The “Top End”

From the first few kms that we left Mareeba the vegetation started to change from green farmlands to arid Savannah. We started heading west and came to a place called Undara Lava Tubes. A huge shield volcano had spewed lava for many years and it had flowed for hundreds of kms towards the sea. As the outer crusts cooled the liquid lava continued to flow through the tunnels until the volcano gradually emptied...leaving huge tunnels stretching for hundreds of kilometres. These lava tubes are particularly well preserved and are now a national park and preserved area. We camped there for the night and in the morning took a tour around these amazing structures...like huge cathedrals these tunnel walls show amazing colours and the level of lava as it flowed. Where the roof had fallen into the tunnels a rainforest had sprung up in the micro climate. We saw bats, rare wallaby’s, and many birds. Then onwards into the very arid Queensland interior where the road deteriorated into a single strip of bad tar and huge road trains came barrelling towards us every now and then towing up to 5 trailers and had 120 wheels! You just get off the road completely and hope!
We travelled to a little fishing village way up on the Gulf of Carpentaria called Karumba..very isolated and wild. The Normanton river flowed into the sea there and the biggest croc on record was caught in this river...”Kris” was 28 and half feet. A replica had been cast and to stand next to it was awesome. While at Karumba Paul and I did a fishing trip and he caught a large Queen fish and several large Salmon..all excellent eating! They gave a nice fight and he was thrilled...we filleted them and now have our freezer full of fish.
Now our trip through the Outback started in earnest. Once again we could not comprehend the size of this country. What looked like a reasonable trip from Cairns to the Darwin was 2 and half thousand kms odd and took us a 7 days of driving all day and just sleeping in little roadhouse parks overnight...the heat was oppressive. The country became more and more arid, and petrol more and more expensive until we paid nearly $2.00 per litre. We crossed the border into the Territory which is like the Ozzie Wild West. We turned north up the Stuart Highway( The Track as they call it here ) to Darwin and still had to stop a few times enroute.
One of the stops was at a little historic pub which dates back to the original homestead of 1830 called Daly Waters..its airstrip had been used extensively in the WW11 but otherwise it was in the middle of nothingness. When we drove into the (awful) caravan park we could not understand why it was so full. But the pub had oodles of character..Memorabilia from years of tourists’ decorated the walls...bank notes, T shirts, bras, ancient artefacts. There were amusing slogans and signs all over the place and it looked like it had come straight out of Crocodile Dundee. That night a fairly well known country and western singer entertained the crowd with singing and bush poetry and jokes until 10.00 pm and the crowd was swinging..what a surprise! The man was a comic and he had two funny looking chooks (chickens) sitting next to him while he played which he called his Baby Wedge tail Eagles...and they were part of the act.
We stopped at some thermal pools along the way which were set in a wonderful tropical oasis of palms and ferns..the pools were crystal clear and very pleasantly done...and free! From there to the Katherine Gorge. The Katherine River has eroded a huge gorge over the centuries and is now a very scenic national park. During the wet season it was a raging torrent of 13 meters higher than the normal river flowing half way up the walls of the gorge. During the dry it was a series of gorges connected by rapids. We took a boat ride up to the fourth gorge and it was spectacular to see the sheer red cliffs on both sides of the boats rise up with bands of coloured rock faces. We saw two crocs sunning themselves, and walked to a lovely waterfall and pool with water lilies where people swam.
Before we got to Darwin we stopped over to see the Litchfield National Park. Within this park were gorges and breathtaking waterfalls, and clear cool natural pools with water slides. The country was arid but the vegetation surrounding the waterfalls was a tropical oasis. There were also giant termite mounds, some 3 meters or more, as well as the very clever Magnetic Termite mounds where the termites build the towers exactly north to south to make the most use of the sun and shade. After a couple of days there, we left for the Darwin, the most northerly point of our journey and the Capital of the Northern Territory.