Shoo fly, don't bother me! Ah don't want yo' c'pany!
I got on the bus, found a double seat behind the driver and concentrated on ignoring my hangover. We had a three hour drive through Clare Valley to Alligator Gorge in which time I managed to discrace myself by having to ask the driver to pull over so I could go and be surreptisously sick behind the van. Im 28 years of age now for chrissake, when will this ever end?! Climed back on the bus and could see 14 sympathetic strangers, and Jonny, all looking at the 'poor girl who must get travel sick'. It was like being back on the Brazil tour again and that was a year ago. Anyway we get to the Gorge for a 2km walk which was the frickin last thing I wanted to do in the BAKING heat, and so powered walked through it to get it over with (it was, in retrospect, very beautiful) and then upon getting back to the van held my breath for 5 minutes so I could use the disgusting 'non flush decompossing toilets' which made me retch. Then we got back on the bus to the railway township of Quorn for lunch, and had only travelled 5 minutes when I had to get the van to stop AGAIN so I could throw up the litre and a half of water I'd necked on the walk. Sheepish? Well of course.
At Quorn we tried to set up for lunch and were immediatley set upon by a BAZILLION flies. It was pretty gross trying to get a sandwich in your mouth without getting a fly in it- or in your salad or whatever. And they just want to get in your eyes, ears, nose and mouth and are so PERSISTENT. Everyone just sat around the picnic tables trying to eat their sandwich whilst perfoming weird martial art hand movements to get them away. Jonny just stuck his fingers up his nostrils and in his ears....
Just a side point... You may or may not know that Australia has had something of a banana crop crisis since the cyclones in March took out lots of the crops in N. Queensland. Well anyway bananas have soared in price and have been pretty crap- yellowy brown freckled stumpy things for astronomical sums. I hadnt had a banana since then but in Quorn there were some massive, greeny yellow healthy looking ones so I picked one off and took it to the counter. I was excited! Until of course she rang up that ONE BANANA for the princely sum of $4.50!!!!! Thats nearly TWO QUID for a banana!! I wanted to chuck it at the tillies head- but instead checked my hungover, fly infested temper and gave it back.
We set off to the Yourallumba Caves on the way to Parachilna to check out some real Aboriginal rock art (you really have to hike to see this stuff- it's all hidden in caves miles off the beaten track) we took the photos and then arrived at the weirdy beardy little, town? Village? Street of Parachilna that has a population of five people. It has a road, a school (why a school I have no idea) some little set up for tourists and of course, the Aussie House of Worship : The Pub.
The village has been used in a few famous Aussie films, most notably, Rabbit Proof Fence and survives on this and the tourist trade. It has Australias longest running stretch of railway running along it and so we sat on the platform, looking out onto real aussie outback, and watched the big orange fire ball drop into sunset before having a BBQ of Emu burgers, Camel sausages and Kangaroo steak. The steak wasnt too bad but the the burgers and bangers just tasted all wrong....
The next day we headed to the Flinders Rangers to check out Wilemena Pound. This included a tricky 3 hour hike up Mt Ohlessen-Bagge that resulted in amazing views of the desert and Lake Torrens. Then we arrived at Rawnsley Park sheep station for dinner and a campfire before bed.
Coober Pedy
It was a looooooong long drive to our next destination of Coober Pedy. We had to set off at 6am for this 8 hour drive and on the way stopped at the salt lake Lake Heart. It was a bit like the ones I saw in Bolivia and was a bit weird walking on the salt flats again on a different continent. It used to be used as a bomb testing site by the British (of course) and so we had to stay behind recommended guidelines lest we blew ourselves up. We eventually got to Coober - which is an outback town famous for the mining of Opals, and also for the unique way the people live there. Before WWII many blokes had decided to chance their luck at mining for opal in this harsh land that can reach temperatures of up to 50 degrees. After the war, many ex soldiers realised after living in cold clammy trenches that this would be a cooler way to live while they 'noodled' for the stones and so dug trenches to live and keep cool. The result is a town that lives underground in 'dugout houses' that keep a temperture all year round of 25 degrees. There's a church, a pub, you name it- it can be found underground. We had an opal tour and had to watch an AWFUL film on the history of opal mining before being turned loose for pizza and a beer in the underground pub. One thing I can say about Coober is that it has a reputation for undesirables wanting to live there- of stories of people 'dissappearing' there and that if someone arrives at Coober Pedy, they must have something they want to get away from. Our guide gave us about 100 sq metres that she would prefer we roamed in lest we got hasselled by boozy Aborigines and it all added to the feeling that Coober was a place you could go for a night only. It's a pretty strange place.
Uluru
We set off at the ungodly hour of 5am to travel towards Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park passing the odd Red Kangaroo but sadly no Thorney Devils. This tour was not for wimps. On the way there, Arnie, our bus driver, pointed out a lump in the distance and asked 'Is that Uluru??' and we all got a bit excited. But it wasn't- it was just some moutain range that looked a bit like a toothbrush when you got to see it properly. The guides nickname it 'Fool-aru'. Har har. When we eventually did see Uluru in the distance there was no mistaking it. Having made good time we immeditatley set off on the Walpa Gorge walk to Kata Tjuta (aka The Olgas) which were bloody amazing! Everyone yaps on about Uluru but Kata Tjuta had a a real 'red planet' weirdy beardy feel to it. It's hard to explain what seeing these things up close is like. It's like being on Mars. And also, The Olgas in the distance look abit like Homer Simpson lying down.... We then drove to the Uluru sunset point with hundreds of other tourists and got ourselves a good spot to watch the rock blaze red before sunset with a glass of bubbly in hand. Everyone was quite moved- I thought Jonny was going to cry- because it's not like The Eiffel Tower, or the Statue of Liberty or any other man made thing. Uluru is imposing nature and deserves the word Awesome. We camped in swags that night around the campfire (the mozzies were as persistent as the flies and I got stung on my nose- about the only thing poking out of my swag.) The next morning at 4AM we all had to get up for Uluru sunrise and I was only a little perturbed to find Dingo footprints all around my, and everyones elses swags. On the bus everyone was quiet due to TOTAL knackeredness and Arnie set the mood playing digeridoo music. We stopped behind Uluru to take photos of the shilouette (really good- probably my favourate view of Uluru and we had many) and then we went to the 'sunrise' point to get a view of Uluru waking up. The skies were pink and vanilla, stretching off across the desert and there was a spate of Dingo howls for a few minutes. Then the sun came up and we all oohed n arrhed. Are you going to ask me 'Did you climb it?' Well I had decided along with a few others on the tour not to. The Aboriginal people hate anyone climbing it and when they were given the rights to the land back by the government, they were forced to still let the rock be open for climbing. Being of great significance to the people spiritually the equivalent of climbing it is probably doing the Can-Can inside St Peters Cathedral. Anyway they have posters and t-shirts all over the gaff asking people 'not to climb'. The Aboriginal word for people who climb it is... Mingers! Mingers are 'ants that climb up the rock'. So if you climb it your a minger hahaha. Anyway I opted for the 3 hour walk around it (its heeeeeowj) and the others who wanted to climb it, after all that, couldnt because it was closed due to high winds.....
Kings Canyon
We razzed over to Kings Canyon for bedtime campfire swaggy business where I had a few too many 'Goon wines' and then in the morning set up for our hike of the day. I was going to be fitter than Anneka Rice at this rate. The Canyon rim walk was 7.2 Km long beginning with Heartattack Hill- 150m of rocky uneven steps and through 'Prescillas Crack'. The Aussie film Prescilla: Queen of the Desert filmed scenes here and apparently once a year some of Australias finest transvestites stagger the walk in their size 9 stilletoes. We then began clambering down to the Garden of Eden which is in the shaded part of the canyon and has tropical plants growing there and a rain pool. In this desert. And for some unknown reason a duck swims around in the pool and no one knows how a duck ended up there....
Alice Springs
As you can imagine after a week of hiking and 4/5am wake up calls we were all completely bushed when we got to Alice and the knees up the group planned just didnt really happen because the bar was kerrrr-ap. Spent the next 3 days chilling, shopping in the Sunday markets and saying goodbye to half of the tour that wasnt heading to Kakadu. Had a bit of night down in the Bojangles pub, a bit of 'saloon' style pub that has cameras in it linked to the internet. Myself, Jo And Vix (off tour) all watched Jonny cavort infront of the cameras so his brother in Durham could have a laugh at him 12,ooo miles away. Then the next day it was sad goodbyes to Jo who was flying to Sydney (she was one hilarious bird) and then Jonny, Vix and myself had to meet the group that would be heading to Kakadu.
The next three days were fairly chilled affairs as between Alice and Darwin there isnt so much to see- you just have to clock up some miles to get there. However Adventure Tours made a good effort that saw us stop at the offical line of The Tropic of Capricorn (Im a Capricorn so had the compulsory photo) and then a stop off at the Devils Marbles- huge great boulders of red granite strewn about the desert in a weird Salvador Dali-esque landscape. By this point I'd seen enough red rocks so I was getting abit 'Oh yeah. Weird. Drive on please' and was also nearly passing out from the heat. We stayed at Banka Banka cattle station that night in Helen Springs and had an entertaining talk on cattle farming from Will, the guy who ran it. The next day we headed to Katherine Gorge via the infamous Daly Waters Pub- the oldest pub in the Northern Territories. This place really was in the middle of nowhere and yet there was still a couple working behind the bar from Liverpool! Ha! The pub was covered with all kinds of backpacker paraphanalia- t-shirts, bras, pants, flip flops- all with peoples names and countries on- people left bank notes, ID cards, police badges- you name it, it was stapled to a wall in the pub. I even graffitied a bit of wall myself... then we headed to Matarkana to swim in the thermal pools- really lovely if you didnt mind the hundreds of Flying Fox bats hanging in the trees above hehe.
Lesley Moment #153'550
So we all end up around another campfire and I have a couple of Smirnoff Ices. Everyone is getting along nicely and a few group photos are taken. I set the camera on timer so that I can also get in the campside picture and leg it through the dark and smash straight into a massive rock- bashing my right shin, left knee, cutting my left hand and scraping my forearm. The pain was sickening and I had to be carried off to the food hut to have first aid... and I have a lovely picture of the whole group looking behind themselves to see a girl crashing into a rock. My legs were a mess :( I am irredemably a biff.
Katherine Gorge and some of the group
Was lovely. Big rivers running through 'Crocadile Dunndee' style landscapes, and so we had a bit of a canoe down the Freshwater Crocodile waters in the morning, mooring on a little beach for a swim with the crocs and the catfish before heading to Darwin for the night. I have to mention a very special couple at this point. When we aquired our new group three days previously, we got a 19 year old German boy and 29 year old Dutch guy, 2 Japanese girls, 3 german girls, a nurse from Perth, a waitress from Sydney, an aussie couple expecting their first child.... and then Harold and Barbara from Melbourne, aged 72 and 77 respectively. When these two clambered onto the van I thought 'Jesus Christ, what the hell are they on this tour for???' I'm a fairly fit individual- the tour brochure demands a certain level of fitness to complete it and after the first week I could see why. But these two were OLD. However after a couple of days with them it became apparent that these two were going to be very entertaining. True Blue Aussies, Harold and Barbs bickered their way up the red centre, always doing every hike and always looking on the verge of a heart attack. When Sanders, the Dutch dude, got in the front of the 4WD he grabbed the mic and asked Harold to tell the group about Barbera and vice versa.
Harold: ' Well I tried me bladdy hardest to come on me own on this tour. And if Id have known there was gonna be so many beautiful girls on it Id have tried a lot harder! I cook, I clean, I have no bladdy idea what she does but I cant seem to get rid of her' - then much cackling.
Barbs just shrugged and giggled. In between them sat a poor Japanese girl who had no English and had to mediate between the two of them for the last three days in Kakadu.
Litchfield National Park
So we get a new tour guide, Jamie and she takes us towards the Park via some MASSIVE termite mounds. I know you are probably thinking 'Why would you want to see these things' but they were massive- one had the nickname The Cathedral and there were so many it looked like some weird cemetary- just thousands of stone coloured mounds for miles. Then we went to Florence Falls and Buley Falls for a swim in some magical waterfalls. At one point Harold took a bit of a turn and we thought maybe he really was having a heart attack. It scared the bejesus out of Jamie and attracted alot of attention. he was fine eventually but despite being a lovely guy- whoever had booked this couple onto such a strenuos tour should have been shot- it just wasnt suitable for them. Anyway we were taken to a much more relaxing activity- a river cruise on the Mary River to go Saltwater and Freshwater croc spotting. Again, it reminded me of being in the Pantanal in Brazil- with many tropical birds as well as the crocs. Lovely lovely.
The next day we went to Maguk (Barramundi Gorge) for a swim in the rock pools- big blue skies, red rocks and green fauna, the cool waters were just the ticket for my aching tush- those 4WD on the dirt tracks just rattle your bones I swear. Jamie showed us some underwater caves to swim under but I wimped out. We went to Ubirr for another nature walk- saw the most impressive Abo rock art on the trip and then climbed the lookout point to look at the plains- that looked like the Serengeti. It was a scene used in Crocodile Dundee, when Mick D says 'Welcome to my office'. We sat off and watched another amazing sunset...
Jim Jim Falls and Twin Falls
The most tricky of the hikes, but most fun, was Jim Jim. You had to clamber over huge boulders and rocks like an 8 year old and poor old Harold had to stay behind- but stubborn Barbs insisted on coming. Oh it was a worry. Eventually we made it to the canyon where the falls would 'fall' in the rainey season, but for now we were rewarded with a white beach around a lake, in the canyon. There was no way you could pass up a swim after the effort of getting there so we did. Then we clambered back over the boulders (took about half an hour) and headed to Twin Falls. Twin Falls was only accessible by a boat service and you couldnt swim in it because it was Salty Croc infested- but my was it beautiful. The sand was so hot it burned your feet but it was like something out of The Beach. On the way back you could get drenched by a shower before getting on the boat- which was a good idea after basking in that heat and not being able to swim in it. All in, Kakadu was the best part of the out back. You get the red earth and the blue skies, but you also get the water, as well as really good rock art and all of the 'roos and possums etc. Everyone felt refreshed, happy, and it was the end of the tour- and a great way to spend my last day in Australia after 10 and a half months here! We all went out in Darwin, got a bit twisted, and then after saying sad goodbyes to a great crew, and adopted brother Jonny, I jumped a rickshaw (yep- in Darwin) to the hostel, grabbed my stuff and headed for my plane to Bangkok.
At Quorn we tried to set up for lunch and were immediatley set upon by a BAZILLION flies. It was pretty gross trying to get a sandwich in your mouth without getting a fly in it- or in your salad or whatever. And they just want to get in your eyes, ears, nose and mouth and are so PERSISTENT. Everyone just sat around the picnic tables trying to eat their sandwich whilst perfoming weird martial art hand movements to get them away. Jonny just stuck his fingers up his nostrils and in his ears....
Just a side point... You may or may not know that Australia has had something of a banana crop crisis since the cyclones in March took out lots of the crops in N. Queensland. Well anyway bananas have soared in price and have been pretty crap- yellowy brown freckled stumpy things for astronomical sums. I hadnt had a banana since then but in Quorn there were some massive, greeny yellow healthy looking ones so I picked one off and took it to the counter. I was excited! Until of course she rang up that ONE BANANA for the princely sum of $4.50!!!!! Thats nearly TWO QUID for a banana!! I wanted to chuck it at the tillies head- but instead checked my hungover, fly infested temper and gave it back.
We set off to the Yourallumba Caves on the way to Parachilna to check out some real Aboriginal rock art (you really have to hike to see this stuff- it's all hidden in caves miles off the beaten track) we took the photos and then arrived at the weirdy beardy little, town? Village? Street of Parachilna that has a population of five people. It has a road, a school (why a school I have no idea) some little set up for tourists and of course, the Aussie House of Worship : The Pub.
The village has been used in a few famous Aussie films, most notably, Rabbit Proof Fence and survives on this and the tourist trade. It has Australias longest running stretch of railway running along it and so we sat on the platform, looking out onto real aussie outback, and watched the big orange fire ball drop into sunset before having a BBQ of Emu burgers, Camel sausages and Kangaroo steak. The steak wasnt too bad but the the burgers and bangers just tasted all wrong....
The next day we headed to the Flinders Rangers to check out Wilemena Pound. This included a tricky 3 hour hike up Mt Ohlessen-Bagge that resulted in amazing views of the desert and Lake Torrens. Then we arrived at Rawnsley Park sheep station for dinner and a campfire before bed.
Coober Pedy
It was a looooooong long drive to our next destination of Coober Pedy. We had to set off at 6am for this 8 hour drive and on the way stopped at the salt lake Lake Heart. It was a bit like the ones I saw in Bolivia and was a bit weird walking on the salt flats again on a different continent. It used to be used as a bomb testing site by the British (of course) and so we had to stay behind recommended guidelines lest we blew ourselves up. We eventually got to Coober - which is an outback town famous for the mining of Opals, and also for the unique way the people live there. Before WWII many blokes had decided to chance their luck at mining for opal in this harsh land that can reach temperatures of up to 50 degrees. After the war, many ex soldiers realised after living in cold clammy trenches that this would be a cooler way to live while they 'noodled' for the stones and so dug trenches to live and keep cool. The result is a town that lives underground in 'dugout houses' that keep a temperture all year round of 25 degrees. There's a church, a pub, you name it- it can be found underground. We had an opal tour and had to watch an AWFUL film on the history of opal mining before being turned loose for pizza and a beer in the underground pub. One thing I can say about Coober is that it has a reputation for undesirables wanting to live there- of stories of people 'dissappearing' there and that if someone arrives at Coober Pedy, they must have something they want to get away from. Our guide gave us about 100 sq metres that she would prefer we roamed in lest we got hasselled by boozy Aborigines and it all added to the feeling that Coober was a place you could go for a night only. It's a pretty strange place.
Uluru
We set off at the ungodly hour of 5am to travel towards Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park passing the odd Red Kangaroo but sadly no Thorney Devils. This tour was not for wimps. On the way there, Arnie, our bus driver, pointed out a lump in the distance and asked 'Is that Uluru??' and we all got a bit excited. But it wasn't- it was just some moutain range that looked a bit like a toothbrush when you got to see it properly. The guides nickname it 'Fool-aru'. Har har. When we eventually did see Uluru in the distance there was no mistaking it. Having made good time we immeditatley set off on the Walpa Gorge walk to Kata Tjuta (aka The Olgas) which were bloody amazing! Everyone yaps on about Uluru but Kata Tjuta had a a real 'red planet' weirdy beardy feel to it. It's hard to explain what seeing these things up close is like. It's like being on Mars. And also, The Olgas in the distance look abit like Homer Simpson lying down.... We then drove to the Uluru sunset point with hundreds of other tourists and got ourselves a good spot to watch the rock blaze red before sunset with a glass of bubbly in hand. Everyone was quite moved- I thought Jonny was going to cry- because it's not like The Eiffel Tower, or the Statue of Liberty or any other man made thing. Uluru is imposing nature and deserves the word Awesome. We camped in swags that night around the campfire (the mozzies were as persistent as the flies and I got stung on my nose- about the only thing poking out of my swag.) The next morning at 4AM we all had to get up for Uluru sunrise and I was only a little perturbed to find Dingo footprints all around my, and everyones elses swags. On the bus everyone was quiet due to TOTAL knackeredness and Arnie set the mood playing digeridoo music. We stopped behind Uluru to take photos of the shilouette (really good- probably my favourate view of Uluru and we had many) and then we went to the 'sunrise' point to get a view of Uluru waking up. The skies were pink and vanilla, stretching off across the desert and there was a spate of Dingo howls for a few minutes. Then the sun came up and we all oohed n arrhed. Are you going to ask me 'Did you climb it?' Well I had decided along with a few others on the tour not to. The Aboriginal people hate anyone climbing it and when they were given the rights to the land back by the government, they were forced to still let the rock be open for climbing. Being of great significance to the people spiritually the equivalent of climbing it is probably doing the Can-Can inside St Peters Cathedral. Anyway they have posters and t-shirts all over the gaff asking people 'not to climb'. The Aboriginal word for people who climb it is... Mingers! Mingers are 'ants that climb up the rock'. So if you climb it your a minger hahaha. Anyway I opted for the 3 hour walk around it (its heeeeeowj) and the others who wanted to climb it, after all that, couldnt because it was closed due to high winds.....
Kings Canyon
We razzed over to Kings Canyon for bedtime campfire swaggy business where I had a few too many 'Goon wines' and then in the morning set up for our hike of the day. I was going to be fitter than Anneka Rice at this rate. The Canyon rim walk was 7.2 Km long beginning with Heartattack Hill- 150m of rocky uneven steps and through 'Prescillas Crack'. The Aussie film Prescilla: Queen of the Desert filmed scenes here and apparently once a year some of Australias finest transvestites stagger the walk in their size 9 stilletoes. We then began clambering down to the Garden of Eden which is in the shaded part of the canyon and has tropical plants growing there and a rain pool. In this desert. And for some unknown reason a duck swims around in the pool and no one knows how a duck ended up there....
Alice Springs
As you can imagine after a week of hiking and 4/5am wake up calls we were all completely bushed when we got to Alice and the knees up the group planned just didnt really happen because the bar was kerrrr-ap. Spent the next 3 days chilling, shopping in the Sunday markets and saying goodbye to half of the tour that wasnt heading to Kakadu. Had a bit of night down in the Bojangles pub, a bit of 'saloon' style pub that has cameras in it linked to the internet. Myself, Jo And Vix (off tour) all watched Jonny cavort infront of the cameras so his brother in Durham could have a laugh at him 12,ooo miles away. Then the next day it was sad goodbyes to Jo who was flying to Sydney (she was one hilarious bird) and then Jonny, Vix and myself had to meet the group that would be heading to Kakadu.
The next three days were fairly chilled affairs as between Alice and Darwin there isnt so much to see- you just have to clock up some miles to get there. However Adventure Tours made a good effort that saw us stop at the offical line of The Tropic of Capricorn (Im a Capricorn so had the compulsory photo) and then a stop off at the Devils Marbles- huge great boulders of red granite strewn about the desert in a weird Salvador Dali-esque landscape. By this point I'd seen enough red rocks so I was getting abit 'Oh yeah. Weird. Drive on please' and was also nearly passing out from the heat. We stayed at Banka Banka cattle station that night in Helen Springs and had an entertaining talk on cattle farming from Will, the guy who ran it. The next day we headed to Katherine Gorge via the infamous Daly Waters Pub- the oldest pub in the Northern Territories. This place really was in the middle of nowhere and yet there was still a couple working behind the bar from Liverpool! Ha! The pub was covered with all kinds of backpacker paraphanalia- t-shirts, bras, pants, flip flops- all with peoples names and countries on- people left bank notes, ID cards, police badges- you name it, it was stapled to a wall in the pub. I even graffitied a bit of wall myself... then we headed to Matarkana to swim in the thermal pools- really lovely if you didnt mind the hundreds of Flying Fox bats hanging in the trees above hehe.
Lesley Moment #153'550
So we all end up around another campfire and I have a couple of Smirnoff Ices. Everyone is getting along nicely and a few group photos are taken. I set the camera on timer so that I can also get in the campside picture and leg it through the dark and smash straight into a massive rock- bashing my right shin, left knee, cutting my left hand and scraping my forearm. The pain was sickening and I had to be carried off to the food hut to have first aid... and I have a lovely picture of the whole group looking behind themselves to see a girl crashing into a rock. My legs were a mess :( I am irredemably a biff.
Katherine Gorge and some of the group
Was lovely. Big rivers running through 'Crocadile Dunndee' style landscapes, and so we had a bit of a canoe down the Freshwater Crocodile waters in the morning, mooring on a little beach for a swim with the crocs and the catfish before heading to Darwin for the night. I have to mention a very special couple at this point. When we aquired our new group three days previously, we got a 19 year old German boy and 29 year old Dutch guy, 2 Japanese girls, 3 german girls, a nurse from Perth, a waitress from Sydney, an aussie couple expecting their first child.... and then Harold and Barbara from Melbourne, aged 72 and 77 respectively. When these two clambered onto the van I thought 'Jesus Christ, what the hell are they on this tour for???' I'm a fairly fit individual- the tour brochure demands a certain level of fitness to complete it and after the first week I could see why. But these two were OLD. However after a couple of days with them it became apparent that these two were going to be very entertaining. True Blue Aussies, Harold and Barbs bickered their way up the red centre, always doing every hike and always looking on the verge of a heart attack. When Sanders, the Dutch dude, got in the front of the 4WD he grabbed the mic and asked Harold to tell the group about Barbera and vice versa.
Harold: ' Well I tried me bladdy hardest to come on me own on this tour. And if Id have known there was gonna be so many beautiful girls on it Id have tried a lot harder! I cook, I clean, I have no bladdy idea what she does but I cant seem to get rid of her' - then much cackling.
Barbs just shrugged and giggled. In between them sat a poor Japanese girl who had no English and had to mediate between the two of them for the last three days in Kakadu.
Litchfield National Park
So we get a new tour guide, Jamie and she takes us towards the Park via some MASSIVE termite mounds. I know you are probably thinking 'Why would you want to see these things' but they were massive- one had the nickname The Cathedral and there were so many it looked like some weird cemetary- just thousands of stone coloured mounds for miles. Then we went to Florence Falls and Buley Falls for a swim in some magical waterfalls. At one point Harold took a bit of a turn and we thought maybe he really was having a heart attack. It scared the bejesus out of Jamie and attracted alot of attention. he was fine eventually but despite being a lovely guy- whoever had booked this couple onto such a strenuos tour should have been shot- it just wasnt suitable for them. Anyway we were taken to a much more relaxing activity- a river cruise on the Mary River to go Saltwater and Freshwater croc spotting. Again, it reminded me of being in the Pantanal in Brazil- with many tropical birds as well as the crocs. Lovely lovely.
The next day we went to Maguk (Barramundi Gorge) for a swim in the rock pools- big blue skies, red rocks and green fauna, the cool waters were just the ticket for my aching tush- those 4WD on the dirt tracks just rattle your bones I swear. Jamie showed us some underwater caves to swim under but I wimped out. We went to Ubirr for another nature walk- saw the most impressive Abo rock art on the trip and then climbed the lookout point to look at the plains- that looked like the Serengeti. It was a scene used in Crocodile Dundee, when Mick D says 'Welcome to my office'. We sat off and watched another amazing sunset...
Jim Jim Falls and Twin Falls
The most tricky of the hikes, but most fun, was Jim Jim. You had to clamber over huge boulders and rocks like an 8 year old and poor old Harold had to stay behind- but stubborn Barbs insisted on coming. Oh it was a worry. Eventually we made it to the canyon where the falls would 'fall' in the rainey season, but for now we were rewarded with a white beach around a lake, in the canyon. There was no way you could pass up a swim after the effort of getting there so we did. Then we clambered back over the boulders (took about half an hour) and headed to Twin Falls. Twin Falls was only accessible by a boat service and you couldnt swim in it because it was Salty Croc infested- but my was it beautiful. The sand was so hot it burned your feet but it was like something out of The Beach. On the way back you could get drenched by a shower before getting on the boat- which was a good idea after basking in that heat and not being able to swim in it. All in, Kakadu was the best part of the out back. You get the red earth and the blue skies, but you also get the water, as well as really good rock art and all of the 'roos and possums etc. Everyone felt refreshed, happy, and it was the end of the tour- and a great way to spend my last day in Australia after 10 and a half months here! We all went out in Darwin, got a bit twisted, and then after saying sad goodbyes to a great crew, and adopted brother Jonny, I jumped a rickshaw (yep- in Darwin) to the hostel, grabbed my stuff and headed for my plane to Bangkok.
posted by LesAlanos @ 3:24 AM
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