Planning a Trip to Northern Territory

As we all boarded the coach after breakfast this morning, the radio was predicting a tropical storm for the "top end", which is what the Australians imaginatively call the part of the Northern Territory we're heading into now. Our main stop of the day was scheduled to be a dip in the famous thermal springs at Mataranka, and this was to involve a walk through the forest, so the idea that we were heading into the middle of a storm didn't strike me as particularly auspicious - but up here, you usually just accept things like storms and floods as inevitable, shrug and hope for the best. We stopped for lunch at the Daly Waters pub, voted the best wayside Inn in the Northern Territory. It is also Australia's remotest pub, a fact which has clearly only served to add to the attraction of the place. People actually drive hundreds of kilometres out of their way just to visit Daly Waters, either because somebody has told them about it or they've read about it in a book somewhere - but whatever the reason for stopping by, few are disappointed by what they find. The pub isn't actually on the Stuart Highway, which means that the coach had to turn off and drive along a bumpy track to reach it, but this just adds to its remoteness and somehow I feel it would lose a lot of its charm if it suddenly found itself next to a main road. As well as being incredibly remote, Daly Waters is also able to lay claim to being Australia's oldest licensed public house, having been established in 1893. It has everything I would expect from an outback pub - there's a verandah attached to the front that looks as though it could fall off at any moment; a sorry looking dog baking in the mid-day sun, with just enough energy to lift an ear and raise an eye as I walk past; locals sitting around in huge floppy hats sipping beer and telling each other that nothing has happened today. But what makes Daly Waters unique and draws people here from all over the world are the things you wouldn't expect. Our coach captain had been teasing the women on board all morning that the staff at Daly Waters expect all female visitors to donate an item of underwear for them to hang over the bar - upon arrival I have to say that many of them were relieved to find that this activity was entirely voluntary, although there really is a fair collection of bras and panties tacked up over the bar which have been left behind over the years. The walls are covered from top to bottom with photos of visitors sitting around, posing, or taking part in regular events and live entertainment which the pub lays on. There were football scarves, badges, stickers, dirty (in both meanings of the word) posters, foreign flags, beer mats and other assorted stuff stuck to every surface. This, as you can imagine, gives the pub a real international feel. In fact, several beams are covered from floor to ceiling with coins and banknotes from around the world. I don't think there was a single bit of free space anywhere to stick anything new, so I assume there must also be a massive storeroom somewhere so that they can remove old stuff and replace it with new offerings on a regular basis. Outside the front of the pub is Australia's remotest traffic light, in perfectly working order, serving absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than to make people point and say "What the hell?" Out the back, there is a small collection of cages in which birds of various varieties are kept as pets and also serve as entertainment for visitors if there's any time left after spending a couple of hours reading everything on the walls - one of the parrots seems to have taken a particular taste to lager and refuses to drink anything else. And make sure you don't forget your swimming trunks, because this is the only pub I've ever seen with its own swimming pool! Staff at the pub, as is often the case in outback Australian watering holes like this, are made up of a combination of local characters and backpackers looking for work on the way through. Sometimes, you'll strike up a conversation with the girl behind the bar and discover that she was just travelling through on her way somewhere else and liked the place so much that she decided to stay and work for a few months - and to be honest, in a place like this with tourists heading through every day, you're never going to be lonely and you'll always be meeting new people. Getting to Daly Waters isn't a problem - most of the Australian tours come here either for a couple of hours or to stay in the adjoining motel, there's a small airfield the size of a postage stamp down the road which has the cheek to call itself an international airport and believe it or not there is even a Helipad out the back just in case you have your own helicopter in the garage.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

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.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

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.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

Wear suncreen HIGHEST possible SPF, and stay hydrated. The best time to visit is in the Summer, less humid. Go to the Nitmiluk Gorge (beautiful, breath taking views, kayaking, cliff diving, canoeing) and stop by the local restaurant Kimbidgees which is on the way to the gorge

Travelling North from Alice Springs on the Stuart Highway, the coach crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and we were all encouraged to be true tourists and get off for a look. The actual line between South and North is, um, a line drawn across the road - giving several of my fellow passengers the opportunity to make idiots of themselves by demonstrating a total lack of understanding of the difference between the Tropic of Capricorn and The Equator and leaping back and forth across it going "Look, I'm in the Northern Hemisphere... Look, I'm in the Southern Hemisphere" while we all smiled politely and wondered if anybody would notice if we drove off without them. Our coach captain, having a particularly wicked sense of humour, went and got a funnel from the back of the coach and used it to demonstrate to anybody gullible enough to fall for a simple magic trick that water drained clockwise on one side of the line and anticlockwise on the other (1). I am now officially back in the tropical zone, which means nothing other than I can expect to be attacked by a different species of insect from now on and I can sweat buckets again without being a whinging Pom. Tennant Creek is the main town on the junction of the Stuart Highway which runs almost the entire way up the middle of Australia and the Barkely highway which heads off Eastwards back towards Mount Isa and eventually Townsville. It is therefore also a major terminal and stopover for the many coaches heading between the red center and the East coast and is positioned almost exactly half way between Alice Springs to the South and Katherine, where I will be stopping tomorrow on the way to Darwin, to the North. The town is named after a nearby Creek which was given it's name by John McDouall Stuart, the most well known of the Australian pioneers and a man who dedicated most of his life to exploring and mapping great chunks of the country and presumably saying "Oh look, some more desert" every few miles. Stuart had already made several expeditions across the outback by the time he reached Tennant Creek, losing companions and catching Scurvy in the process, finally arriving here as part of an attempt to explore the country from South to North - an attempt thwarted soon afterwards by a tribe of Aborigines who obviously hadn't learned that thwarted white men often came back later with guns. Stuart is such a popular figurehead in Australia, in fact, that Alice Springs was actually called Stuart until 1933. In the 30s, Tennant Creek was a major destination for miners keen to take advantage of the Gold Rush sweeping the area. These days, however, it is just a sleepy outback town on the way from somewhere to somewhere else, but nevertheless seems to suffer from the slightly over-inflated ego that Australian towns often do. I don't mean to suggest for one moment that it's not a perfectly nice place for a stopover or a bit of a walkabout, or that the people are anything less than charming and welcoming, but if you're looking for nightlife in a typical outback settlement you're probably going to end up with your backside firmly planted on a barstool in the town pub, talking to the same three people for your entire stay. The Tennant Creek tourist literature describes it as the only major town in the middle of the Northern Territory, which really is about as meaningless as saying that London is the biggest city in the London area. The only other signs of civilisation for hundreds of kilometres in any direction are small Aboriginal settlements and cattle ranches - In fact, there are only a handful of towns of any decent size in the Northern Territory and four of them are larger than Tennant Creek. I have to admit that I've never really understood patriotism for the sake of it - after all, nobody gets to choose where they're born and surely in a free world someone is entitled to grow up, weigh up all the options and then decide they'd rather be elsewhere. This, after all, is the basis on which many people spend their life travelling. The Australians seem to have local pride almost down to street level - so much as mention to an Australian that the town he was brought up in doesn't have streets paved with gold and he'll shout at you until he's hoarse and then head off to find his knuckle dusters. I remember making the mistake when I came through here on a previous trip of suggesting to my previously chatty and light-hearted coach driver, who turned out to have lived here for several years, that Tennant Creek was perhaps "not as nice as Alice Springs". Not only did he never speak to me again, but I suddenly found myself allocated to the only broken seat on the coach. I was just glad I didn't point out the graffiti on the door of the bus station toilets. Another thing you should probably not do is listen carefully to a local guide telling you that the town hall dates back to the 1920s, and then point out casually that your front door is slightly older. Trust me on this.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/parks/find/devilsmarbles.html
http://www.tennantcreek.nt.gov.au

(1) This isn't true, by the way. The Coriolis Effect, which is supposed to account for water draining in different directions on either side of the Equator, isn't anywhere near strong enough to create such a noticeable effect. It's an urban legend. Tell your friends.

Unfortunately, there is always one person in every holiday group who seems determined to annoy as many people as possible, and at breakfast today she decided to join me at my table. This lady - we'll call her Betty - must be in her late 50s and seems to think that she's done pretty well for herself over the years and should share all her knowledge with everyone, whether they want to know or not. So over my cereal this morning I found myself being subjected to a lecture on the art of filling in tax returns, and she would've got much further in her attempt to tell me how she'd gone to England as a young woman and made her fortune if I hadn't suddenly remembered something important I had to be doing elsewhere. According to the literature at the hotel, Katharine Gorge boasts facilities for hiking, boating, canoeing and scenic flights along the Katherine River. As our time in the area was limited, AAT Kings had arranged a boat cruise for us which would allow us to see the gorge and also get to do some limited hiking within Nitmiluk National Park, home to the indigenous Jawoyn Aborigines (1) to whom it is a major cultural site. At the moment, the Katherine River is pretty tranquil and the cruise was relaxing, but it isn't always that way - much of the "top end" of Australia is prone to flooding from Cyclones and rising river levels, and in the wet season it really is pretty much touch and go whether any of the attractions and parks will be able to open from one day to the next. The last major flood in Katherine was in 1998 when the Katherine River rose twenty-three meters and flooded the town and surrounding areas, causing mass evacuations and the region to be designated as a national disaster zone (2). The cruise turned out to be about thirty of us crammed into what didn't amount to much more than a large raft with seats, but we didn't mind because Katherine Gorge can't be described as anything less than incredible. In fact I honestly don't think I could come up with a word to describe the intensity of the scenery as you sail along the river between towering rock walls seventy metres high, the silence only broken by the clicking of camera shutters and the screeches of birds. It's difficult in Europe to go anywhere where there is no sound of traffic to distract you - but here in Katherine Gorge, you really can forget that such things exist. Surrounded by rock faces, banks of grass and with birds wheeling overhead, it doesn't seem such a stretch to imagine that you've travelled millions of years back in time and that up ahead there'll be a brontosaurus wading across the river. Although the gorge is around twelve kilometres long, there are areas of the river which are full of rapids and dangerous to pass unless you're in a canoe. The boatman tethered us to the shore just before we disappeared over the edge of a mini waterfall and those of us who felt up to it got out for a leisurely scramble across loose sandstone and through narrow gaps in the rock walls. Striding off ahead as though expecting us all to be Olympic athletes, our guide obviously took his job very seriously and seemed very excited to have us following him around - occasionally he would seem to vanish altogether, and just when some of us were starting to wonder how to get back without him his head would pop out of a hole in the rock face and he'd call out excitedly "Come on, come on, this way. Nearly there" as though somehow whatever we were going to see would run away if we didn't get a move on. Eventually, we reached a point at the base of the gorge, obviously inaccessible by boat, where the rock face was literally covered in Aboriginal paintings - clearly, this area has been a significant place to the Jawoyn for a long time, because it seems that these works of art run the entire length of the gorge and tell numerous stories of Aboriginal history in the area. I had not been expecting to see so many paintings in one place, and to be able to make them out so clearly - in some places, the rocks are so well protected from the elements that the paintings look almost untouched since they were originally created. Back on the boat, we headed back downstream for a bit before being ushered off again for another walk, this time with a stern warning that this one was a bit more strenuous and that some of the older members of the group may wish to remain on the boat. The rest of us happily scrambled through tree-lined walkways, dangled precariously over the rapids on narrow rope-bridges and generally cut ourselves to shreds until we finally emerged into a clearing in which a quite spectacular waterfall cascaded into a crystal clear lake. Miss know-it-all from breakfast this morning was so surprised that she tripped over a rock and we got to watch her expensive new camera arc through the air in slow motion and land with a satisfying plop in the middle of the pool, which would've mean much more pleasing if we hadn't been distracted by the guide plonking a big blue box down on the floor and cracking it open to reveal drinks and sandwiches. Mind you, she did manage to lock herself in the toilet on the way back to the dock on the boat, so we all had a good laugh then instead. Those of us who had come prepared stripped down to our trunks and dived in. Oh, it was bliss - I couldn't wait to see the faces on the people back at the boat when we told them that we'd been swimming under a waterfall and sitting by the pool eating sandwiches while they sat and waited for us to return. My only regret about today has been that we have to stay in a hotel tonight. Nitmiluk provides perfectly good camping facilities, and I would've been quite happy to sleep under the stars surrounded by Aboriginal paintings and the sound of the river. Maybe next time.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

(1) In the Jawoyn language, Nitmiluk means "the place of Cicada Dreaming" (2) In April 2006, the Katharine River once again rose to around twenty meters and flooded the town with very little warning. Homes were once again filled with water and millions of dollars worth of damage was done. A state of emergency was declared in the area, but this time little damage was done to the houses themselves and the town quickly got back to normal. Needless to say, Home Insurance is at a premium in this part of the world.

Close to Tennant Creek you'll find the Alien Campground. It's lot of fun - so many things to explore, you'll see Hulk, Elvis and lots of other Aliens. Even if you need to go to the toilet you'll meet the Femaliens or the Maliens....

Litchfield National Park - Florence Falls At Florence Falls two spectacular waterfalls cascade into a deep swimming hole. Be careful of submerged sharp rocks.
You can also climb to a high lookout for a magnificent view down to the falls and the surrounding bush area.
If you want to linger a little longer here, there is a nearby campground with shower and toilet facilities.

Read more: http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/827ac/1ca531/4/#ixzz1GzmznMy4

One building which is a reminder of the devastation of Cyclone Tracy is Christchurch Cathedral in Smith Street near the harbour. The original building was completed in 1902. It was 'enhanced' by the armed forces in 1944. Using stones taken from the old Post Office they built a porch as a memorial to the people who had died in World War II. Significantly when Christmas morning 1974 dawned the only part of the Cathedral left intact was the porch. The cathedral was subsequently rebuilt incorporating the porch into the new design.

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.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

Backbackers As I was admiring the CBD view from my Saville Suite Apartment balcony I noticed three backpackers accommodation within throwing distance so I thought I'd add this as a tip.
Although I haven't stayed at any of these, they seemed very busy with backpackers from all over the world. I've heard that Chilli's is one of the more popular.
There are heaps of backpackers around Darwin so it's best you do some due diligence on the internet.


Read more: http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/827ac/1ca531/3/#ixzz1GzsLDVDx

As we all boarded the coach after breakfast this morning, the radio was predicting a tropical storm for the "top end", which is what the Australians imaginatively call the part of the Northern Territory we're heading into now. Our main stop of the day was scheduled to be a dip in the famous thermal springs at Mataranka, and this was to involve a walk through the forest, so the idea that we were heading into the middle of a storm didn't strike me as particularly auspicious - but up here, you usually just accept things like storms and floods as inevitable, shrug and hope for the best. We stopped for lunch at the Daly Waters pub, voted the best wayside Inn in the Northern Territory. It is also Australia's remotest pub, a fact which has clearly only served to add to the attraction of the place. People actually drive hundreds of kilometres out of their way just to visit Daly Waters, either because somebody has told them about it or they've read about it in a book somewhere - but whatever the reason for stopping by, few are disappointed by what they find. The pub isn't actually on the Stuart Highway, which means that the coach had to turn off and drive along a bumpy track to reach it, but this just adds to its remoteness and somehow I feel it would lose a lot of its charm if it suddenly found itself next to a main road. As well as being incredibly remote, Daly Waters is also able to lay claim to being Australia's oldest licensed public house, having been established in 1893. It has everything I would expect from an outback pub - there's a verandah attached to the front that looks as though it could fall off at any moment; a sorry looking dog baking in the mid-day sun, with just enough energy to lift an ear and raise an eye as I walk past; locals sitting around in huge floppy hats sipping beer and telling each other that nothing has happened today. But what makes Daly Waters unique and draws people here from all over the world are the things you wouldn't expect. Our coach captain had been teasing the women on board all morning that the staff at Daly Waters expect all female visitors to donate an item of underwear for them to hang over the bar - upon arrival I have to say that many of them were relieved to find that this activity was entirely voluntary, although there really is a fair collection of bras and panties tacked up over the bar which have been left behind over the years. The walls are covered from top to bottom with photos of visitors sitting around, posing, or taking part in regular events and live entertainment which the pub lays on. There were football scarves, badges, stickers, dirty (in both meanings of the word) posters, foreign flags, beer mats and other assorted stuff stuck to every surface. This, as you can imagine, gives the pub a real international feel. In fact, several beams are covered from floor to ceiling with coins and banknotes from around the world. I don't think there was a single bit of free space anywhere to stick anything new, so I assume there must also be a massive storeroom somewhere so that they can remove old stuff and replace it with new offerings on a regular basis. Outside the front of the pub is Australia's remotest traffic light, in perfectly working order, serving absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than to make people point and say "What the hell?" Out the back, there is a small collection of cages in which birds of various varieties are kept as pets and also serve as entertainment for visitors if there's any time left after spending a couple of hours reading everything on the walls - one of the parrots seems to have taken a particular taste to lager and refuses to drink anything else. And make sure you don't forget your swimming trunks, because this is the only pub I've ever seen with its own swimming pool! Staff at the pub, as is often the case in outback Australian watering holes like this, are made up of a combination of local characters and backpackers looking for work on the way through. Sometimes, you'll strike up a conversation with the girl behind the bar and discover that she was just travelling through on her way somewhere else and liked the place so much that she decided to stay and work for a few months - and to be honest, in a place like this with tourists heading through every day, you're never going to be lonely and you'll always be meeting new people. Getting to Daly Waters isn't a problem - most of the Australian tours come here either for a couple of hours or to stay in the adjoining motel, there's a small airfield the size of a postage stamp down the road which has the cheek to call itself an international airport and believe it or not there is even a Helipad out the back just in case you have your own helicopter in the garage.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

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.

You can read my complete travel journals at www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

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!

A definite activity you must do while here is climbing Ayer's Rock , or "Uluru" at the heart of the red center. It's a three mile hike up the smooth surface of the largest rock in the world, with stakes and chains if you need help. Once you're at the top, there's a large compass with the names of the different regions of Australia labeled in each direction. Great photo opportunities. For those who have difficulty climbing, the 1/2 day walk around the base of the rock is quite stunning with lagoons and waterfalls, not to mention the local aboriginals.

It sounds funny, but go to Darwin in the "suicide season" (summer) as hotels are cheap, tourist attractions are uncluttered, the seedier characters stay off the streets, and Kakadu looks awesome at that time of year!

Ein Schoggifondue im Outback? Aber sicher, im Keller's gibt es weitere feine Koestlichkeiten aus der Schweizer Kueche zu probieren. Mhmm...

there is a lake north-east to tennant creek. cool water, trees, breeze... stop for a swim. it is worth it. but it is not allowed to sleep over there and there r rangers that takes care people will listen to it... we were asked kindly to leave

Well i got stranded there for 2 weeks, and got annoyed with it there. when i finally come to the day of leaving i had to pay $1500 on my bloody jeep. Gutted.

stay away from the wet season