Three month update

Greetings again from the Northern Territory.

Where have we been since the three week update? All the way to the North West Cape of WA and back to the Territory – all up about 16,000 kms!  

We’ve been to… Kakadu, Edith Falls, Timber Creek, Zebra Rock Mine, Kununurra, Wyndham, the Lower Ord, Lake Argyle, Purnululu NP (Bungle Bungles), Halls Creek, Mary Pool, Fitzroy Crossing, Tunnel Creek, Windjana Gorge, Derby, Fitzroy River, Broome, Dampier Peninsula, James Price Point, Willie Creek, Middle Lagoon, Cape Leveque, Barn Hill Station, Eighty Mile Beach, Port Smith, Balla Balla, Port Hedland, South Hedland, Cleaverville, Karratha, Onslow, Three Mile Pool, Old Onslow, Exmouth, Cape Range NP, Ningloo Marine Park, Tom Price, Karijini NP, Broome, Mary Pool, Kununurra, Lake Argyle, Flora River Nature Reserve, Edith Falls, Buley Rockholes, and finally the Mary River Wilderness Retreat. 

Yes, we have turned around and are on our way back to QLD. We’ve had an incredible time but haven’t found anywhere along the way we’d like to stay with decent work opportunities. Also, it’s insanely expensive in outback Australia – fuel, food and the lack of free camping has nearly emptied the spending account.  

However, we’ve found a way to extend out trip for a bit longer thanks to the HelpX website (a bit like Wwoofing but not just on organic farms)! This blog comes from an air-conditioned room (heaven) in NT at the Mary River Wilderness Retreat where we are ‘helping’ until the end of November. In exchange for working four hours a day, six days a week (maintenance, gardening, cleaning, restaurant, bar etc.) we get a room with an ensuite (also heaven) and three meals a day. 

Also, we get paid for any extra work we do so hope to earn enough to pay the fuel bill to get home. We’ve only been here a few days but I reckon I’ll be an expert at ‘hospital corners’ in no time. 

We have our first day off tomorrow and we’re taking out one of the retreat’s boats to go exploring the Mary River. We'll throw a lure or two about and hope to see a croc or two which shouldn't be hard as the Mary has the highest density of saltwater crocs per km in Australia. The average is five across tropical Australian rivers but in the Mary it's as many as 20 per km. Bring on the big croc sighting!

Back in the Territory

The wet season is building in Australia’s top end and it’s hot and humid. Getting back from WA it was 45 degrees in the car most of the time so there was one major rule once back in NT – anywhere we camp must also be close to water without crocs! Even if three minutes after a swim we are sweating again it’s better than nothing!

This rule was made after our stay at Flora River, a gorgeous spot about 150 kms out of Katherine, where we caught our first NT barra and also saw a 3.5m croc. It was in a trap but even so that means there are many more out there we couldn’t see!

Our search for camping and swimming took us back to Litchfield NP and I found my number one swimming spot in NT, Buley Rockholes. A series of about eight crystal clear rock pools cascading down through lush green bush. We swam twice a day while there and it was divine. 

If ever in Darwin, it’s a short drive to Litchfield NP and Buley Rockholes is not to be missed! 

Take us back to the sea…

It's over forty degrees in the shade, we’re covered in a layer of red dirt and our feet resemble a home tan fail! We’re back in the Pilbara, dreaming of our last two weeks in Cape Range National Park/ Ningaloo Marine Park, the white sand, turquoise water, and more fish than we could eat!

Snorkelling in Ningaloo Marine Park

They are on the opposite side of WA’s North West Cape from Exmouth, and from what we can gather Cape Range might be the most popular national park camping spot in Australia.

At $7 pp/pn with a maximum stay of 28 days it’s a bargain in a top location. Although a level of self-sufficiency is required (no water, no showers and drop toilets), the 134 sites across 12 camp grounds are full most of the year.

In peak times four of the camp grounds can be booked and the others are allocated to the first in line – either through an internal transfer once you are ‘in’ or literally in the line of cars that appear every morning from 6am at the gates to the park.

Ned's hosts - Greg and Terry

We were sixth in line at 7.30 am and were lucky to be allocated a site at Kurrajong for just one night and lucky to get an internal transfer to Ned’s. It was the perfect spot for us. We could launch the tinnie from the beach and it’s not in a sanctuary zone, so plenty of fishing.

As it turned out Ned’s also had lovely camp ground hosts and many of our neighbours were staying for the full 28 days so it was a friendly little community of like-minded campers. Sundowner drinks at the communal tables was a daily must, and during our two week stay there was a group BBQ and a trivia night!

No more cod, we're eating Cobia tonight!

We loved getting the tinnie in the water every day – fishing and snorkelling. Ningaloo Marine Park has nothing on the Great Barrier Reef but it was still very pretty. At first the only fish we caught were Chinaman Cod. Although they were delicious, after a few days we decided to start throwing them back and chase something bigger.

The next day, on the outside of the reef, Jeff caught a Cobia or Black Kingfish (depending on what part of Oz you are from). It was also delicious and fed about 75% of the camp ground much to the delight of our neighbours.

The next day, in an attempt to get a large shark to the surface for a photo Jeff snapped our biggest and best rod, a first for him. No more chasing the big fish for us (sad faces all around).

We could have stayed for the full 28 days but four days of windy weather (30+ knots) and swells of 4 – 5 metres encouraged us to move along and back into the red dirt of the Pilbara… but it was definitely a highlight of our trip – we caught and ate lots of fish, got our toes in the sand every day and made some fabulous friends!

Australia’s fauna is not trying to kill you!

I don’t want to jinx us, but I thought we’d encounter more of Australia’s famous dangerous wildlife, especially snakes and spiders in the 'outback'. We've seen very few, dangerous or otherwise. However, if fauna includes insects – mainly mosquitoes, march flies and sand flies – then you could be irritated to death.

Wallaby at Lake Argyle

To date we've seen sea snakes at Eighty Mile Beach, a dead snake in the gutter in Broome and a wolf spider. Perhaps they've all been killed by cane toads which we saw plenty of throughout NT and unfortunately Eastern WA. ‘Toad busting’ is encouraged in the Kimberley and they have live toad collection points throughout the region. It made me wonder if they've ever tried something similar in QLD.

I've always loved animals and still get a little excited to see them in their natural habitat. I keep a vague list of Aussie animals I’d like to see in the wild and I can now cross off fresh and saltwater crocs which only leaves wombats (I've only seen one sleeping on the side of the road) and platypus (Jeff says he saw one in a creek in the Otways, but I just saw the splash).

Crazy Galah

Other land animals we've seen – some native, many not – include wallabies, kangaroos, dingo, emu, brumbies, feral pigs, buffalo, goannas, lizards running upright on their back legs (weird) and huge feral cats brazenly eating road kill in the middle of the day, and barely moving when we drove past which is I'm told highly unusual.

I've never really taken an interest in birds until we reached NT. We saw majestic Jabiru and Brolgas, noisy flocks of magpie geese, and cheeky bowerbirds. WA has also provided abundant bird watching opportunities with colourful little Rainbow Bee Eaters, Galahs, Corellas, Black Cockatoos, numerous water birds at Lake Argyle, and a bird that sounds like a crying kitten – a Silver Crowned Friar Bird.

Bowerbird in our washing up tub!

Sadly, throughout our trip, we've seen thousands of sad, bony, hungry cattle. I’m used to the fat, happy cows of Victoria and southern QLD so it’s a shock to see so many standing in the dust, eating what little they can find, including ripping the bark off the melaleucas by a creek.

Now I understand why the cattle properties up here are so huge, one cow needs hundreds of acres of land to survive. On the road into Exmouth we also saw a number of mangy feral sheep, unshorn and still with their tails. They look out of place among the spinifex and termite mounds.

Our recent ten day stay at Cape Range NP has put us up close with the wildlife of the sea – but that’s the next blog post…