but they were the right height to jump into and we had the whole area to ourselves so we had fun playing around in the water.

Heading north from Surprise Creek the car suddenly lurched forward and something started dragging along underneath. Immediately thinking I had snapped the axel I pulled up to the side of the 4wd track and jumped out of the car. I had hit a log that got caught between the wheel and the leaf springs... Figuring it would take a while to fix I backed off the road completely to let other car pass and set about pulling out the required tools (which of course were all packed as deep as possible in the car.

Upon getting the wheel off I found that the log had ruptured the rear brake line... Prefering not to try and get back to Darwin with no brakes I set about trying to pinch the brake line so it didnt leak all my brake fluid. Of course an old metal line is more prone to snapping than pinching so that wasnt working. Luckily by this stage two other cars had stopped to lend a hand, and luckily one of the guys had a screw in his tool kit that perfectly fit the rubber hose that fed into the junction box. so with that all fixed the three cars headed offin convoy ( well I putted along while they drove ahead). curising along the windy track we suddenly had to test the brakes as one of the cars in front were stopped halfway down a hill just before a creek crossing. Luckily I had fixed the brakes well enough and we stopped in time. A car with a trailer was having trouble getting up the far side of the creek crossing so we all waded into thigh deep water with "Danger Corcs" signs right next to us. After alot of pondering and a little bit of digging we all got through unscathed and no crocs.

The rest of the trip back to Darwin was uneventful