MATARANKA (NT) TO DARWIN (NT)

Sunday 6.9.08,
Given up on keeping track of the days and am attempting to keep track of the date instead, I still have to check though, it's amazing what being itinerant does for your sense of time. We arrived in Darwin on Friday and are liking the place quite a lot, but I have a bit to cover before I get to Darwin.

Mataranka was great, we ended up staying for three nights, it was just so good to settle for a bit and let the kids unwind, best of all was being able to swim. By this point we are really having a ball, we're meeting so many people. While swimming at Bitter Springs we met a couple and their two kids who have been travelling for 18 months! The kids are aged 9 and 10 and are being home schooled, our kids hit it off with them immediately and we ended up having drinks with them all three nights, we've since caught up with them here. We went to a place that does Barramundi feeding on our second day at Mataranka, these fish are awesome. I was a bit grumpy about being rushed to see some stupid fish feed (seen one seen 'em all) but these things were something else. Feeding takes place in a large pond/small lake about 1½ meters deep, there are five big Barra that he feeds, the smallest being about 75cm the biggest at about 90cm. To feed them, the guy dangles half a pilchard off a fishing line just on the surface of the water, the Barra comes to about 5cm from the food slow as you like. Then...BANG! In a second it suddenly hits it, all you see is a big splash, a flash of scales and hear the noise, Lachlan and Zali nearly died (in fact we all got a fright). He feeds a couple more in this way and then gradually moves to hand feeding them, everyone watching is cringing for him expecting him to lose a finger, then suddenly the biggest fish goes the bait, the guy jams his hand in it's mouth and hauls the thing out of the water. It was totally unexpected and really quite impressive. Funniest thing then was he holds it up for photo's, releases it and the bloody thing hangs around his ankles until he gives it another bit of food before taking off. Apparently, when Barra feed it has a type of trigger, they never nibble, just suddenly switch on and hit, then, switch off again. So I was forced a bit of humble pie over the fish feeding but that was okay! That same night we ate some Barra, fresh caught (nothing like eating the most impressive animals you can find, just to show who's boss) by the guy camping next to us, he caught 3 big ones between 75 and 95cm, he only meant to keep one but the second one swallowed the hook and he'd already killed the first one, so we got fresh Barra for dinner - it was delicious.

The Northern Territory is an awesome place, I could never live here, too hot and too remote but it is awesome. One thing that blows my mind, we have travelled about 1500 - 2000km up the middle and gone no further than about 30km either side of the road and we see so much, you could spend years here trying to see it all. After Mataranka we travelled to Edith Falls, just North of Katherine about 2hrs from Mataranka (short trip for a change). You have to check the photo's for this place, it is too hard to describe and give you an appreciation of it. Like everywhere here EF sits in the middle of some of the hottest driest land on the planet, but it is absolutely stunning. For the record, it was 35 degrees the day we arrived at Edith Falls and not yet September, no snowy winter for us.

Once we drove in, had lunch and set up we thought we better check out the falls, only 100m from the camp site. Well, more accurately the water hole was 100m the falls are on the other side of the water hole a further 150m away. Sitting surrounded by cliffs on three sides is a massive circular waterhole 150m across, coming out of a gap in the cliffs is the little waterfall (about 15ft high) directly opposite the camp site. The water is crystal clear and the cliffs a nice orangey red colour. Swimming across to the falls for the first time is a bit spooky because of the Freshwater Crocodiles but you soon get used to it, although in saying that Belinda refused to wear goggles because she didn't want to see one. I have no idea how deep the water is, but it was plenty deep enough to climb the falls and jump off. While here we met another family of travellers, we'd bumped into them at Mataranka and so we got to talking, again we all hit it off really well (this time their kids were Zali's age) so on our second night we ate with them (so far everybody we met is planning on being in Perth for Christmas, like us, so we are keeping in touch and catching up as we go - lots of fun) as we also did the Katherine Gorge cruise with them. Better clarify a few things here, we stayed at Edith Falls for two nights, on our full day we went on a Katherine Gorge cruise, just in case you were getting confused because I was losing track.

Cruising Katherine Gorge was awesome, it is actually 13 Gorge systems, we cruised two of them. It truly is beautiful, again in the middle of this incredibly big dry place you find this spectacular, deep, wide water course, it's just amazing. Check the photo's again for a true appreciation and I'll just jot a few learning's here. Fresh water croc's have a mouth that is too small and narrow to eat people, they live on insects, fish and small reptiles (was quite glad to learn this). In the wet season the second Gorge water level rises 13m! In the dry the deepest part is 30m. The Silver Melaleuca can be used for lots of stuff, smoke from the leaves is an insect repellent lasting up to four hours, the bark is 90% waterproof, add beeswax to get the last 10% and you have a good boat base. Mash the leaves in water and they make a good antiseptic and they store water fit for drinking at their base. There you go, some trivia.

After the gorge I took the kids across the waterhole at Edith to have a look at the waterfall in the rubber dinghy (thanks Amber and Ross). They were very excited and even jumped off the rocks a few times, Zali from about a foot up and Lachlan about 6ft up, they were very proud. Just as we were about to go back I decided to climb in under the waterfall and pretend I was surfing a barrel, that was cool so Lachlan wanted a go. I helped under and we both tucked in there hooting and woo whooing like we were surfing the barrels, it was great and I wish I could have videoed it.

We found it very hard to leave the next morning and lingered as long as we could in the water with our new found friends but we eventually dragged ourselves out and said goodbye. We'll see all our new friends in the next couple weeks that we're in Darwin. From Edith Falls we headed for Litchfield NP. You need to understand that when we camped at Cloncurry, Litchfield had been the Holy Grail for us, this had been tempered somewhat by our very nice experiences over the previous week but we were still hanging out to get there.
I think I should take a moment now to talk about Zali, my spectacularly beautiful and incredibly....shall we say...challenging? Four year old daughter. Don't get me wrong here I wouldn't trade her for anything, but my God some days it's tempting to leave her behind somewhere. She started pretty well but it only took a few days for the novelty to wear off and she started to stamp her authority on things. What I've worked out with Zali, is there is no middle ground and no middle gears, she starts in first then skips straight to sixth, first gear being nice and mild and sixth gear being an absolute demanding, yelling, screaming, demonic girl from "The Exorcist". Seriously, you have to spend some time with her to appreciate it, but I've had to stop the car several times out in the middle of some hot, dry straight in the middle of Australia and threaten to leave her there just so she'll be halfway reasonable. I'm really struggling to describe what it's like, but here's an example - one night she went from happy to tantrum in less than 10 seconds and it was over the colour of her pillow case, honestly. Well the tantrum of Zali is an absolute screaming fit, crying, shouting calling us names and eventually she actually spat on her bed, of course she then dissolved into a bigger fit because she spat on her bed - deliberately. Another challenging aspect is her eating. Everyday, every single day, Zali will sit at the table for at least two meals and very nicely refuse to eat, she will play and chat and stuff about while we all eat. During this time we will warn her several times to eat because once we're finished we're getting up to play or shower or whatever. Very nicely Zali will understand this and continue not to eat, then the second we stand up to move on she will start to scream at us that she hasn't finished, she wants to eat but she cant, or she doesn't want it but she wont let us take the food away. She is incredibly trying, but when she's nice, she'd melt the Icecap with her cuteness, God help us for the rest of this trip and God help her first boyfriend one day, he'll need it.

Anyway, that's what we deal with..Litchfield. We stayed two nights in Litchfield at Wangi falls and it was here I felt my first bit of disillusionment with our trip. Litchfield is another beautiful place, really spectacular but it was so crowded, this being the source of my disillusionment. I had this ideal and plan to get out in these amazing isolated outback places and get photographs that will be unique and unseen, trouble is, all the best spots have viewing platforms and fences and an endless procession of people taking the same photo from the same spot. I guess the bright side is it's challenging me as an aspiring photographer to really think about my shots.

Wednesday 9.9.09,
Before I go on with Litchfield, I have to tell a Zali story that happened just today. We decided late this afternoon that we'd go down to East Point for a swim in the lake and a BBQ dinner; I had to get the meat on the way. We pulled in at a Gourmet Butcher at Fannie Bay, the range of meats and variety of sausages, rissoles and poultry was awesome and the quality looked top notch, I chose four T-Bones which I quickly changed to three when I saw their size. All in all I ended up with 1.5kg of meat in three steaks, they were huge! Our kids fought over who would hold the packet for the rest of the drive, couldn't believe it. Anyway, we cooked up the steaks and had them with some potato salad and zucchini and peas, as usual Zali ate her meat and then told us she couldn't eat the vege's. Just at this point I was chewing on the bone from my steak, I'd already chewed Lachies (he cant handle the thought of bones) when Belinda offered me her bone also. Zali, the complete opposite to Lachlan jumped straight in,
"Ooh, I'd love to chew that bone."

Well, I made a deal with her, eat her veg' she can have the bone, after some argument she conceded and ate the veg. This is where it gets funny, I handed her the bone which had plenty of meat hanging off it, was wider than her head with more than a little pink colour to it and the following conversation took place - (For the record, steaks were cooked medium rare)
Zali: " Ooh yuk is that blood?"
Me: "Yep"
Z: "Am I going to eat blood?"
M: "Yep"
Z: "That is the disgustingest thing I've ever seen in my life" (Face very screwed up and turned off looking)
M: "Are you going to eat it or not?"
Z: "Yep" and she dug in and picked the bone clean.

Sorry about that, it made me laugh so much I took a photo of her eating the bone, back to Litchfield. Litchfield is another amazing place, these beautiful swimming holes and water falls running through rainforest that extends about 50m either side of the river than its dry and arid again. First stop was Florence Falls, here you walk down 187 steps to a deep and crystal clear waterhole (very crowded unfortunately, still managed a photo without a tourist in it though) with two waterfalls dropping about 50-60ft off the cliffs that surround three sides of the hole. We had a short swim, including the now obligatory swim under the falls, before walking up shady creek and up to Wangi Falls. Wangi is a much taller fall, bigger and shallower waterhole, much more child friendly and less water coming over the falls. Not a real lot happened during our stay at Litchfield, it was really hot during the day so we just hung out by the falls in the shade, slipped down to Buley Rockholes in the afternoon which is a very bizarre section of the creek. Buley Rockholes is a stretch of creek about 200m long that probably drops about 40m in altitude through a series of small falls into small deep rock pools, each one crystal clear and about 10m around, very beautiful place and one of the most popular in the park. I got some real nice shots of a Mertens Water Monitor here and a Cormorant fishing, plus a nice swim.

We found out some interesting things at a slide show on the Wednesday night, everyone wonders where the water comes from, turns out that during the wet season all the rain soaks into the sandstone plateau for miles around, it then spends the dry months leeching from the rock and into the water courses. Scary thing about this place, unlike Cairns where the croc's don't come into the creeks and streams because they're to cold, these creeks are warmed on the plateau and croc's are quite comfortable here. We'd seen a few "No Swimming, Crocodiles" signs at various creeks and thought it a bit strange because the freshies are virtually harmless, well in the wet season, everything floods and the big Salties come swimming right up into the swimming holes. At the beginning of every dry season the National Parks & Wildlife Service monitor the swimming holes for about 6 weeks and make sure they're clear of croc's. A couple years back a lady & her husband stopped at Bamboo Ck for a cuppa and to dip their feet in the water. Bamboo Ck travels under the road, is crystal clear and about 3ft deep, the lady sat on the bridge and dangled her feet in, it was then that the three metre Salty living underneath grabbed her and tried to drag her under the road. Her husband jumped on the damn things back and saved her life. On hearing this story we determined to swim nowhere that doesn't have a safe swimming sign on it, no matter how clear the water.

On leaving Wangi for Darwin we decided to attempt the gravel road, gravel holds no fear for me, I grew up on farm roads. Course once we'd travelled 30km out of our way, we found the gravel road had more corrugates than a Colourbond roof, we persevered for about 6km before turning back in defeat. Next problem this presented was we were now to low on fuel to make it back to Batchelor, so we stopped at Walkers Ck to fill up from the emergency Jerry Can. Naturally, upon opening the fuel tank and the can we realised we didn't have a funnel, nevermind, pull out my trust knife (thanks Jason and Thiess) and a 1.25lt water bottle, cut the bottom off it and hey presto, a funnel. Unfortunately the water bottle funnel doesn't work on todays modern car because the neck doesn't go far enough into the fuel pipe. Thankfully a nice young traveller from Victoria in another Commodore had a funnel; unfortunately he didn't have the flexi attachment to get down the fuel pipe. So, I got a little stick with a fork on the end, whittled off the bark and dirt with my trusty knife, stuck the un-forked end down through the neck of the bottle and into the cars fuel pipe, thus pushing the little protective flap aside without losing the stick into the fuel tank (we nearly had a moment when Zali got in on the act and tried to drop a stick into the fuel pipe), then put the funnel into the bottle and filled up the car. I was a little chuffed with this bit of ingenuity though we have a funnel now, flexi bit included.

So finally on to Darwin, where we are now.

I've just tried to upload some photo's and have learnt that this wont load photo's in the format that I've saved the best ones, it's also really slow. Please bear with me, it'll take me a few days to sort this out.