Nature – Page 4 – The 2 Bradshaws

Kununurra, WA

We’ve become a bit more savvy when booking into a campsite now and ask to choose our own site. Quite often the powered sites are very expensive and you’re crammed into a small space with no views whilst the unpowered sites are spacious and in the best spots. This was the case at the Lakeside Caravan Park, Kununurra where we chose a lovely spot by the lagoon in the unpowered section. The only downside – at night we realised just how many crocs were in that lagoon when we shone a torch.

Ivanhoe Crossing

This is just outside of Kununurra and worth a visit. It’s a concrete causeway across the Ord River. Water flows over it year round but in the dry season it is a challenge for people to cross in their four wheel drives. There are saltwater crocodiles at the crossing and the waters are extremely dangerous but it’s still also a popular barramundi fishing and swimming spot.

Celebrity Tree Park

Ask visiting celebrities to plant a tree in your park and put up a plaque. Here’s Princess Anne’s tree:

There were also trees planted by Baz Luhrmann, John Williamson and John Farnham.

The park also has an impressive Boab Tree. These are common in the Kimberley region. The trees store water in their bottle shaped trunks. The boab nuts are edible and the seeds can be ground down to make flour.

If you have a four wheel drive vehicle, one of the iconic off-road challenges starts here. The Gibb River Road is around 650km long and takes you across to Derby .

The Victoria Highway to the Western Australia border

Timber Creek

On leaving Darwin, we had to head back down the Stuart Highway to Katherine, to pick up the Victoria Highway across to Western Australia. We stopped overnight at Timber Creek which is halfway between Katherine and the Western Australia border. This is the heart of croc country and it was a little unnerving to see a freshwater crocodile basking on the bank of the creek at the back of the campsite.

Locals don’t seem too worried about the ‘freshies’. Winston didn’t get a walk that night though!

The Border

There’s a quarantine checkpoint on the NT/Western Australia border. We had our quarantine booklet and I was confident the 2 ½ Bradshaws were compliant as I showed the inspector our fruit and veg. However he said he would have to confiscate our tomatoes and cucumber, and potatoes had to be peeled and cooked. Jonathan said I shouldn’t have quoted the booklet at him but it was incorrect. Not willing to hand over our food, we pulled into the rest area for a salad lunch and boiled up the potatoes before heading on through.

We were heading for the campsite at Lake Argyle, Australia’s largest freshwater lake. We only realised that Western Australia is 1 ½ hrs behind the NT when we arrived at reception and saw the clock. We are now only 7 hrs ahead of the UK. It was a little disappointing to find that the campsite wasn’t actually on the lakeside although after reading it’s home to 30,000 freshwater crocodiles, maybe that was a good thing. Jonathan didn’t hold out any hope of catching a barra with that lot in there. The weather is pretty much perfect at the moment. The temperature doesn’t go above 30 degrees during the day and it cools down at night. Back in Alice Springs, it’s now dropping below zero at night.

We sat with drinks and watched the sunset over the lake while listening to Steve Case, a travelling performer. He could do with adding a few cheery songs to his repertoire. It felt strange that the sun was going down at 5pm.

11,000 km later – the 2 ½ Bradshaws reach the Top End

What a journey it’s been, all the way up the Stuart Highway from Adelaide to Darwin, with a detour to Uluru.

We arrived in Darwin on Tuesday and are staying at a Barramundi fishing and conservation park on the outskirts. It has everything to keep the 2 ½ Bradshaws happy. Winston can run around off leash with the owners’ two corgis and have a cooling dip in the lake. There’s a tinnie for campers’ use which Jonathan takes out to try and catch a Barra for supper. It’s lovely and peaceful and I can sit reading, watching the birdlife and taking photographs.

The new Barramundi lure – designed to mimic a cane toad

At the Darwin Italian Festival – missing my little Fiat.

Darwin’s year round temperature is consistently around 32 degrees C and the seasons in the Top End are referred to as Wet and Dry. May to October is the peak visitor time during the dry season when the night time temperature can drop to a cool 20 degrees. We’re also now in croc country. The crocodylus porosus or saltwater crocodile is known as a ‘saltie’ in the Top End and it’s definitely at the top of the food chain. The highest concentration in Australia is around Darwin and the river systems to the south. After being hunted nearly to extinction, they are now a protected species in Australia and there is estimated to be 200,000 of them in the wild.

We saw possibly the most famous saltie of all – a 5 metre male called Sweetheart who is stuffed and on display at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

Whilst I can’t say I’m a fan of salties, I did feel sorry for old ‘Sweetheart’. He terrorised boaties in the 1970s, and in 1979, it was decided to catch him and keep him in captivity. They gave him a sedative but thought it hadn’t worked as he was still active. What they didn’t realise was, it had shut down the system which prevents crocs from drowning. Sweetheart became tangled underwater and slowly drowned.

The taxidermist given the task of stuffing Sweetheart actually took home some of the meat for dinner. Here’s a link to this very interesting story: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-04/the-darwin-sweetheart-crocodile-taxidermy-story/7587666

Sweetheart then went on a tour of Australia to promote the Northern Territory, though I’m not sure how telling people you’ve got dangerous saltwater crocodiles persuades them to visit!

The other particularly interesting exhibit at the museum tells the story of Cyclone Tracy which devastated Darwin on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 1974. The cyclone reached wind speeds of over 200 km/hr and destroyed over 70% of buildings in the city. Seventy-one people lost their lives. They have a dark, sound proof booth where you can hear a recording of the cyclone at its height.

Jonathan flew to Australia with his mum in January 1975 and can remember their plane being diverted to Darwin to pick up evacuees.

Continuing North …

Daly Waters Pub

A real surprise on the highway. The pub must be making thousands of dollars every night from drinks, pub meals and the campsite. Mostly grey nomads there and the pub knows how to entertain them for the night with a beef and barra bbq and live Aussie country music singalongs. It was nice to sit in comfy chairs with a cold beer at the end of a long hot day though.

Christine from Taiwan stapling her knickers to a beam.

Travellers have left all sorts of things hanging around the pub such as hats, thongs and underwear.

Bitter Springs, Mataranka

Bitter Springs is in the Elsey National Park. It’s a thermal pool where the water rises from underground at a fairly constant 34 degrees C. Dogs not allowed of course but the pool is only a short walk from the campsite where we’re staying. Reception hires out noodles and masks and snorkels. It was a lovely refreshing swim in this dust and 30 degree heat.

Jonathan went off fishing in the nearby river but after spotting this freshie lurking in the water, he decided an afternoon lounging in the hammock was much safer.

We’re now only 110 km South of Katherine and 424 km South of Darwin.

Alice Springs to Tennant Creek

Continuing North along the Stuart Highway.

Barrow Creek Telegraph Station

A historically interesting stop with more info about the building of the Overland Telegraph line.

Wycliffe Well

Claims to be the UFO hotspot of Australia.

Has a caravan park that’s fairly run down and some alien souvenirs at the shop. Someone quipped on Wikicamps that Wycliffe Well was probably the last place aliens would visit.

The Devil’s Marbles/Karlu Karlu

These are 393km North of Alice Springs. They are huge, rounded boulders, scattered over quite a large area. According to Aboriginal legend, the boulders are the eggs of the Rainbow Serpent laid during the Dreamtime. To the first English people who saw them, it looked as though the Devil had emptied his bag of marbles around the place. Geologically I believe they are called a ‘degraded nubbin’.

Tennant Creek

The town has a population of around 3,200 and is 70% indigenous. It was interesting to read an article written in The Guardian this week that said people in the town are diagnosed with infections and diseases that have been eradicated from the rest of Australia for nearly a century. An African health care worker said the town reminded him of his home in Zambia.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/may/20/return-to-tennant-creek-healthcare-going-backwards-says-di-natale

We stopped at a very nice caravan park but that’s the best thing I can say about the experience. The only part of town that showed any signs of life was the pub which absolutely stank as you walked past.

Tennant Creek Caravan Park. The view from our van.

Alice Springs

Lasseters Casino

This part of Alice Springs felt like a world away from the town with a convention centre, luxury hotels and landscaped gardens.The Casino was the final destination for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert where the three drag queens performed a show.

The Olive Pink Botanic Garden

Miss Olive Pink sounds like a formidable woman. She was an anthropologist who moved to central Australia in the 1930s to study and advocate for the Warlpiri and Arrernte people. She was a pioneer in using native plants and created the gardens as a ‘soulfeeding antidote to the restless rush and materials of what modern living entails.’

The NT writers’ festival was taking place at the garden and I took the opportunity to listen to a talk while I was there by Tim Low, a biologist from Brisbane who is writing a book about rare plants in Central Australia.

The Ghan stopped for a few hours in Alice Springs on its way to Darwin from Adelaide. It’s a very long train and these passengers had a very long walk down the platform in the heat.

The MacDonnell Ranges

The MacDonnell Ranges stretch to the East and West of Alice Springs. Our campsite was directly underneath the ranges. It was a very peaceful spot with lots of wildlife. Winston was desperate to chase the rock wallabies bouncing around the hillside.

We drove about 80km along a sealed road through the West MacDonnell Ranges and stopped off at these scenic spots along the way.

Pets are not actually allowed into Standley Chasm but they kindly said Winston could come on the walk too.

Kings Canyon

We didn’t manage to get to Kings Canyon when we were here in 2008, due to a tight schedule and some essential van repairs in Alice Springs so we were looking forward to seeing it on this trip.

There’s a choice of two walks – a 6km Rim Walk and a 2km Creek Walk. Mr Intrepid did the Rim Walk which starts with a lung busting climb up to the rim of the canyon.

We stayed at Kings Canyon Resort for the night – I think ‘resort’ is stretching things a bit but it was the closest camping to the Canyon walks. Also the most expensive site so far at $25 per person. Goodness knows what they do with the money but we had a gravel site with power and drinking water. There’s no phone reception here but there is wi-fi at the Canyon car park. Later, we sat having a drink at the campsite and watching the sunset over Kings Canyon when a dingo appeared.

It seemed pretty tame and more interested in saying hello to Winston but I quickly headed back to the van with the fluffy one. This seemed a good reason not to stay a second night.

The next morning, we returned to the Canyon, which is a 6km drive from the campsite, along a sealed road. I decided the Rim Walk was too scary and did the creek walk. My guided tour of the Arid Lands Botanic Gardens came in handy.

The roots of the Witchetty Bush provide a habitat for Witchetty Grubs which are highly nourishing and rich in protein. Often seen in bush tucker trials on ‘I’m a Celebrity’.

Priscilla Queen of the Desert movie note: Guy Pearce’s character has a dream to climb to the top of King’s Canyon in full drag and they do this towards the end of the movie. The writers wanted it to be Uluru but weren’t allowed.

Historic rail country (2)

As it’s now school holiday time in South Australia, it was great to find a quiet free camp just south of Peterborough. For almost 90 years from 1880, Terowie was on the main line from Adelaide to Port Augusta. Passengers and freight had to stop at Terowie and change trains as it was the ‘break of gauge’ point where the broad and narrow gauges met. We followed Bob the Railway Dog’s interpretative trail along the old railway line from the restored railway station to the cemetery.

During WWII, there was an Army staging camp in the town. General Douglas MacArthur made his famous “I shall return” speech on the railway platform in March 1942.

The station closed down in 1989 and the town is largely deserted now. The Terowie Citizens Association are doing their best to keep the history of the town alive and have restored several buildings.

Living Desert Reserve, Broken Hill

The 2 1/2 Bradshaws are now officially Outback. Our first evening in Broken Hill was spent on top of a hill, watching a beautiful sunset amongst 12 huge sandstone sculptures. They were created in 1993 by artists from around the world.

Nhatji (Rainbow Serpent) by Badger Bates from Broken Hill

Bajo El Sol Jaguar (Under the Jaguar Sun) by Antonio Nava Tirado, Mexico

By the way, Broken Hill which is in New South Wales, has decided to be on South Australia time so we had to put our watches back half an hour.