Northern Territory Natural Environment

After lunch, we headed straight for the Mataranka Hot Springs. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived there was a sign outside reception saying that they couldn't let anybody go swimming because the tropical storm was due at any minute. Nevertheless, we were still able to walk along the narrow path to the springs to take a look - although this wound through dense forest which was flooded and covered in bog in places so the journey involved quite a few unplanned excursions through the trees and getting covered in mud. Being a tropical area, the trees were alive with literally thousands upon thousands of Fruit Bats, all hanging upside down from every tiny twig or branch. The sky was almost blotted out by their little furry bodies, although unbelievably they blend so well into the background that you might not even notice them until somebody points them out. Of course, there's always one idiot in every group and our resident show-off was obviously unable to resist the temptation to clap loudly - this, of course, sent all the bats shooting into the air at once accompanied by the deafening noise of ten thousand tiny wings beating and the screams of several fellow travellers. The thermal springs are hidden away in the depths of the forest, and the natural hot water is so clear that you can see the mud at the bottom. I really have no idea why we were allowed to walk through the forest but not permitted to actually get into the pools, given that we wouldn't have cared much about the oncoming storm while up to our necks in hot water. In fact, there were already a few people bathing, obviously having arrived before the ban, and no sign of anybody telling them to get out. It struck me as quite unfair, and if our coach driver hadn't reduced the time we were staying to virtually nothing because of his wish to get the hell out of there before the storm struck, we probably would've got in anyway and stuck our collective tongues out at the management. It all looked very inviting - the trees hang over the pools, giving the springs a real back to nature feel. I dipped my foot in the water and it was the temperature of a hot bath, so I'm already trying to work out how I can get back here in the future to see what I've missed. Mind you, apparently the springs are considered something of a romantic destination, newlyweds and lovers being unable to resist the urge to come here and make love, so do I really want to get in there? Back at the gift shop, I had just enough time to buy an ice lolly - which they call ice pops over here, since lollies are what they call sweets - before the heavens opened up and the expected tropical storm arrived in Mataranka. It absolutely chucked it down as though it hadn't rained in centuries, and we all tore back onto the coach with our coats pulled over our heads. Those of us eating ice lollies must have looked quite strange in the pouring rain, but remember that the rain is warm up here and it doesn't get any colder just because it's raining. Several minutes later we arrived back at the highway, by which time the sun had come out and it was as though nothing had happened. But would the driver turn the coach around and go back to the springs? Would he heck.

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From Katherine, the coach took us along the Stuart Highway for another couple of hours until we broke for lunch in a little town called Pine Creek which is situated conveniently on the turnoff for Kakadu National Park. Pine Creek has a population of six hundred, actually quite a lot compared to many of the towns we have passed on the journey North, and somebody seems to have let this go to their head - when we arrived, we all piled into the local cafe and were astonished to find a big sign on the wall naming it as the Hard Rock Cafe, Pine Creek! This, I think I can safely say, is not one hundred percent official - but I can always tolerate delusions of grandeur if they make me laugh! From our lunch stop, we continued to drive all afternoon until we entered Kakadu National Park - an area of nearly twenty thousand square kilometres which is jointly maintained by its traditional Aboriginal owners and the government. At the moment, unfortunately, most of the area appears to be underwater, and this made for an interesting and slightly scary journey pretty much from the point where the coach left the main highway and entered the park. Most of the sealed roads are totally flooded, sometimes to a depth of a metre. Where the water was shallower and we could pass, we were driving through soft mud and water was up to the level of the coach doors and flooding the floor - we had to either drive through slowly or speed through with the coach rocking from side to side, and only our coach captain seemed to know the secret formula which allowed him to determine which of these would avoid us sinking on any particular road. To make things worse we were booked to go on a two hour cruise of the Yellow Waters Billabong at 4.30, and by the time we got to the ticket office the skies had opened up and we were in the middle of another tropical storm. This time, the rain was so heavy that we couldn't even see clearly through the windows - the windscreen wipers were thrashing wildly but having little effect. Essentially, we were driving through three feet of water in zero visibility and just crossing our fingers that we were still on the road. Luckily, our coach captain managed to perform a minor miracle and made it to the ticket office which turned out to literally be the last building on a road which then vanished into an extended lake which used to once be a car park. We parked the coach in a position where we could easily leap into the adjacent cafeteria, and waited for a few minutes until the rain had stopped so that we could have a look around and assess the situation.
As it turned out, the storm had actually worked to our advantage - since the lake had risen so much because of the floods, we were able to board our boat from the back of the ticket office rather than having to drive a further five kilometres down the road to the normal wharf. Despite the weather and the lack of any solid surfaces for miles in any direction, the staff at Kakadu weren't letting anything get them down and helped us on board the boat so that we could begin what turned out to be a surprisingly good cruise. The floods had raised the water level by so much that we were able to take a leisurely sail around the car park and take photos of all the keep left signs floating past. The cruise lasted around two hours, and I got the distinct impression that the boatman was the sort who would finish a job if it killed him - despite several suggestions that he could turn back if he wanted, he just kept insisting that he's seen much worse. During those two hours, I think I must've seen just about every species of birdlife known in this country - every few yards, the guide would stop the boat and point excitedly into a tree where a tiny pair of eyes would indicate that something was sheltering from the rain. It's a shame we didn't see any crocodiles which I was particularly looking forward to, but you can't have everything. Tonight, we are staying at the Kakadu Holiday Village. This would normally be quite satisfactory, except that on the way over here we stopped off to look at the Jabiru Holiday Inn which has actually been built to look exactly like a crocodile, so it doesn't seem quite like they've made the effort.

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In 2003 I returned to Kakadu with Tanya during our trip to Australia and New Zealand and finally managed to see what Kakadu looked like when it wasn't underwater. I have to say that it was a much more enjoyable experience with the sun beating down and all the birds of the park out on the water, standing around on lilies or actively hunting for fish. On the 1999 tour there was certainly no shortage of wildlife as I have described above, but it was nice in 2003 to not have the guide stopping the boat every five seconds to have us squint into a tree looking for a particular bird - and it was certainly easier to find the crocodiles. Having said that, I still have fond memories of sailing past a "one way" sign sticking out of the water with only the yellow square above water and the entire pole below!

The itinerary for my last day with the AAT Kings tour group changed totally at breakfast this morning when the news surfaced that the entrance to Litchfield National Park was flooded and that we could no longer visit the park or go swimming at Wangi Falls as planned. Mike had been given a report by his boss early this morning that the road into the park was under nearly two metres of water, and had been getting half hourly updates throughout the night - but the latest news was that the water level, although dropping, was still at over a metre and that the road was likely to remain impassable for some time. On board the coach, Mike and Lisa explained that they had discussed the situation, considered all the options and decided that we should go instead to somewhere called the Territory Wildlife Park in Berry Springs, forty Kilometres outside Darwin. This resulted in a number of people with a collective mental age of about five mumbling under their breath and storming off the coach in a huff, claiming that their entire holiday had been ruined and that they wouldn't be going to no boring wildlife park, but the rest of us accepted that there's not much anybody can do about the weather and we headed off towards Berry Springs for our unexpected excursion. Driving out to the Wildlife Park didn't take long, and AAT Kings paid our entrance fee as the storms had stopped us from being able to visit a Crocodile farm yesterday which we had already paid for. We were met by a girl at the entrance, who was altogether too chirpy for that time of the morning, and she explained every tiny detail about how the park worked before handing us all maps and booklets repeating everything she had just said in case we hadn't been listening. Which most of us hadn't, being still asleep. The park is divided into sections representing the three major habitats of Northern Australia - Monsoon Rainforest, Woodlands and Wetlands. Each of these areas is either a self contained environment supported by the creeks, rivers and forests of Berry Springs, or is contained within a geodome or indoors where environmental conditions can be simulated year round. It's all quite impressive, and the management obviously think they're a smaller version of Disneyland as they've even laid on a "train" that trundles around the roads picking people up from out the front of each environment and dropping them off at the next. My main complaint about the day, if any, is that we had to be back at the coach at the ridiculously early time of 12.15, which didn't give us anywhere near enough time to see everything. Why do coach tours do this? We've already paid to get in and the coach isn't using any petrol while it sits in the car park, so why don't they just leave us in the park all day where there are plenty of restaurants and cafes to keep us happy until evening? It's a mystery to me. My favourite area of the park was the aviary - I could've spent the whole day there. This is something unlike anything you've seen before - instead of having birds crammed cruelly into tiny cages with hardly enough room to perch, this place was nothing short of an opportunity to observe the birds going about their daily business. A wooden walkway started at ground level and raised me slowly upward, higher and higher into the rainforest, right up to the canopy where it zigzagged in and out of the trees with birds zooming past my head and landing on my arm if I decided to stick it out. Multiple habitats have been created for various avian species, and every now and then the walkway would lead me into a sort of hide in the sky, where I was able to sit and watch the birds through giant windows looking right out into the forest and often right into their nests in adjoining trees. Eventually, the walkway led me into a huge space-age biodome which was totally cut off from the rest of the forest and through which the treetop walk continued with jaw droppingly beautiful tropical birds flying everywhere. Even when I finally left the biodome, the walk continued through monsoonal rainforest for some twenty minutes before it gently began to slope back down to ground level and finally emerged back onto the road. I really wanted to be five again, so I could get away with screaming "Go again, go again!" For those wishing to experience birds which are more likely to eat you than sit on your shoulder, the park also offers two Birds of Prey shows daily. A couple of handlers stand in the middle of a large grassy area surrounded by a wary looking audience while various Kites, Hawks and Eagles zoom over the crowd with an average headroom of about three centimetres to grab food out of the hands of anybody who happens to have been foolish enough to bring any. The handlers, who are also clearly accomplished comedians and have the crowd in the palm of their hands as all Australian showmen seem to do, make it quite clear that no attempt has been made to train or tame the birds - they simply know where the food is. Nevertheless, Birds of Prey really don't need to do much to look impressive - just the sight of an Eagle soaring majestically out of the distant trees when called, narrowly missing the heads of small children who shall remain emotionally scarred by the experience for the rest of their lives, and grabbing a small piece of meat out of the handler's outstretched fingers before vanishing over the horizon again is enough to impress anybody. Afterwards, various Hawks and Eagles could be found sitting on logs around the outside of the green snacking on great lumps of meat and looking up occasionally as though to say "Yeah? You looking at me?". We were advised, just in case any of us were suffering from terminal stupidity, not to stroke them. Myself, I wasn't even going to look at them funny. In the aquarium, there is an underwater viewing tunnel which runs underneath a billabong (1) in one of the habitats and I was able to get the closest I have ever been to a really mean looking Saltwater Crocodile - albeit on the other side of a sheet of glass. The sign said that Salties can reach speeds of up to forty kilometres an hour on land, so I'm sure he could've taken a run up and smashed through the window if he'd really wanted to eat me anyway - or at least, that's what I'll be telling people when they ask about my brave encounter with a croc. Today has been really relaxing, and I'm really glad we didn't go to Litchfield as planned as this has turned out to be a great day out. The best thing about the Territory Wildlife Park, as far as I'm concerned, is that there are no animals in cages - the Kangaroos and Wallabies seem to just be wandering around in a massive conservation area, quite happy. They seem to be quite ahead of the pack in Australia when it comes to the things that actually count for anything - the environment, animal welfare, Aboriginal rights. In fact, Australia is one of the most forward thinking countries I've visited on my travels, and it really shows. This evening was the last that the AAT Kings group would be spending together - I'm off Westward and the others are all going their separate ways or flying across to Cairns to join another tour heading south. For a farewell meal, we all trotted off to find a nearby restaurant and ended up in an American chain called Sizzlers, which was certainly an experience. For some reason we were expected to line up upon arrival, as though this was a roadside truck stop, and only after having ordered and paid at the till were we approached by a waitress who provided us with cutlery and showed us to our table. The main problem with this arrangement, of course, was that several of us decided that we wanted a desert after we'd finished our main course - this required lining up all over again and confused the hell out of the waitress who was waiting at the end of the line and couldn't quite get her head around the fact that we already had cutlery and a table! Half way through our meal, we were interrupted by a commotion at the next table. It appears that a young mother had taken it upon herself to change her baby on the dining table - yes, you did read that correctly - and this had upset the management somewhat. Australian hospitality might be a wonderful thing, but it does have its limits.

(1) Billabong is an Australian term for a small lake or pond, often empty in the dry season.

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With nothing much left to do in the Northern Territory before catching my bus into Western Australia tomorrow, I decided today to be spontaneous and grab a 4WD tour to Lichfield National Park. The weather has improved considerably since yesterday and the park is now open, and it seemed a shame to leave the area without at least having a go at seeing it. I was picked up from the hotel this morning by a pleasant guy called John, in an 8 seater 4WD Toyota. What I had booked, it turned out, was a small group tour that John runs with his brother, and from what I had been told this was quite simply the only way to see "The top end". Already on board were Richard and Scott, two tourists from Somerset and Wales respectively, and an older couple from Melbourne. We stopped briefly at the youth hostel to pick up a gorgeous girl called Shauna who was from Sydney doing a tour of her country, and then we set off along the Stuart Highway towards Lichfield National Park. Our guide, John, was a serious comedian from the start - the sort of guy who chuckles privately to himself every time he manages to persuade some mug in the group to look out for a Koala Nest or a Kangaroo Egg. He had Shauna well and truly stitched up waving a compass in front of a Magnetic Termite Mound - in case you were wondering, they're called this because the termites build them facing North. After that she wasn't going to listen to a word he said for the rest of the day, which was a shame as he was our guide and I imagine that a fair amount of what he told us was actually true! We stopped for breakfast at a little café along the highway, where we all snacked on tea and toast at John's expense before heading into the National Park for a really great 4WD tour of the lakes and forests. Being in a small group really adds to the whole atmosphere - we went swimming under the spray of a huge waterfall, and John was able to point out features of the surrounding landscape and wildlife in the tree's that we wouldn't have been able to see if we had been in a bus full of tourists. However much I explore this country, it still feels very strange to be so obviously miles away from anywhere. We had to scramble down a seemingly endless flight of stone steps that had been chipped into the riverbank, and then suddenly we were in a grassy clearing through which the river ran out of a big pool of crystal clear water, accompanied by the roar of the waterfall. After swimming for an hour or so, John took us on a tour of Lichfield - showing us the aforementioned termite mounds as well as the homes of the local Rock Wallabies. It started to rain, though, so we weren't lucky enough to see any today, despite returning to the rocks several times during the day. We drove through the small town of Bachelor, and stopped at a place where a wooden walkway had been constructed over the swamp so that we could wander around some truly huge Magnetic termite mounds and take in the sheer scale of the things, some of which were five times taller than me. We sheltered from the rain for a while under an information hut nearby, and John produced a big box of fruit and snacks in which we indulged. This area of the country appears to specialise in amazing waterfalls, and in the afternoon we went to see another couple, one of which had a walkway that took us right underneath the spray. At mid-afternoon, we reached a small campground where we followed the trail for some distance into the forest while John told us about the native flora and fauna. Before leaving, he told us to check our clothes for leeches, and as you can imagine this sent Shauna into a fit - I think John had been secretly hoping that she'd just rip her clothes off and stamp up and down on them like in the movies! The thing is, though, that in the bush there really are more creepy things than it's healthy to think about. Some of them even make it as tour guides. We finished up the day with another free meal at the place where we had stopped for breakfast. John offered to buy us whatever we wanted to eat, so naturally we emptied the place out and sat around on benches in the garden outside talking about what a great day it had been. Afterwards, sad to be parting, we wished each other luck for the rest of our respective trips and carted our bloated selves back into the Toyota for the return to Darwin. Back in my room tonight, I immediately picked up the phone and called Greyhound. I had been hearing some disturbing rumours that the roads to the west were closed off again, and this would've once again put my plans back by a few days. At this point, it's already looking as though I'm not going to have as long as I had wanted in several places without being set back even further. "No Sir," the girl at central reservations assured me, "At the moment the roads are clear - But we don't know for how long it will stay that way." The only available coach leaves Darwin at 7.45 in the morning, and so I finally get to head towards Australia's famous West coast. I have never been to Western Australia before, except for a brief visit to Perth a few years ago, so from here on out it's nearly all new to me…

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The coach journey from Darwin to Broome has been an experience, to say the least. There seems to have been an almost total lack of communication between the driver (I'm sorry, I mean the Captain) and Greyhound themselves - elsewhere in the world he would've been able to keep in constant touch with the company over a radio in the cab, but I guess the wide expanses of nothing making up Australia makes radio reception impossible. Instead, we have had to rely on information given to the driver en-route by locals as to the state of the roads ahead. Every time we stopped at a roadhouse, he would encourage us to take our time having a spot of lunch or a "smoke-o" while he shot off to speak to somebody in the know or possibly make a phone call. We would all be left standing around with our fingers crossed, hoping that the next leg of the journey didn't turn out to be underwater. If at any point the weather had turned bad again, there's a pretty good chance the driver would've simply turned the coach around and headed back to Darwin - assuming, of course, that we hadn't all staged a sit-down strike in front of the wheels which I think was on the cards on at least two occasions. We had, of course, all had to sign the usual waiver forms back in Darwin saying that we accepted the risk of being stranded by floods, but in reality I think there were some people on board who had seen the worst of the weather over the last few weeks and probably would've nailed the driver to the door of the roadhouse by his testicles if there had been even the slightest hint of having to turn back. And who exactly would've been able to stop them? I hope Greyhound pays danger money! I've been wondering about this for a while actually. How exactly do you maintain any semblance of law and order in a country the size of Australia where each town is hundreds of kilometres from the next and only contains two hundred people and a couple of police officers? Any serious crime of any kind and surely the local police must be totally overwhelmed - and by the time reinforcements have taken all night to arrive from the next town it's all over and the criminals have fled the country! Riots have been known to flare up in Australian towns over things as trivial as somebody letting their dog walk across a neighbour's garden - in 2005, back in Boulia, a major riot ended in a standoff outside the local police station in which a mob threatened to kill two local policemen. What made this case even more bizarre was that one of the women taking part in the riot was a local councillor and that, since no legislation existed at the time to cover such a thing, nobody was able to remove her from office even after she had been convinced. It was left entirely up to the electorate to decide whether or not they wanted a rioter to remain in power after the next election. I'll say it again - only in Australia. We stopped at Katherine on the way to the border, which was certainly an interesting place to experience by the light of day. The transit center in Katherine is a petrol station and a guy with a microphone. I'm not saying Katharine is a small town, but the "Welcome to Katherine" and "Good-bye. Please Come Again" signs are pasted back to back onto the same pole. I hesitate to describe it as a one horse town, but if you did take a horse there then there wouldn't be any room left to swing the cat. I could do this all day. And yet, Katherine does have an internet Cafe from where I was able to send some e-mails home. The Internet, for some reason, took off big in Australia almost from the moment somebody came up with the name. No matter how small the town is, there will always be public access to the Net for next to nothing. In some places where there are no viable shops in which to install a computer, the local school allows access to the Internet to the public in out of school hours. This, I'm guessing, is another indication of just how important backpackers are to the Australian Tourism industry - wherever you are, probably even at the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef, you'll be able to get internet access somehow. You may, in some places, be connected via a 14K modem which takes three weeks to send a single e-mail, but at least you have contact with the outside world. I'm now crossing into Western Australia, which can best be described as a huge expanse of wilderness scattered with National Parks. In fact, although we haven't had time to stop and have a good look, we passed today through Purnululu National Park which is home to the famous Bungle Bungles - which are nothing to do with the Geoffrey-Geoffreys and the Zippy-Zippys. Only really truly appreciated from the air, the Bungle Bungles are a range of mountains formed as hundreds of imposing irregularly shaped red striped mounds sticking hundreds of metres into the air. Every nook and cranny in the rocks is filled with lakes, woodland and abundant wildlife - and the Bungle Bungles are certainly one of the most imposing geological features of Western Australia, attracting energetic hikers probably with no idea what they're letting themselves in for. I have no doubt that clawing my way through the Bungle Bungles and constantly coming across hidden lakes, caves and gorges could make me want to set up camp and never leave, so perhaps it's best that my limited time in Western Australia forces me to pass straight through. On another occasion, I'll almost certainly be coming back and spending some time exploring this region of the country in more depth.

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