Thursday 30th November – Return to Travellers’ Autobahn

I was awoken by that annoying buzzing in my left ear in the middle of the night.  A mosquito.  I was wide awake in seconds and could feel I’d been bitten a few times.  We’d gone for the full ‘open everything’ tonight due to the intense heat.  My bug spray had clearly worn off.  I got up and re-coated myself before catching some more zeds.  It’s been an adventure in Ozzie, but I’m not going to deny that I’m looking forward to sleeping in an air-conditioned motel room tonight with hopefully no bugs! And hoping that our new van’s air conditioning is effective!

I enjoyed a lovely swim and shower this morning and then we hit the road.  Well, it was effectively just crossing the road!  Simon had spotted the Australian Aviation Heritage Museum right across from where we were staying.  Ozzie isn’t due to be handed back until 3pm today, so we’re making the most of having him available until then.  I chose to sit out on this Museum experience.  It saved money and I’m sure Simon will have told me all about it!  Instead, I set to tidying everything together in the van for our moving out this afternoon.

Si was done by noon.  I had checked with the cheap motel we booked for the night and we would be able to check in a little earlier than the 330pm as our booking said, so we had a couple of hours to kill.  As we’d overfilled the petrol tank of the camper we had a little mileage to play with, so we headed to East Point and Dudley Point to get some alternate views of the city - imagine having a stunning beach like this on your doorstep but not being able to go swimming there because of the crocodiles. 

We then headed to our hotel for just gone 130pm. 

The Winnellie Hotel Motel (even it can’t decide what it is) was never going to set the world alight.  It was a little run down and we had to go into the attached pub to check in (why’s that bad?!) but it had some very important things going for it – the room was an icy 20 degrees, there was a fridge to store our chilled goods in, we had our own bathroom and a kettle.  It would do nicely.  It took three trips to transfer all of our belongings from Ozzie into the room, then we were off to find the car wash.  We had no intention of doing a thorough valet but at the same time, we have our pride.  Si focussed on the outside whilst I swept and cleaned the inside of the van (in the aircon).  Maybe I was too harsh on Ozzie in the first place – he didn’t scrub up bad after our hard work.

Timed to perfection, we pulled up to Travellers’ Autobahn at 255pm.  There was only one member of staff there, but luckily we were also the only customers.  Asked if we’d had any issues with the van we mentioned that the fridge has been fine since the repair job in Carnarvon and mentioned that the Police thought the tread on the rear right tyre was getting a little low!  We were only there for 15 minutes; the paperwork was signed off to say that they were happy with the condition we had returned their van in and they called us a cab.  Job done.  The final mileage figure? 7509 km…. in 4 weeks!  That explains the petrol bills then! What’s that in miles? Google tells me it’s 4666!  We were doing about 3000 miles a month in the States so we’ve pushed it even further this last month.

We'd put a few extra kms on the old van....

Back at the motel by 330pm without wheels, we had a night free from driving.  Maybe we would both relax in our air-conditioned room and catch up with some internet whilst watching some TV?  Both having been looking forward to this, we were disappointed to find that the Wi-Fi in our room was so poor we would have to choose – one of us could go on the very slow internet…. But it meant that the TV stopped working!  Neither of us wanting to be selfish, we resigned ourselves to not being able to do that blogging/Facebooking after all.

Just past 630pm we agreed it was time to source some dinner.  Simon had decided that he didn’t want to set foot outside of the air conditioning again today so I ‘volunteered’ to go over the road to the Greek takeaway we’d spotted.  Except that it was shut.  As was the Chinese takeaway further down the road.  Next stop, the shell garage where I rang Simon and asked what his choice of hot pie might be?!  I went for a spinach and cheese one and grabbed some other naughty nibbles and a six-pack of beers for a treat.  It was a tasty dinner!  And I even managed to find a channel showing Mythbusters on the TV, so the evening wasn’t too shabby at all. Now time to get some sleep with no bugs and in a reasonable temperature... bliss.

Wednesday 29th November – Litchfield National Park and Florence Falls

Not the most productive sleep.  We awoke grumpy and sweaty from a disturbed night.  We needed a spa day and we were in exactly the right place for one.

Heading back to Florence falls we took the stairs down to the jungle floor and were greeted by this idyllic sight:

  

We attempted to get some 'under the falls' footage but as you an see, it's not easy!

The water was cooling, clear and pure.  You could drink it as you swam along and washed off your bad night’s sleep.  Heading to the two waterfalls themselves, the power of the water spray was such that it took your breath away as you neared.  We managed to swim against the current to pass behind the larger of the two. It was invigorating!  There was only one other person there. We felt like we could have stayed for the day. However, having had our rainforest shower, it was time for a back massage.

Moving on to Buley Rocks, a series of interconnected natural plunge pools with boulders separating them.  Still in our swim gear, we found one with no other bathers present and leapt back in to the cooling water.  We’d found the best pool.  One where you could sit atop a large boulder and have the water pummel your shoulders to just the right pressure:

We forced ourselves to leave about 1130am for the drive to Darwin.  There we recce'd the place we’re picking up the RV on Friday, booked a motel for one night within walking distance and headed to Charles Darwin Park.   There was less going on there than we expected, but we had some lunch and got a view of the city.  We stopped off at Traveller’s Autobahn to ask where we need to go to find a carwash to allow us to clean their van for them tomorrow.

Onwards to the VC where we got tips for where we could find free parking by the Royal Flying Doctors Museum, which was well worth a look.  

This one plane ferried over 7500 patients in its 20 year life span

It was like a museum of the future – everything was high Tec, from the Virtual Reality headsets that gave us an 8-minute experience of the bombing of Darwin in February 1942, to the interactive holograms that we could ask questions.  It was a combined museum about the Royal Flying Doctors' Service and the bombing of Darwin in WWII. 

Memorial to the bombing of Darwin which resulted in 292 fatalities

The initial and most destructive bombing of Darwin in February 1942 signalled the arrival of WWII in Australia and the terrifying and real risk of a Japanese land invasion gripped the nation.  Darwin was Australia' northern defence post and a place where Australian and allied ships and aircraft could stop for refuelling and restocking - making it a worthy target for the Japanese.  This map shows just how close the Japanese came  in 1942. 

We had intended to stay close to the city tonight to experience the ambience, however, it seemed that many attractions had closed for the season and, the campsites were back out the way we’d just driven in!  We had rung and booked onto a ‘Top campsite’ (10% off), but were now running short of time to get there by the designated 6pm.  Especially as, when we exited the museum to check out the quay, we found a Sea Shepherd vessel moored there, the Ocean Warrior:  

In summary, this is a ship belonging to a fleet of extreme anti-whaling activists.  When Greenpeace thought their tactics too severe, Paul Watson broke away and formed the Sea Shepherds.  They try to thwart the Japanese whaling fleets by any means necessary. The crew risk their lives employing tactics from helicopters, water cannon and dragging lines to try to stop the Japanese fleets killing whales whilst falsely claiming that they are doing so in the name of scientific research.  Simon and I were both massive fans of the Discovery series, Whale Wars, following the successes and failures of these environmental heroes.  I was in awe to see a Sea Shepherd vessel moored here in Darwin (very far North for them!) so couldn’t stop myself from saying ‘Hi’ to members of the crew who emerged.  It turns out they have been docked here for two months but are to finally set sail on Monday in an undisclosed direction (the marine biologist I was chatting to couldn’t tell us where, or he would have had to kill us).  We wished them a safe and successful voyage and just checked that they didn’t need any last-minute crew (though you need a stomach of iron to withstand the roll of the south seas in these vessels).

We headed to our ‘Top’ campsite for our last night in Ozzie before we return him tomorrow.  Once parked, we opened all windows and doors for the evening and did a mass washing in advance of the next leg of our adventure.

Tuesday 28th November – Kakadu National Park

We got moving earlier – we have a lot of park to see today!  First stop was a viewpoint over the lush green forests.  I was navigating and planned to stop along the route at other viewpoints as we passed them.  However, many were closed or involved a long hike to see them.  We had to be choosy about where we were going to spend our time.

Our first panoramic view over Kakadu

One of the main sites right in the middle of the massive park is the Yellow River.  I had read about a boardwalk loop that would take about an hour to show us around some of the wildlife of the wetlands.  We had to fill up the camper (for a change) and I just happened to ask the lady at the counter about the river cruises running today.  It turned out that we were in perfect time for the 1130am cruise that would last an hour and a half.  Simon had seen some reviews raving about the experience, so we figured we’d stretch our over-stretched budget another time.  It was one of those ‘we may never get this opportunity again’ moments.  The cruise was amazing.  Firstly, when we walked to board the boat there was already a crocodile floating around in the billabong in front of us and numerous waterfowl.  That reminds me of an interesting fact - birds aren't bothered by the crocs because crocs can't digest feathers, so they are completely off the menu.

Our first proper wild croc (Simon wouldn't go close enough to assist with scale, but it was BIG)

Cormorant

Then we met our guide, Ruben.  A true force of nature. He was hilarious and if I hadn’t experienced him with my own eyes and ears I would have said he was an Australian Aboriginal caricature!  It started during the safety briefing.  Having explained about how to wear the life vests he made it clear they were NOT to be used overboard due to there being a crocodile every 200m, he finished with ‘if ya don’t speak English and didn’t understand a word I said you’re probably the ones that’ll die first!’ He had verbal diarrhoea, talking ten to the dozen and having third person conversations with himself.  ‘So, why did we do this?  I’ll tell you why Ruben!’ But he was also very enthusiastic about finding the wildlife to show us so he made the tour for us.  I took loads of photos, here are just a smattering....

Sea Eagles

Another croc for you...

Egrets

Water lilies

Plumed whistling ducks

Juvenile Sea Eagle

As we finished the tour - this cormorant caught lunch!

The Yellow river wetland

It was the highlight of Kakadu for us.  Again, there are many other areas with a variety of landscapes in Kakadu, but these were out of reach to us due to time, flood waters and lack of a 4WD vehicle. We stopped at a bird observation deck for one last look at the wilderness before it was time to move on.

As we’d not taken as long as expected in Kakadu we went through with the plan to head to Litchfield NP to save having to fit it in with the new RV at the end of the week. It was looking like a push too far at one stage, a long drive but we arrived before sunset, even having time to stop to see the termite mounds (right) and Florence Falls where we’ll be swimming in the morning.

Simon had found a good, cheap campsite in the park, with clean toilets and showers for only $6.60 per person on a powerless site.  It was great to be staying in a park again just like we had so often in the States.  But there were sooo many flies and bugs.  We kept the engine on as late as we dared but there was a ‘no generators’ policy so we had to turn it off for the sake of the other campers.  I got so hot in the camper that I was wide awake about 1am and just suggested we throw caution to the wind and open the door and boot.  After a quick dowsing in bug spray we managed to get some sleep.

Not gravestones... each of these is termite mound specifically positioned uni-dirrectionally to cope with the heat

Florence Falls.... we'll be swimming down there in the morning...