The Month of September Darwin to Edit Falls 2013

Darwin 1st September to 21st September

Back in Darwin, went to the Boat show and then walked for 2 hours around town, off to the Mindell Markets to pick up the CD of the Didge player, played it when we got home and it is crap.

We have flown back into Darwin with the view of packing up and heading west back into the Kimberleys but our plans had changed a bit due to an ongoing health issue with Trice. A specialist is due in town on the 19^th of this month so we have to fill in time and wait.

 

Being in Darwin 3 years previously we had seen most of the town so we didn’t have a great program to complete and besides with Trice not being well we were confined to the van for a lot of the time.

 

Interestingly last time we were here I had made the statement that Darwin needed to move on from the war but it was more my ignorance to the events rather than Darwin hanging onto the past.

 

The raid on Darwin in February 1942 was a massive raid killing what was recorded at 243 victims but many reported that the casualty list was in fact over 1,000. What astounded me was not the size of the bombing or the loss of 58 ships that day but the fact that there were an additional 62 more times between 4 March 1942 and 12^th November 1943.

 

The work that was carried out on the town that housed 5,800 people during that time. We went to visit the wharf area to read more about the bombings. The storage tunnels are just near-by but were not open. We ended up walking the town and ended up at the Mindil Markets for a sunset once again. I had a go at whip cracking which was a bundle of fun. With the didge player getting off, the young aboriginal girls dancing their socks off, beautiful food smells all over the place, the atmosphere is to die for.

 

Another beautiful sunset, if only we had a bottle of wine, it would have topped the day off.

 

We have now moved our van under the trees as the temperature is starting to rise a bit, now starting to get into the low 30’s. Behind us is a horse training yard, the young girls are there every afternoon, grooming their horses and working them in the exercise yard.

 

Kim who we met in Hamlin Pools dropped by to see us, lovely guy who could talk under water with a mouth full of biscuits. Between Kim and Trice, I have no chance.

 

Monday nights are over 50’s night at the Sky City Casino. Free Pokie money, as well as Keno money, a free drink and a cheap meal, you can’t go wrong. We met up with Garry and Pam who we met in Waldron Swamp in NSW, Garry is a non drinker so the rest of us could have a drink.

 

The temperature is continuing to hit us so our only option is to swim in the pool which appears to be helping Trice’s back.

 

Kim has invited us for dinner, life is pretty good.

 

Today we headed off to catch the double decker bus for a tour around Darwin and have parked near the old Gaol. This place was established in 1883 and operated until 1979. Like all old gaols they were pretty horrific. The original gallows are still in place, these gallows were built in secret for the hanging of 2 prisoners who were jailed for the murder of a local taxi driver in 1952. The gallows were specially constructed for the hanging of these refugees and once carried out were never used again.

 

In 1970 the prison also housed boat people who had landed in Darwin.

 

We had spent far too long in the goal and have now missed the bus so we decided to head over to the botanical gardens for a look around.
The gardens were established in 1886 and were used primarily to trial plants for agriculture. Interestingly despite bombing and cyclones which have wiped out the town, some of the original plants have survived and now form part of the Darwin heritage.

 

Many of the plants have originated from overseas and the display of enormous trees and peculiar bushes and plants kept us occupied for many hours.

 

Kel and Patty have turned up at Saddle Park getting ready to fly out to Brisbane for a wedding. The heat is still with us so we decided to head into the wave pool on the Darwin Foreshore.

 

This is a huge complex next to the convention centre which generates waves for 10 minutes every 15 minutes. Now I was expecting long slow waves which you could catch on boogie boards or swim rings. In we go waiting for the waves which start is rapid succession building in height.

 

This is like a giant washing machine and trying to stay on a swim ring which you have to sit on rather than in is rather difficult. It was a bundle of fun and cooled us off from this heat.

 

 

We headed back to Saddle Park ready for the world famous Roo Cook Off. Now I was feeling pretty confident have a fabulous teacher in the name of John Gavin who showed me hour to make a delightful meal. John from Tasmania and I got ourselves ready for the big event. We even had an ex chef who had the blind fold tasting, his conclusion was that they were both very tasty but so very different. Mine was the traditional bush camp oven style while John made a more curry style. Either way we had a bucket load of food and fed 8 adults with heaps left over.

 

Today we are definitely getting on the bus so headed to the car park at the museum to wait for the bus. We go inside to find out that we have just missed a bus and the next one is not here for another 30 minutes. No big deal, we will have a quick look through the museum and be out for the next bus. Cameras are not allowed except to take a photo of the giant croc.

 

The museum was a great surprise with things like the giant stuffed croc named Sweetheart, fantastic displays of Shells, insects and the like. A fantastic look at the bombing of Darwin, an eerie display around cyclone Tracey. You walk into a dark room and the sounds of the cyclone start, it would have been terrifying. Beautiful works of art, machinery a large room full of different sea going vessels just to name a few. Some 3 hours later we realized that we had missed the bus again and now there was not enough time to go on the tour.

 

 We decided to walk past the museum to Vesty’s Beach which is on the other side of Darwin City to Mindil Beach. A lovely walk with more history, it was also nice to see Mindil Beach without the crowds.

 

 On the way back we dropped into Lee Point. This area along withthe suburb of Leanyer are the newer parts of Darwin, Leanyer built after cyclone Tracey and Lee Point a brand new development. Lots of beautiful corrugated iron homes which is giving us a few ideas if we get to build our new house.

 

Lee Point was established as a line of defence during the war, the original observation posts, as they called them which was one of 6 built to defend Darwin shore line. Considering that these things are now 70 years old they must have built them strong back then.

 

More visits to doctors has kept us occupied so I decided to take the opportunity to visit the Darwin
Aviation Museum built on what was the old domestic air field. The highlight of this museum is the B52 bomber inside the big hanger along with many other displays. I spent and enjoyable 2 hours wandering around while I waited for Patrice to come out of day surgery.

 

Trice is still not right so I decided to do a few things around the camp, I fixed a leaking pipe that had been leaking for months. A $3 part and 15 minutes is all it took, it is nice to get the hands dirty again.

 

We have heard that the storage tunnels are open today so we raced into town to have a look. There are 5 tunnels with 2 open to the public. Each tunnel is around 171 metres in length and 5 metres in diameter holding 38,475 million litres of oil.

 

There was supposed to be 10 in total but only 5 were completed, they tried to use them to store aircraft fuel and the like but is was evident that the tanks leaked and were never used again after the 1950’s. The crazy part is that these tunnels were hand dug by mine workers and were not completed after the war was finished. If they had been completed the project would have cost around 1M pounds at that time.

 

We have got the results back for Trice and what I thought was going to be a serious situation has turned out to be OK. I was getting ready to send Patrice back home by plane and I was going to follow with the car and van. Thank Goodness…..

 

As this will be our last night in Darwin we have decided to go out to dinner with Ina and Arthur at the Darwin Wharf. A beautiful night with cruise boats coming up to the wharf feeding fish, great food and great company.

 

We packed up today to start heading south, we have decided that because the temperatures have risen so sharply we will not go back to the Kimberleys but head south towards Alice Springs, no big rush. It is interesting as we have done this area before so we are not seeing anything entirely new. We are still loving it but are looking forward to getting to Alice. We were told about some girders on display, this shows the force of the cyclone.

 

 Coomalie Creek 22nd to 29th September

Our next stop is Coomalie Creek, it is a disused caravan back that is currently being renovated by farmer from NSW. Garry and Pam are here doing a few jobs here and there while Peter the farmer works out what it is that he really wants.

 

We had only just got our van set up and was setting the satellite up when we here this bang followed by noise and then explosions out on the highway outside.

 

Garry and I jumped into the car and raced out to the highway only to be greeted by a mangled car and a B Double engulfed in flames. A young girl who had been following the truck and who worked in the Darwin hospital raced over to the young girl to check vitals but it was obvious that she was dead.

 

Trice noticed a baby seat in the back of the car so a frantic search was on for the baby but luckily the baby had not been in the car.

 

It was like we were on a movie set with bits of car and truck spread all over the road for 2 or 300 metres, the truck was on fire and the tyres were exploding with the heat. The truck driver was out of his truck but walking around in a daze, all he could say was that the car came on to his side of the road and he could get away from it. The poor guy was distraught and was starting to go into shock when an ambulance it is way from Katherine to Darwin arrived on the scene. There was no phone serve so we had to race back to the house to phone emergency services before heading back.

 

It was a terrible scene and so senseless as it turned out that the single mum in her early 20’s with a 5 year old child had had a fight with her boyfriend and decided that she wanted to end it all.

 

This is all that is left of the car after they were left to cut her out. 

 

By the time they investigated the accident, cut her out of the wreck and cleaned up the mess, the main highway to Darwin was closed for 24 hours. I just hope that the poor truck driver is ok.

 

Coomalie Creek is at the entrance to Litchfield National Park and last time we were here we couldn’t get into the Lost City and Blyth Homestead  or get a real good look at the magnetic termite nests because of the wet season, so off we went.

 

First stop was the termite mounds followed by The Lost City, an amazing set of rocks formed by millions of years of erosion to resemble a city. Table Top Swamp was next with an array of  birds, you didn’t know where to focus with all the bird calls.

 

It is starting to get hot again so we called into Tjaynera Falls for a
dip, this swimming in these rock pools is fantastic, we are swimming so much at the moment.

 

Blyth Homestead was interesting as we had to negotiate a water logged track to access it. Trice was panicking so I thought that only thing I could do to help her was make her drive back through the water which she did very well after we had a look around. This I
s where the children lived, the mother and father lived separately in different homesteads. There were a total of 14 children but only the older ones lived here.

The great part about Litchfield is the closeness of everything, we were able to see so many things in one day and only travelled around 140klms.

 

Bit of work to be done so I got on the end of a shovel pretending it to be a staff to run some levels with Peter the farmer. The wetlands that Peter appears to be obsessed with will look fantastic if he gets the water he is expecting. It was great it brought back many memories of my old surveying days working with him. I feel sorry for Garry, we have 2 big characters here with Garry and Peter vying for the alpha position and all they are doing is butting heads.

 

It is warming up more and more each day so we head back into Litchfield again to visit Berry Springs. Berry Springs is made up of 3 separate swimming holes with the first one on the right having the spring. The centre swimming hole is more popular and is very crowded so we headed down to the right hand pool which has a sandy bottom. We are having a ball watching some young blokes using the rope swing. It turns out that these guys are young bull riders having a break, you could tell something was different as they had no fear.

 

The water is beautiful and we are surrounded by little fish. A young American tourist is very nervous about crocs so she got her friends to go through to the next waterhole via the water with her following. When I told her that crocs always go for the slowest she took off to be in the middle.

 

On the way back we started searching for somewhere to put the kayak in and came across Montam Dam, great facilities with a boat ramp BUT plenty of places for crocs to hide so we went for a walk instead.

 

Poor Garry and Pam, all they seem to be doing is driving back and forward to Darwin, living in remote areas is not good when you need to get to the doctor for regular visits and follow ups.

 

We all piled into the Prado to head in to Wangi Falls, when we were there 3 years ago the pool was closed for swimming due to crocs. It is still a beautiful area and a great place to swim.

We met some great people who loved a chat and it turned out that they were into prospecting. Trice was in her element chatting and picking up hints on what metal detector to buy and so on.

When I asked the woman how much gold she has found her response was well I have found 36c and a couple of buttons, not very profitable. She did show us some photos of a friend who has a waterproof detector and scourers beaches and the like, very impressive indeed.

 

We left Wangi to head towards Florence Falls and Buley Rock Hole. 3 years ago at Buley Rock Hole I was shown a hole that you could get into under the waterfall; you could not see it unless you were shown. Due to the lack of rainfall and drop in water levels the hole is quite visible and the water coming over it is now only a fraction of before.

 

Beautiful temperature, crystal clear but idiots sitting there drinking beer from glass stubbies right on the edge of the rock pool. Signs are everywhere stating that no glass is to be taken past certain points, I guess I had assumed that they are literate but not all rock apes can read.

 

We had a large Water Monitor guarding the walk way, he was obviously very comfortable with people and laid there and sunbaked while people walked around him.

 

Today is our last day in Coomalie Creek so we thought is would be great to visit the Barra Capital, Daly River to see how busy it is, we may even get a Barra.

 

It was further than we thought, 200 klm but Garry was driving so I will be able to have a beer at the pub.

 

We pull into town, it has an air strip, a small cluster of homes, a pub and general store and lots of fishing tours, all the fishing tours were closed, nothing, no fish, I was just waiting for someone to say “You should have been here last week”.

 

Down on the crossing were some beautiful aboriginal kids swimming, they were the most delightful kids you could meet. They were jumping off the causeway to be washed through underneath, they were laughing and smiling and having so much fun. We asked them about crocs and all they could say was that they are nor scared of them.

 

Back to the pub for lunch just as a commotion has started, an older aboriginal woman, obviously intoxicated, has just launched a large rock through the rear window of a car. She is taken away by others but nobody seems too concerned about the car.

 

We wandered into the bar and we are the only whities other than the barman, he is a grey nomad helping some friends out for a few months and is not very happy with his patrons. We ordered lunch and sat out the back under a fan, the food was beautiful and the beer was cold. A bit more of disagreement inside when one of the patrons accused the barman of only giving him 2 beers when he paid for 4.

 

Interesting place, in the wet season all this area goes under water including the caravan park. The general store is on huge stilts and the pub is on high ground. We would love to stay in the Darwin region for the wet season but we would be stuck here for a while.

 

It has been great staying with Garry and Pam but we do have to move on if we are ever to get home.

 

Edith Falls 29th - 30th September

 

 

Katherine is around 220klm from here but we have decided to spend a couple of nights in Edith Falls. Hey John remember Edith Falls? That is the place where you saved me from going over the waterfall.

 

The bottom pool has changed a lot as this was wiped out in 2011 by a flood. Most things were swept away and now there is a large gravel island just of the main shore.

 

New pathways, a new bridge, newly tiled abolitions block and redesigned camping area. Very clean, the water beautiful but the flies are driving us crazy.

 

One night is enough so we head to the Shady Lane Caravan Park in Katherine where there are no flies, lots of shade and a great pool under shade cloth.

 

We intend to stay here for 3 or 4 nights and then start a slow trek towards Alice Springs.