Crossing the Border (for the final time)

The first place we came across on our way to Keep River National Park was Timber Creek. We stopped purely to enable us to buy one final postcard from the Northern Territory for Max to send to his class, before we head into WA. While there I checked for phone messages and found a volley. While we had been enjoying the peace of Gregory National Park Liz had been having another phone ‘war’ with Coromal Caravans Cannington. The upshot was that although they had told me to pack everything we didn’t need, and could fit, into the van before it was trucked down South, with no problems about it sitting in there workshop until I got back down South in October, they then told Liz it had to be removed immediately and made a few cracks about how much stuff we had loaded into the van (although the bikes made it look far worse than it really was). On top of that she also copped another earful about the problems we had experienced being all our fault so wasn’t particularly happy. We agreed that Max and I would curtail our trip and head home as fast as we could, however as she had asked my Dad to help her pick everything up from Perth the next day decided that it was best if I made sure I was in Kununurra for the whole of the period she was on their premises the next day in case she needed to call me for any reason. This enabled us to at least spend one night in Keep River as a ‘last hurrah’.
We set up camp that afternoon and went for a twilight walk (once it had cooled down somewhat) looking for Aboriginal Rock Art. When we finally came to the fork that lead to the art we found it had been closed to visitors, so continued up to a lookout instead – Max was very put out however as he had chosen the campsite based on the trail to the art site.
Back in at camp our last night in Northern Territory was everything it should have been, campfire, balmy weather, not too many insets flying around and Max curled up next to me listening to ‘Lord of the Rings’ after we had had several hands of Uno. If we had to finish the relaxed part of this trip at this point at least we did it in style!
Next morning we were up nice and early with the aim of doing one final walk, passing through quarantine and getting to Kununurra with enough time for Max to ring home before Harry went to school Max had been trying to speak to harry since we had split the family up but had never managed to speak to home when he was there. The most annoying time I think was when I had a chat to Harry, but by the time Max finished talking to his Mum Harry had disappeared down the the creek with his cousins (they were at the farm this time). This particular day seemed appropriate as we were able to utilise the time we made up by crossing the border.
The lookout turned out to be historic and carefully maintained hide formerly used by local aboriginals to catch birds of prey (falcons etc.). It was largely constructed of stones, with a roof of sticks that allowed a stick decorated with feathers to be poked through. When a bird of prey swooped on the feathers the hunter would quickly reach up through the sticks and catch the bird – well worth the effort of visiting.
In the end we made it into Kununurra well and truly early enough for Max to make his call, in fact he ended getting Harry out of bed! and everybody was happy. Hitting WA on the first day of a month also seemed propitious for some reason (although one wasn’t readily apparent). We then headed back out to the Ord River Dam to have a look around before we were needed back in town as Liz and Dad weren’t due into Perth before 11am at the earliest.
The Ord River Dam was everything I imagined, huge and impressive – with a couple of houseboats moored near the dam wall giving thought to a future holiday opportunity. The fact that somebody had yet to come up with a way to really make this area of the state take off given the available water supply still staggers me, although it probably clearly identifies the difficulties isolation poses irrespective of the resources on offer (unless we are talking about mineral wealth).
Following our excursion across the dam wall we followed up with a quick visit to the Durack Homestead. I was very interested in this as I knew there was some sort of family connection with the Durack’s (I was thinking that they had been good friends with some of my family early last century but after talking to Mum she advised they had actually been related). While it was interesting for me I think Max found the two Bower Birds outside much more worthy of his time.
We then headed back into Kununurra and found the local library to allow Max to catch up on some reading while I checked a raft of emails Liz had forwarded on. In the end we spent virtually the whole day in the library (at least until they chucked us out), it was the easiest place to keep Max occupied while I made sure I was available for Liz whenever she needed me. Luckily all our stuff loaded up fine and in the end Liz suggested that Max and I cancel our rushed trip home and go back to Plan A because, as much as she was missing us, there wasn’t actually anything we could actually achieve by being at home at present – certainly not until some further information on the future of our caravan was available – this excited Max incredibly although he did confide to me that part of him wouldn’t have minded going home as he is missing Mum and Harry.
Once we knew that the rush was off I rang a friend of Liz’s Uncle Tim, who had offered us a bed if we wanted it. Unfortunately it was fairly short notice given it was now mid-afternoon and we were already in Kununurra, but worth the try anyway. In the end we couldn’t actually get hold of them until we had already sorted ourselves out in a caravan park and, while they offered us a place the next night if we wanted, we decided that we would head off for the Bungle Bungles around lunch time so we missed them.
Max was very happy with the caravan park as, for possibly the first time this trip, he thought a shower a great idea. Given he has a habit of curling up in any dustbowl he can find in shade I am not surprised. In addition they had the movie ‘Up” screening that night under a big boab which made his evening perfect – especially as he ended up getting to eat dinner while watching. One thing that is taking a little getting used to is daylight hours of 5.30am – 5.30pm, given we had just come out of 7am – 7pm. Not surprising given the time change but disconcerting none the less.
After messing around in town the next day, and taking a drive along some of the irrigated farmlands to see the difference in the country when water is added, we headed for the Bungles!

Report Card

Time Away 

• Liz and Harry – 20 weeks
• Trevor and Max – 25 weeks

Kilometres Travelled

• Liz and Harry – 18,000
• Trevor and Max – 27,000

Breakages

• One Camper Trailer (although I just got a call to say all responsibilities have been sorted and the next call we get will be telling us it is all fixed and ready to be picked up) .
• Car:
• Rear window (thanks to the bastards who tried to break in in Melbourne).
• Rear door handle – the only real issue with the car that wasn’t caused by an external party, hardly anything to complain about.
• 1 tyre – split in Kakadu.
• Bike Carrier – never really did the job it was supposed to – I guess it was made for short trips on suburban roads. But it didn’t even cope when we decided to only carry two bikes on it rather than four!!
• Harry’s bike – (the first one – the one I bought in Canberra is still going strong).
• Punctures:
• Max’s bike – 3.
• Harry’s bike – 2.
• My bike – 1.
• 2 bike bells (fell apart on the roads).
• 1 ipod – lost.
• 1 camera tripod (now a bipod ).
• 1 camera (Max’s) – a win to Fowler’s Bay sand dunes.
• Several hats!!

All in all, a fairly small roll of honour for a trip of this nature!

Initial Awards (My Opinion Only)

Favourite Campsite

• Broome Hill (WA - outward leg)
• Yacka (SA)
• Cavendish (Vic)
• Coopernook (NSW uncharged)
• Lane Cove National Park (NSW charged)
• Canungra Showgrounds (QLD)
• Garnamarr – in Kakadu (NT)
• Bullara Station (WA – homeward leg)

Full awards to hopefully follow once I have had a chance to really collect my thoughts re: the whole experience!

Gregory National Park

The day dawned clear and warm (as every other morning in this part of the world has during our stay with the exception of one morning of heavy fog in Darwin). Having now spent a reasonable amount of time in two different NT national parks I am taken by how well set up for visitors they are. Everything is fairly simple, but well priced and comfortable. I think this is a significant part of the attraction to them, especially Kakadu and Litchfield, along with how accessible the attractions are. We have certainly seen much more impressive waterfalls (Wallaman Falls outside Ingham for instance) and plenty of rugged countryside, but few places have allowed, or been warm enough, for you to swim under the falls or climb up beside and around them. Also, while they are accessible, the approaches and trails haven’t been built up to the point that the interest and sense of adventure is removed from them. For a large part of the time we have been poking around we have definitely needed the four wheel drive at minimum, with things like the Snorkel also important at different times.
Anyway, after packing up we set for Katherine initially, to re-provision and obtain the new tyre. Obviously the unusual tyre size of the Pathfinder also has a pricing issue as even the office staff came out with “bloody hell – that’s expensive” when it came time to pay. We also managed a good chat to Liz – I think Max summed things up beautifully when, after seeing how much he was missing his Mum and brother through his desire to talk to them, I asked him whether he would rather head for home more quickly. To that he replied “I’m missing home Dad, but nowhere near enough to want to miss out on the chance of doing this trip”.
The drive out to the national park was fairly uneventful, although Max did like the fact that I was willing to have the talking book of Bumaggeddon (not sure about spelling, Liz or Mrs Lindsay to the rescue?) playing the entire way. On the intersection tot eh entrance to the part of the Gregory National park we had decided to visit is a memorial to the Durack Family, paying tribute to their pioneering efforts over many years around the turn of last century. All of this information on the lives of the early pastoralists I am finding fascinating, especially given that several generations of my mothers family came from pastoral leases. This uneventfulness ceased to an extent on the entrance road, with Max throwing up all down the side of the car after spending too much time on his DS on windy, bumpy roads. I think however this has been a lesson learned (possibly for both of us – at times I think I have been forgetting he is only 9 and expect him to operate as someone a lot older due to him being my only companion).
Another simple, cheap but pleasant campsite was encountered at Bullita, with my opinion about part of the reason for the popularity of the Northern Territory national parks being strengthened, although flies – especially those that bite, midgees and mozzies here are definitely a negative. Max has now found a very significant positive in his insect net being separate to his swag as it fits over him when he is sitting in his chair, so he has been almost permanently installed under it whenever we have been in camp and shared it with me when we were eating tea last night.
This morning we visited the limestone deposits and waterfalls before heading in to look over Bullita Homestead. The limestone deposits are amazing, in fact a pure white waterfall (no water at this time of the year) had Max believing that somehow snow was surviving in this environment.
Bullita itself was considered one of the harshest of the pastoral leases in the country, with the cattle actually being shod before being driven to market due to the hardness of the ground causing irreparable damage to their hooves otherwise. This is the first time I had ever heard of cattle being shod.
The homestead area and main cattle yards are all being carefully preserved by the NT Parks and Wildlife as a record of the life of the regions pastoralists. The sawmill used to prepare timber to construct and maintain the yards has been relocated to sit beside the yards and looks as if it is only short an engine, belts and a lube-up before being completely operational again.
The homestead has all the buildings in place as they were when the lease ended in about 1977, which is probably much more confronting for kids like Max as it is easier to talk to him about conditions that existed within my lifetime rather than looking at structures from the early 1900’s which seem to be ancient in his eyes. The 1970’s are long enough ago for him as it is!
It was amazing how rough and ready life still as on the station at that time, although the climate would have had some impact on the design and layout of the homestead, sore sheds and stockmen’s accommodation.
At this stage we headed back to camp for a late lunch and a rest. Max is finding the heat difficult to deal with at present, he thought he had acclimatised when we were in the Kakadu but it has been somewhat hotter out here.
Tomorrow we head to the Keep River National Park, which meets one of Max’s desires. This afternoon he said “wouldn’t it be cool if we could find somewhere only a couple of kilometres from the WA border to camp Dad, instead of actually crossing into WA” at which point I pointed out to him that the turn-off into Keep River, where we are headed, is only 3km from the border. He decided that that met his needs, I think he thought it was inside WA when we had been talking about spending a night or two there.

Bitter Springs? Maybe Beautiful Springs is More Appropriate!

This morning we headed back up through Mataranka to Bitter Springs. These thermal springs result in a meandering creek of which a bit over a hundred metres has been set up for people to swim in. The ideal way is to start at the end nearest the springs themselves and float gently down to the bottom, return back to the start by way of the path and do it all over again.
Max thought this wonderful and when the Smith family from Bunbury, who we had previously run into at the Leanyer Recreation Park in Darwin, arrived Max again had some other children to play with.
After about an hour and a half we had an early lunch and set off for the Mataranka Homestead once again, this time to watch ‘We of the Never Never’. Given one side of my family spent many years on stations in the North West of WA I thought this was particularly interesting to get Max to watch and then discuss over the next few days. To top things off while we were there the Smiths arrived again and the kids got to reprise their morning all over again a the adjoining thermal springs. Best moment was when Tom (7) asked me why we were following them and we were able to point out to him that it was hard for us to be following them as we were always already there when they arrived.

Rainbow pool, the source of water for this thermal pool

Watching Max swim this morning brought home to me again how far he has come in the last week or so – I don’t think there is any way he would have been prepared to set off down a hundred metre creek, pretty much all deeper than he can stand – on his own even last week, now however he is happy and confident with the thought (although the fact that he was going with the current certainly helped).
Tomorrow it is time to start heading towards the WA border, first stop Katherine for the new tyre and then our intention is to stay in the Gregory and Keep River National Parks for a few days before we get to Kununurra, so I guess entry’s will back up a little again until we can get reception and load everything up again.

Capital of the ‘Never Never’

Wild Brumbies adjacent to our campsite

So the next morning it was back off to Katherine after a great few days in the Kakadu. Max really enjoyed our time there and I was impressed by the way the place was set-up. Our entire experience was reliant on the Parks and Wildlife Services - from campsites to the boat ride up the river – and everything was well priced and well run.
When we got to Katherine tracking down a tyre turned out to be a major issue. In the end the local Bridgestone workshop has had to order one in from Adelaide as there aren’t even any to fit our car in Darwin so we now have until Monday before we start heading off towards Kununurra.
Once we had topped up with fuel and washed clothes we headed off again for Mataranka after deciding to spend our remaining few days exploring the hot springs area. On the way down max looked through the Camps book and picked out a campsite he liked the look of. When we got there it turned out to be another run by parks and Wildlife, very similar to those we had stayed in throughout the Kakadu and max was thrilled with his choice. In the end we paid for the full four nights we have before we are able to get the new tyre fitted.
The following morning we headed back into Mataranka and spent a couple of hours looking through the local museum. While there was a lot of interesting information and a few valuable artefacts, the whole place had a feel of decay, with not a lot of are appearing to have been taken of many of the exhibits since it opened over 20 years ago.
We left there and headed back towards our campsite, however rather than turning off we continued onto the Mataranka Homestead and the hot springs there. When we got there we found the replica homestead used for the film ‘We of the Never Never’ had been relocated so we wandered around looking at it. There was also a note advising that the film plays in the nearby bar at noon every day so we have resolved to head back in the next couple of days and view it.
After much complaining I talked Max into walking down to the hot springs for a look. In the end this was another walk that he was glad we did as he had an absolute ball at the springs – including meeting another 9 year old boy who is also in the middle of touring Australia – in his case just with his mum. The result of this was the first time since we left Darwin that I haven’t been the focus of max’s attention which was fantastic in some ways but took a little getting used to…

The 'missed' sign

This morning we headed off to find the Mataranka Waterfalls. The walk trail starts at our campsite (in fact the directional sign is beside our car, although neither of us had noticed it until I went wandering around looking for a sign that would tell me how far away the falls were!) and Max was a little apprehensive at it is over 4km each way. The walk itself was very pleasant although Max complained bitterly for the first 1.5km (due to me insisting that we walked out to the falls first and stopped at the swimming pontoons on our way back as I thought we would need a swim by the time we got back). Suddenly Max decided that his hat was the problem and talked me into swapping, with the result that he ran much of the rest of the way leaving me to follow. The falls themselves were pleasant enough, but not up to the standard we had become used to in the Kakadu, also Max wasn’t particularly happy as I wouldn’t let him swim there as I didn’t think he was a strong enough swimmer for the river conditions.
The walk back was a chore as I worked out exactly how unfit Max really is, I guess we haven’t really done that many lengthy walks over the years as a family so hopefully the next few weeks will result in a difference. By the time we got back Max was so tuckered out he decided he would prefer a lie down to a swim!

The Rock Pools at Gunlom

This morning started very early with max waking up feeling crook. I think it was purely heat stress as I am not convinced he is drinking enough no matter how much I try and force him. Maybe after this it will sink in! His reticence to drink a lot of water is intriguing given how proud he had been of how much he drank during our travels prior to Liz and Harry going home. I am wondering if there was an element of competition in this previously and now that Harry isn’t here it has ceased to be such a focus.
Anyway, after a slow start we headed of to the nearby waterfall. Initially we wandered over to the plunge pool, which was only a couple of hundred metres from the campsite, however I felt we were better off working up a bit of a sweat before a swim (and was hoping to find something nicer than the plunge pool as it looked a bit manky (word specially for you Liz) and green and coerced Max into climbing to the top of the waterfall with me.
For all that he wasn’t happy with the initial idea he ended up being very pleased as the rock pools at the top were by far the nicest swimming spot we have found in the Kakadu. While there another family joined us with two daughters – one older and one younger than Max. They were on there way from the Gold Coast to Margaret River to take up a new work direction and it turned out that like Liz and I they had initially met in Margaret River, so we spent a couple of hours chatting and messing around in the pools.

Late in the afternoon we went to a meeting point for a ranger guided tour out to the river – in the opposite direction to the falls, however when we got there we were told that the tour actually ran on Tuesday evenings and all the brochures and posters advertising it were incorrect. As far as I was concerned it would have been more appropriate to change the day of the tour, especially considering there were a large number of posters in the park itself advertising it for 5pm on Wednesdays.
Max and I did the actual walk anyway but I an sure we would have learnt more if we had been part of the tour – especially frustrating as we were there on the Tuesday and would have done it then if they had fixed the posters around the campsite!
Tomorrow it is time to leave the Kakadu, with our current plan being to head for Mataranka and the hot springs – although I will have to see what I can do about another tyre when we reach Katherine first.