It’s funny when you travel for a while. You realise after a while that you don’t actually belong anywhere but you have the freedom to enjoy everywhere. As wonderful and carefree as that sounds there comes a time when you realise that home is where you belong and it really is a very nice place to be. For Chris the start of cricket season has been his calling to return home, for me the calling at times has become a deafening roar. We really love travelling and we do it without a hassle but we love home! The sense of belonging was never more evident than recently when we met a family who have been on the road for 3 years. When they left home they were a family of 6 children and two parents. Today they are a family of 9 children and two possibly insane parents. Clearly they have no issue with intimacy in the caravan, obviously at some point they have conceived three kids on their journey. Eeeewww. At this point they have no intention of settling down, getting a house or sending the kids to school. The amazing part is that they haven’t even made it to the southern states yet.
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| No time for toilet stops boys we've got more waterfalls to see. |
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| Really hot springs! |
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| Scary dark caves |
Driving deeper into nowhere we pull up at the Undurra Lava Tubes. This is an amazing geological area and our very expensive two hour tour taught us a lot about the layout of the land following the eruption of Undurra volcano. We were treated to cave tours which provided a cooling refuge from the 40degree heat. Once again we had the only kids on tour so I had drilled into the kids the importance of good behaviour, high expectations etc. All was going well until we ventured into a cave that was full of water. The temptation proved too much for Ry and he started a water fight in the freezing cold pond. At this point I did what any good mother would do, turned around and booted as much water into his face as possible. Seriously, if you can’t see the benefit of starting a water fight in those temperatures it may be because you’ve fallen into a coma.
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| A life size (so they say) replica of the biggest croc ever caught |
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| Kurumba alive with wildlife, but still no Barra |
Another long day on the road to nowhere saw us pull up at yet another free stay on the Stuart Hwy. My first observation of NT was that their road trains are even bigger than the ones in QLD. It was at this road stop that I met, by far, the biggest moron of my life. His name was Sean and his travelling companion was Noddles, a camel that he had rescued from Katherine and was now walking to Alice. For those who may not know that’s about 1000km. He said he doesn’t mind the walk, after all he once walked from Broome to Brisbane and it was in Noddles best interest to get out of Katherine. Sean’s toes were all black and bruised, he had no toenails on several of his toes and he spent about an hour bandaging before he went to bed. Noddles on the other hand had a lot to complain about and the complaints commenced at about 5am when Sean started to load her up with their gear. For those who don’t know (and I’m sure that’s many of you) a camels call is bloody loud. It was like giving the Star Wars character Chewbacca a megaphone and standing right next to him as he roars. Perhaps it was hearing Noddles cries or the fact that we have travelled for days with no reward but the Pentlands experienced their first group meltdown of the trip. All but one family member ended in tears (heartless bastard). We agreed that after getting to Darwin we would review out travel plans and may head straight home.
After wiping away the tears we hit the road and finally we were rewarded with a genuine tourist destination. With the morning madness still fresh in our minds the kids watched as I wandered fully dressed into Bitter Springs without so much as a glance for crocs. The kids then bombed in behind me and we thoroughly rejuvenated mind and body in the thermal springs. It was only as we climbed out that I truly recognised the swamp smell and took note of the warning signs about crocs. We knew we had to settle for a few days and regain our equilibrium. Staying at Mataranka springs was just what we needed. We could enjoy swimming in the thermal pools all day long. The only setback was that once a year they have an influx of about 25 000 bats who come for 28 days to breed. The smell of bat poo was laughably disgusting. It’s a smell that I can now identify in the smallest quantities.
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| Dental hygeine Mt Isa style |
Have I mentioned yet that we live in a massive friggin country! We drove and drove and drove for hours through land abundant with nothing. We crossed through several more wild fires that seem to burn furiously through the most sparsely grassed land defying logic. Our only stops for the day were to refuel and drain the diesel filter after picking up some very dirty fuel. I’ll add with importance here that Chris and I looked very much the professional traveller as we jumped out the car, popped the bonnet, identified the fuel line and started purging the water out. Yes we looked like two people who knew exactly what they were doing! Well what would you expect, with hours of boring travel I had read the entire Patrol maintenance manual during the day. We chugged into a roadside stop late at night just out of Mt Isa. When I say chugged, Chris had misjudged the fuel consumption and we were not going to make it to town so we pulled up begging fellow travellers for fuel. Ahhhhh the laughs I got watching my mathematician husband sucking diesel through a hose while complaining that the dirty fuel had cost us about 100km of distance.
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| Tamsyn left her mark at Daly Waters Pub. That's her school badge beside Chris UBCC coach badge. |
After wiping away the tears we hit the road and finally we were rewarded with a genuine tourist destination. With the morning madness still fresh in our minds the kids watched as I wandered fully dressed into Bitter Springs without so much as a glance for crocs. The kids then bombed in behind me and we thoroughly rejuvenated mind and body in the thermal springs. It was only as we climbed out that I truly recognised the swamp smell and took note of the warning signs about crocs. We knew we had to settle for a few days and regain our equilibrium. Staying at Mataranka springs was just what we needed. We could enjoy swimming in the thermal pools all day long. The only setback was that once a year they have an influx of about 25 000 bats who come for 28 days to breed. The smell of bat poo was laughably disgusting. It’s a smell that I can now identify in the smallest quantities. 
Ry enjoyed his 10th birthday at Mataranka with a big feed of chicken parma and as there is no bakery within 300km he settled for a block of vienetta icecream for his birthday cake. His best present was the fact that we agreed to not travel anywhere on his special day. The following day however we were off and running again.
Katherine Gorge was utterly beautiful. We took a two gorge tour down the river. In between the two gorges you have to get off the boat and walk between the gorges to the second boat. We were on a boat full of senior citz so the kids figured that if they jumped off the boat first and legged it across the rocks they would get time to swim in the rock pools before the oldies made it to the boat. Obviously they did it easy. Whereas Taz jumped in fully dressed Taj stripped to his undies and then continued the remainder of the tour in them. He added “I think I’ll do all our tours in my undies it’s really comfortable”.
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| Captain underpants on tour! |
The night was spent at Edith falls. Another magnificent collection of swimming holes and waterfalls. We met up with another family here and the kids had a great time playing with new friends. The nights are almost unbearably hot and even if there was a sign saying that the pools were infested with crocs I’d still be tempted to swim. But there’s nothing to fear the signs all state that the rangers constantly check for and remove any saltwater crocs that they find. I just hope that I don’t find one before they do.  |
| A cooling dip at Edith falls. Pretty sure the crocs are all gone now. |
Every time we speak to travellers who have been over this way they refer to Kakadu as kaka-don’t so our Expectations were very low. To our astonishment it was in fact amazing and the kids started to refer to it as Kaka-absolutely-du. We had the most memorable experience. The kids drank up all the history and lost themselves in interpretation of aboriginal art. There were very few complaints as we climbed rock hills to see cave paintings and visualise where spirit ancestors now lie. Staying at the Jabiru resort just added to the experience, using the air con in the van all night certainly kept us all sane. By far the best experience was achieved by chance. We went out to Cahill’s crossing because we had heard that the crocs come in to feed at the change of the tide. We meandered down to the boat ramp and met an aboriginal family fishing. Noelene had brought her husband and two of her five kids out to the crossing to fish. The girls all fished with hand lines and bait pulling in fish after fish relentlessly. The dad on the other hand was using a lure trying to hook Barra (no luck and I’m starting to think all this talk of hooking the big Barra is a myth). We sat on the ramp and Noelene shared stories about her land with the kids. She laughed and joked about her kids not going to school and just staying at home to go fishing with her (I think Ry wanted to be adopted). It was such a carefree and relaxed atmosphere until a huge croc started making its way towards the boat ramp. The girls just picked up some mud and threw it at him and he retreated. Astonished I asked if they were scared. Noelene replied, “Nah love, we just throw some mud. You know. They know we looking at them and they want to eat us only when they think we not looking. We throw mud and they think, nah she watching us. No good here”. So with that my kids set themselves up on croc watching duties and peppered each and every croc that approached, and let me say there were plenty of them. As we were leaving we herd yells from the bank. Fearing the worst we spun around to see Noelene pulling in yet another huge fish with a croc chasing it up the bank as she pulled it in. Her daughters were yelling and commenced the throwing of mud emergency procedure until he retreated. Noelene laughed and yelled at us, “See. He be a cheeky one, he not want my fish he want to eat me.” With that she continued to unhook her fish and recast. The next day, accompanied by our new friends from Edith falls we headed out to catch fish like Noelene. At one point we counted 10 crocs in close proximity to us. The kids were all sitting on an elevated platform ready to throw mud while the adults attempted to catch the elusive big Barra. At the end of the day we had 6 children with very muddy hands, no fish, no lures left and a lifetime of unbelievable memories.
Finally, after some very hard yards we arrived in Darwin. It’s time to get the car serviced and to stop travelling for a while. Ah relax.
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