Kakadu

Kakadu is a huge national park in the north of the Northern Territory, covering nearly 20,000 square kilometres. It is jointly managed by the Australian Government and the local aboriginals, so there is a big emphasis on indigenous culture and not just the natural beauty. We stayed at Jabiru, which is a town in the centre of the park. It services not just the park management and tourists, but also the Ranger Uranium Mine, which is only a few km down the road, slap bang in the middle of the national park. We did a 2 hour tour of the mine one morning, during which we were told only 10,000 times how safe the mine is and how necessary nuclear power stations are, and anyway, all new technology starts out as weapons, look at iron and bronze, weren’t they used to make weapons too but you wouldn’t want to try and live without them....... He did rather gloss over the enormous amount of energy used in the mining process, something like 5,000 litres of diesel an hour, plus 4 road trains worth of sulphuric acid trucked each day through the park, and another unspecified quantity of kerosene. At least we got a good photo of John next to one of the big mining vehicles.

Of course, you really come to Kakadu to see crocodiles, and this we did in abundance. We did 2 boat cruises, one on the South Alligator River and one on the East Alligator River (the explorer who named them wasn’t very imaginative) and there were crocs galore – crocs sunning themselves on the bank, crocs with only their eyes peeping out of the water, baby crocs floating next to the boat and great big old crocs swimming lazily along. These are salt water crocs, the kind that eat people, how anyone could ignore the warnings that are everywhere in the park and go anywhere near any river bank is beyond me.

Having got the crocs out of the way, we then turned our steps to some bushwalking. Kakadu has a lot of really good trails and lookouts, quite a few of which provide access to Aboriginal rock art sites. Not all were open at this time of year, it is just the start of the dry season so some walks and walk access roads were still closed, but we walked our feet off. The Eastern edge of Kakadu is a huge escarpment which is the border with Arnhemland, this provides some spectacular scenery and waterfalls, and is the source of many of the rivers and watercourses in the park.

The only downside to our stay here has been the smoke which has permeated the air a lot of afternoons and evenings. They do ‘patch burning’ during the early dry season to reduce the fuel load for when it gets really dry in a couple of months, and some nights the smoke has been as thick as fog. Not thick enough to keep the mozzies at bay though!

Katherine

We had another long drive to get to Katherine from Tennant Creek, nearly 700km, which is a long way when you are towing a van and averaging around 90kph. We had originally planned to break it up into 2 days travel, but the choices of places to stop are so limited we decided to just bite the bullet and get it over and done with. We've now had a week here to recover.

The thing that is so obvious coming from central Australia is how much greener everything is here. It is now the dry season, so there isn't even the hint of a shower, but they get enough rain during the wet to last them all year. The caravan park has grass sites instead of red dirt, and there are hardly any flies (thank Heavens). Top temperatures have been around 30, and night time has been going down to high teens (as opposed to 4 and 5 overnight at Alice Springs). The tourist season is obviously in full swing, we are staying at one of 10 caravan parks in town and it is bustling. Katherine is not only a major stop on the trip North-South, but also on the East-West route, we'll be coming back through here in a couple of months on our way to Western Australia.

The main attraction in town (apart from seeing grass) is Katherine Gorge (Nitmiluk). We spent a full day there, doing the clifftop walk in the morning and going on a 4-hour boat cruise in the afternoon. When we booked the cruise we didn't realise that in fact it was three boat cruises - Katherine Gorge is actually 13 gorges with rocky rapids separating them - our cruise covered 3 gorges, which meant that at the top of each we had to disembark and walk to the next boat waiting in the next gorge. Apparently in the wet season the river can rise many metres, covering the rocks, they use a speedboat then to do the cruises as the usual riverboats wouldn't have enough power to battle against the river in flood. The cruise was spectacular, with not only magnificent scenery but quite a few freshwater crocodiles lazing on the riverbanks. The 'freshies' aren't the crocs that eat people, that's 'salties', which are much bigger and meaner. They get salties in the gorge during the wet season, and it wasn't yet guaranteed that they'd all been cleared out, so there was no swimming in the gorge. We didn't have to be told twice!

We also went to Edith Falls, which had a stunning walk, and Cutta Cutta Caves, which had an interesting guided tour, including a couple of cave snakes that complained about the flash lights as we all took photos.

Apart from that, a couple of games of golf and several swims in the caravan park pool filled in the time satisfactorily.

Tennant Creek

We had a long day's drive from Alice Springs to Tennant Creek, not helped by the fact we didn't get away until 9:30 as we needed a minor repair done on the van (we won't be undoing that screw again to see what it does, will we Wendy). Apart from the Devil's Marbles (Karlu Karlu) about 100 km South of Tennant Creek there isn't a lot in between, the 'towns' marked on the map are really just road houses, although just North of Alice Springs we went past the marker indicating the Tropic of Capricorn, so we are now officially in the tropics.

Tennant Creek doesn't have a very good reputation, and we had been told by several travellers that they wouldn't stop here, but we haven't found any problems. We went on a very interesting 'mine' tour (in reality it was never a working mine, but was used for training miners) with working demonstrations of actual mine equipment such as diamond drills. We also went out to the old telegraph station buildings (the Stuart Highway runs along the original telegraph line built across the continent in the early 1870's, and all the towns and settlements along the highway started life as telegraph repeater stations) and up a couple of lookouts. Not heart stopping thrills, but enough to keep us pleasantly occupied for a couple of days.

Alice Springs

We've been really taken by the 'unofficial capital of Central Australia'. Alice Springs has a lot going for it - great golf course, good supermarkets and other shopping, lots to see and do and, at this time of year anyway, good weather. I guess its a different story in Summer, when average maximums are above 35 degrees!

After John played in the NT Open for the first 5 days we were here, we finally got out and saw some of the sights. The MacDonnell Ranges spread out East and West of Alice, and the day we gave each direction was barely sufficient. There are more gorges, chasms, canyons and gaps than you can shake a stick at. We've walked, hiked and climbed to lookouts, as well as venturing underground at the old gold mines at Arltunga at the Eastern end of the ranges.

Closer to town we've been to the School of the Air, which now uses webcams instead of radios to keep in contact with students in far flung remote outposts, the town's first AND second gaols (not the third, which is still in use), the original telegraph station, the original hospital built by John Flynn (who started the Royal Flying Doctor Service) and a reptile park.

Add 3 more games of golf (to keep Wendy happy) and we've more than adequately filled in 12 days here.

John's birthday fell in the middle of the period we were here (thanks for the cards), so as a special treat we spent the night at the best hotel in town, which just happens to be attached to the local casino. We considered putting $5 into the pokies, but there aren't any smoking restrictions here, so we didn't venture past the door of the gaming room.

NT Open

Well, I played in the NT Open and didn't exactly set the world on fire. Having said that out of a field of 190 I did finish equal 32nd. The conditions were extremely difficult, with strong to gale force winds all 4 days and the greens set up to be super firm and fast. On downwind holes it was impossible to keep the ball on the greens and, once you were there, it was difficult to get the ball near the hole. Having offered my excuses my scores were 85, 83, 87, 92.

I actually played quite well for the first 2 and a half days, but fell away after that. Wendy caddied for me for the last two days and did an excellent job in the very trying conditions. She now has extra muscles from all the bunker raking she had to do.

Alice Springs is an excellent course and if you are ever in the area, well worth a hit. It is rated in the top 10 desert courses in the world and ranks at 53 in Australia. If you are interested the full results are on http://www.alicespringsgolfclub.com.au/files/JGI9Y0TWQV/NAB_2009_NT_Men_s_Amateur_NT_Open.pdf

We are here for another week to do our tourist things and also for Wendy to finally get a few games of golf in.