Days 71 - 84

Despite the sheer beauty of Katherine Gorge, we were so pleased to be leaving. The amount of people and cars on the road was quite a shock and we had not slept very well due to noisy neighbours and people using the facilities at all hours! It was in stark contrast to what we had been experiencing during our time along the Gulf Track and we yearned for some peace and solitude once again.

Due to this experience, we decided to get off the tar ASAP and get back onto some 4WDrive tracks to get to Litchfield National Park. We drove up the Reynolds River Track and the only person we met along the way was a New Zealand guy who had cycled from Darwin. We met him at a creek crossing where the rangers had just put up a crocodile warning sign (this meant that there must have been a croc sighting somewhere near this creek.) Understandably, he was nervous about crossing the creek on the bike as the creek was 0.7 metres deep and had murky water (a salties paradise). We offered to put his bike on our roof rack and give him a lift across. He did not want to do this but travel behind on foot pushing his bike in our wake so that the water was shallower. After trying to persuade him that this might not be the safest way to cross the creek, we gave in and Gerard set our video camera up on the roof in case anything happened!! It was an uneventful crossing and the Kiwi came out of the creek unscathed!

We carried onto where we were camping that night in Litchfield NP, Sandy Creek. We walked about 2 kms from the camp to Sandy Creek Falls where we were planning on having a swim and spending sunset. When we got there, we found a beautiful waterfall and best of all, it was completely deserted. The water was freezing but we had a quick swim and sat and watched the sunset over the waterfall - a beautiful way to end the day.

We spent two great days at Litchfield visiting all the waterfalls in the National Park and doing some bush walks. Each night, we would return to Sandy Creek for a much needed swim in the cooling waterfall after our hard days work at the office! Even though this is the Northern Territories cooler season, the days did not drop below 30 degrees and there was not a cloud in the sky.

We left Litchfield and drove to Darwin. Whenever we reach major towns or cities, we always have so little time as our main concern is to get waste cooking oil which involves a day asking all the takeaways and restaurants and then another day in the same spot filtering it. It is also a time where we restock on food, drink and do any repair work needed to either the Battered Fish or the Barnacle. Poor Barnacle, it again needed so more welding work in Darwin as once again, we had an accident with the gas cylinder falling off! The Battered Fish on the other hand is running very well and had a service in Darwin as we have travelled over 12,000 kms in three months! Mum – you will be pleased to hear that he handbrake has finally been mended so we now don’t have to deliberately stall the car if we need to park on a hill!

Darwin itself really surprised us. It is a modern city with lots of new development and city flats being built. Best of all, as we arrived at the start of the weekend, there are both day and night markets to enjoy all weekend. On the Thursday night, we went to the famous Mindil Markets. There are aboriginal art stalls, bands playing didgeridoos, a cowboy doing demonstrations with his whips (!) and best of all, thousands of food stalls selling everything from Roadkill (the slogan “you kill it, we cook it!”) to Asian foods. After 12 weeks of camp food, we could not resist the amazing aroma of the foods and we brought some Chinese nibbles and went down onto the beach with the hoards of other people and watched the sunset. Once the sun had set and bizarrely, everyone had clapped, we went and found main course and then pudding! The atmosphere was brilliant and it was a great night.

Over the course of the weekend, we visited every market going and probably gained about 10 kgs in weight due to having laksa for breakfast and curry for dinner each time! We met up with the Dunlop’s again and went with them for a sunset picnic on the cliff tops at East Point Reserve – another stunning spot. Unfortunately, we were not very organised and forgot to bring any lights with us so as soon as it got dark, it was a case of packing up by using feel rather than sight! We also met up with Gerard’s cousin Elisha and her husband Adam who had just had a baby, Isabella. Gerard’s Aunty and Uncle were also there and we had a great time catching up with everyone and telling our travelling stories.

We left Darwin after collecting close to 400 litres of WVO. We are still finding people who are totally unaware that your car can be fuelled by waste cooking oil and it is great speaking to these people about the Battered Fish and also about how they can power their cars on WVO.

Our next destination was Kakadu, a place that I had been looking forward to seeing for a long time. Before we got to Kakadu, we decided to camp near to Adelaide River in order that we could do the jumping crocodile tour the next morning. All though this was INCREDIBLY touristy, I really would recommend it to people who are wanting to look at saltwater crocodiles up close (by up close, I mean less than a metre away from you!). We boarded the boat and sat downstairs next to the open window. We found out that this is the best spot to sit as they dangle big slabs of meat down into the water right by this window. As soon as the first bit of meat was bobbing up and down in the water, the guide informed us to look to our right and there in the water we saw a slithering of a tail and some eyes coming towards the boat. Once the croc is by the boat, the meat is lifted up out of the water and the crocodile jumps directly up out of the water to get the meat – it really is an incredible sight to see a wild crocodile doing this. This was repeated about 8 times with different saltwater crocs, varying from 3 metres to 6 metres in length. As the crocs were so close to you, it really got your heart racing every time they were near the boat. What also amazed me was the sheer number of crocs we saw. You really would not want to be anywhere near this river in a small tinny (boat).

After getting over the adrenalin rush of the jumping crocs, we carried onto Kakadu where we spent 3 brilliant nights. Kakadu did not disappoint me at all and it is somewhere I would love to go back to in the wet season (November – May). The size of Kakadu, in comparison to Litchfield, surprised me and also the landscape. I had imagined it being a huge wetland (which I am sure in the Wet it is) but at this time of year, it is quite dry and dusty with huge open plains. We tried to squeeze in as much as possible but some of our highlights of Kakadu were Ubirr, our two hour sunrise boat cruise on Yellow Water and Gunlom Falls.

Ubirr was just incredibly beautiful. We climbed up to the top of the rocky escarpment and were blessed with a 360 degree view of Nardab Flood Plain. The only man made thing that I could see from up here was a dirt track, everything else was natural.

Yellow Water is Kakadu’s best known floodplain. We decided to take the sunrise cruise (starting at 6.45 am!) as we heard the wildlife would be best at this time. It really did not disappoint. We saw quite a few crocs, a pair of dancing brolgas, jabirus, water buffalo, egrets, magpie geese, darters, thousands of whistling ducks and sea eagles. It wasn’t only the wildlife that was incredible. The reflections of the great gum tress in the water at this time of day and the water lilies, which were closed when we first started the tour but opened up at the end, were also beautiful.

Gunlom Falls features rainforest and a large, deep plunge pool at the base of a high sandstone cliff where a waterfall flows (trickles might be a better expression!). We decided to climb up the cliff to the top of the waterfall where we got slight vertigo looking down from the start of the waterfalls into the pool below! Up at the top, we swam in the rock pools that had formed which looked as if we were swimming in an infinity pool as our view was directly out to the rainforest. The water was cold but after the steepness of the climb, it was very rewarding.

When we left Kakadu, we had four days to get down to Uluru (Ayers Rock) to meet my sister, Sarah, who will be travelling with us for the next 6 weeks. From Kakadu to Uluru, it was 2, 213 kms so we really had to motor it. We also had to stop at each roadhouse we came across to find WVO, something that became more and more difficult as we got closer to the Red Centre. We managed to find oil in Alice Springs but this is after being rejected by 22 places first!! One slightly embarrassing incident happened during our trip to Uluru. After the turn off from Stuart Highway (or Roadkill Highway as we have named it) to Uluru, it is about 300 kms to Uluru. To our left, we noticed a huge “rock” in the distance which we thought was Uluru as it looked exactly like it did in the pictures we have seen. Even getting out and taking pictures at a lookout called “Mt Connor Lookout”, we did not twig that this was not Uluru but Mt Connor. It was only when we actually drove past what we thought to be Uluru that we looked at the map and realised our mistake – doh!!

We will be exploring Uluru, Kings Canyon and MacDonnell Ranges with Sarah over the next 10 days before we head back to Alice to once again refuel on WVO. We are hoping that Uluru will be better than Mt Connor!

I have included some photos of jumping crocodiles, some waterfalls at Litchfield NP, sunsets in Darwin, views from the top of Ubirr and Gunlom Falls and some of the wildlife we saw on Yellow Waters.

Thank you to all who have emailed and blogged us, it is great reading about your news.

Rach and Ged x