Darwin RV Trip Through the Outback of Australia – and the East Coast Cairns To Sydney 2010-11
Summary: 32 days, 8636 km, 336 gal ($5.40/gal): Highlights, Alice Springs, Whitsunday cruise on the Whitsunday Magic, aside from the lure of the barrier reef, the northern waters are only usable by boat due to crocodiles and jelly fish.
Prelude: I have been to Australia several times and hope to visit again. If a bit negative about some of the less interesting points on this trip, it’s just because I saved the worst for last. The east and south coasts are home to some of the favorite places I know, and the bird life, Taronga Zoo, and Sydney area are wonderful travel adventures.
While flying near the typical 35,000 ft enroute from Sydney to Darwin, at perhaps 20,000 ft were countless wads of cotton (clouds), creating an unusual and spectacular view of the sunny outback dotted with their dozens of shadows.
Spending the first night at the Darwin Holiday, we picked up our campervan, and after tending to a couple details, headed south to Litchfield NP. Getting a late start, we camped outside the park Friday night. On Saturday we toured Litchfield. Some great pristine monsoon run-off streams (Buley Rockhole) and waterfalls, Florence, Tolmer, and Wangi, the latter two falls side-by-side, was most interesting with a big calm pool below (with salt water crocodiles this time of year. so no swimming). By evening we were back in Darwin exploring the waterfront and some WW II history, like their oil storage tunnels. We stayed the night in a dump RV park, Shady Glen. Darwin Album[1]
Set out to Kakadu National Park yesterday am. Glad we went to Litchfield NP as it is much more interesting. Kakadu is just another one of those parks like they have in abundance in Costa Rica, just otherwise useless land given back to the aboriginals for the sake of political correctness and because they were so advanced before invasion of the Europeans, or maybe set aside so Lonely Planet readers will think there are lots of parks and want to visit Australia. We will spend two days traversing this park so we can say we’ve been there. There are wallabies, tree frogs, in the night, birds, but we have seen nothing exotic yet. and judging by the warning signs, lots of crocodiles ………… but none to be seen yet. All the criticism aside, the terrain and flora are unusual, clean, and interesting, so the visit not a loss.
Drove from Kakadu to Pine Hill, then south to Katherine. At Katherine we went northeast to the Katherine River Gorge and camped in Nitmiluk N P, doing a 1 hour hike to the rim of the canyon to view the gorge. Unimpressive compared to places on the Rogue, Columbia, Kern, and Tuolome. The road trains are impressive though, frequently 4 trailers and now permitted up to 53.5m (175.5 ft).
On Tuesday and today we proceeded south, arriving this evening in Alice Springs. Last evening at Renner Springs. A remote outback town with a population of 2, Allen and spouse. Our campervan, a 1999 model, has 254,000 miles ………….. so far holding together. . The van I got for a month at $AU1700 in 07 had about 180,000 km --- now it's $AU2800 and has 400,000 km Taking its toll, not sure if it’s burning more oil or gasoline.
December 23, 10; Thursday
Visited the Alice Springs Cultural Center, including Central Australia Museum and Aviation Museum. A fellow named Edward Connellan transformed transportation in the outback from camels to airplanes in the 40’s and 50’s. This guy claims to have solved many of the problems of aircraft operation in extremely hot weather and high altitude – simply by goosing engine horsepower and lengthening runways. First, these solutions sound trivial, and second what were they doing in Colorado and Arizona where the altitude is much higher. Then we made a looser trip west of town about 150 km to some highly touted canyons in the West MacDonnell National Park. This turned out to be no more than you see at every turn up the canyon from Bakersfield, Ca. which would barely qualify as National Forrest in US. Southwest of Alice a few km resides a huge facility and space tracking antenna farm, all covered by radomes, occupied by the spooks we know so well. Local lure is that when anyone from there is asked, they are gardeners. Alice Springs – Ayers Album
December 24, 10; Friday
We drive Alice Springs to Ayers Rock (Ulura & Kata Tjuta National Park) , arriving in time for a couple strenuous hikes in the very HOT sun at Kata Tjuta. This a big rock formation about 50 km west of Ayers ……….. unusual and reminds me of Picacho Peak in Arizona half way between Phoenix and Tucson, but not nearly as beautiful, but Kata Tjuta is an interesting and unusual rock formation. Then returned to Ayers to watch the shadowing as the sun set. I had a couple martinis as we waited and watched. Fortunately my traveling companion did not and, as it turns out he drove back to our camp site. Very fortunate because we ran through a police sobriety check point on the return. Now what in the world is going on here? We are in a national park 250 miles from any civilization, in a situation where there is no vehicle traffic, and probably almost nobody consuming alcohol ………………. and they are running a sobriety check! Looks to me like down under, as in California, the police know how to milk that overtime and get the retirement up ………………….. they probably got paid for the whole day to drive out there for this fiasco.
December 25, 10; Saturday: Merry Christmas from The Red Centre
Got up quite early to watch the sunrise shadowing over the rock and make a hike along the base. The Mala hike up over the rock with stanchions and cable looks much like the final climb up Half Dome in Yosemite. This was closed “due to high winds” or because the operators would like Christmas Day off.
I am realizing the Australia has no animals, well no large mammals. The biggest seems to be kangaroos and wallabies, but no deer, elk, antelope, bear or any of that stuff ………… just birds and a reptiles. And there are ferrule camels in the outback – we saw a couple in the last days, left over from more primitive attempts to establish a transportation system. It does have an enormous variety and population of exotic birds and the most dangerous reptile population in the world. The birds are giving us trouble on the highways, frequently flying into the path of the car and four times now colliding with the front. Two of these did serious damage to the car leaving large dents that will be an issue when we return it.
December 28, 10; Tuesday
Over three days of mostly driving we retraced our path north from Alice Springs to Tennant Creek, then turning east. On the first day east we moved from NT into Queensland, staying at Mount Isa. This was the biggest mineral mining center in Australia in the 19th century and is still a very active mining center. The last couple hundred km on eastern NT is so flat it is reminiscent of the Sarengetti, or more so a flat plane where in any direction you can see until the earth’s curvature produces a horizon. Through the region of Mount Isa and Churnbury (sp), mining towns in small mountains the flat terrain disappears, but resumes again for a few hundred km east in the area of Richmond. Further remarkable, frequently one would see cattle and sometimes horses near the highway, but no sign of humans, i.e., no humans, cars, buildings or any other sign of human presence. As I previously observed in SA, all the ranchers and farmers seem to have their homes and farm buildings far from the highway.
December 30, 10; Thursday
Yesterday we breezed through Townsville. We were hoping to get a dive boat out to the Barrier Reef, but they were all booked up. Then today the transmission in our van started making terrible noises ………….. in everything but 4th gear. We limped down to Airlie Beach using only 4th and burning lots of gas as well as oil. The future is currently unknown we’re hobbling around trying to use only 1st and 4th gear. This reminds me that about 30 years ago the clutch would not disengage on my Volkswagon bus in Baja California, and I drove 300 miles back to Torrance without using a clutch, Just turn the key and lurch forward in 1st to start, then match acceleration speeds to shift through the remaining gears. Airlie Beach has one of the most beautiful waterfronts looking out at the Whitsundays as any place I can remember in my life, including Hawai’i and the Brasillian coast around Santos Island and south. Of course for me part of beauty is the comfortable warm temperature.
December 31, 10; Friday: This is New Year’s Eve
A little very good luck came our way. The fellow at UltraTune got a used transmission by noon today and had it installed by 2:30 pm. I’m getting just like the dork I am traveling with on the “this reminds me of” stories, but this reminds me of when John McIntyre and I were camping in Baja and the clutch failed on his Izisu. We got some guy in the very small village of San Fillipe who worked under the car from the hole in the ground dug in his front yard, to remove the clutch and install a replacement in about 8 hours. At the time, probably 1998, we were marveling that this would take 8 days and $800 in the US. He did it for $80.
January 1, 11; Saturday: This is New Year’s Day in Australia
Today we took a huge commercial dive boat, Whitsunday Cruises, Seaflight, out to the Barrier Reef, my fellow traveler snorkeling and myself SCUBA diving. Specifically to Knuckle Reef where they have a big pontoon moored to conduct their snorkel and diving operations. My two dives were quite shallow (55 ft at most) with crumby visibility due to tidal currents and not much sunlight. Seaflight is a high speed (30 knots) semi-planning hulls catamaran, capable of 320 passengers. Being New Year’s Day we had only 80 which was very, very, fortunate because outfitting the total of 3 (three) certified divers and getting them in the water was a zoo! What if there had been 50 or 100? What ever happened to “red right returning?” Even at sea apparently the ozzies drive on the left side as the harbor entrance has the red buoy on the left and green on the right as we returned to Able Harbor in the evening. Tomorrow we are on Whitsunday Magic, a 3 masted schooner for a 3 day, 3 night first-class sailing cruise of the islands.
January 5, 11; Wednesday
At 34 m long, 10.7 m beam, and 3.5 m draft and 8 sails (mizzen, main, 2 fliers, mainstaysail, forestaysail, 3 jibs), the Whitsunday Magic is a ”tall ship” without exaggeration. Surprising to me, not much high-tech. All the sails are hand furled and raised by hand with blocks, but no wenches. The only power assist I see is the hydraulic motor to pull up the anchor rode.
Box jelly fish and stingers are a continuous threat in near-shore waters in summer (all year) so we have to wear full-body lycra suits for diving or snorkeling. The water is so beautiful, but in a sense unusable, i.e., you would like to just jump off the boat at random, but instead you have to suit up – this is probably the lawyers at work. The snorkeling is too regimented for me – no fins or weights supplied so a tender has to drop you and pick you up, free diving is out of the question. I did find that that by going down with lungs empty I can get to about 8 – 10 ft, which is very close to the bottom. Guides fed the fish, bringing up their pet Humpheaded Maori Wrasse.
Why are they called Whitsunday? Whitsunday is the 8th Sunday after Easter, the day Lieutenant Cook, later Captain Cook, sailed through here and named them. The second morning we went to Whitehaven Beach. Sand here is about 98% pure silica and very white (whiter than Destin, Fla. ??). Word is that NASA bought several tons of this sand to make lenses for the Hubble telescope ………… and tried to buy the whole beach. On Tuesday afternoon the very best part of the trip – in a light breeze we raised all 8 sails and spent a few hours cruising in the light winds. Though all the rigging is rather simple there are clever aspects. For my sailing friends, attached on top of each boom is a bag that is like a sail cover split and open along the top. As the sail is hauled up or let down it just unfolds from or drops into this bag and the entire stow process is very simple for 5 of the 8 sails. The 3 jibs just pile up at the bottom of the stays, so the whole operation is no more complex, or more work, than the 2 sails on a sloop. Our 3 night anchorages were 1) Stonehaven, 2) Macona, 3) Nara, all on Hook Island.
Upon coming back ashore, our plan was to go south after the Whitsundays, but reports of heavy rain and flooding in southern Queensland are thwarting that. In Australia, rather than building highway bridges across most water drainage flows they have simply built the highway down through the dips with some meter sticks to show you how deep the water is – indicating whether you can drive through. When there are heavy rains in “The Wet” the roads just close. For our entire trip we have been seeing “floodway” signs, but never more than a few inches of water. Usually this is for a short time, but this year they are having those “fifty year” floods or something, global warming you know. The result of this is that we cannot drive south through the Rockhampton and Bundeberg regions, even if we detour several hundred km west, we cannot pass this area. As a result, we have altered plans and decided to drive north to Cairns. From there we will decide to return our campervan and go south to Brisbane or Sydney by air. If the choice becomes Brisbane we will get another campervan there and drive the coast to Sydney. At this moment the future is uncertain!
On Thursday evening we arrived for the second time in Townsville and found a very nice drive to the top of a high mountain from which to view the entire area, city, plains, bay and islands, and mountains to the west. For the night we stayed in a nice park, Bowes Bay, on the edge of the bay by that name across from Magnetic Island. The lady checking us in said to keep the camper doors closed, but did not volunteer any detail. The weather being hot and humid, as we have seen much, it is impractical to sleep with doors closed. In the morning I found my trouser shorts strangely displaced. And was mentally and temporarily accusing the very disagreeable person I am traveling with. But shortly I discovered all cash missing from my wallet, and presently we discovered my companion’s day pack outside the van in an inexplicable location. We surmised that the cunning and stealthy aboriginals slipped into the van grabbing valuables to them in an instant. Nothing was gone from my associate (he’s so miserable and disagreeable I don’t know what to name him in these writings), and from me only the ~$300 in cash while fortunately the wallet and all other contents, credit cards, drivers license, seem to remain.
January 7, 11; Friday
Arrived in Cairns last evening. We have settled on a plan and negotiated it with the campervan company and airlines. Monday morning we turn in our old van here, fly to Brisbane, and get another van there to continue south. It’s tight, so cross fingers. Today we drove about 150 km north, crossing the Daintree River by ferry, to Cape Tribulation. The last 40 km or so after the Daintree was a 4 x 4 only road last time I visited Cairns, but now it is paved. This is a beautiful drive through the rain forest, reminiscent of but more remote perhaps, the “road to Hana” on Maui.
The Barrier Reef is really a barrier. For a few hundred km that we have observed south from Cape Tribulation there is no surf. Many places the miniscule shore break appears to be 6” or so despite the fact that the reef is 30 – 40 miles out to sea. Queensland Album
What about roundabouts? Australia is full of them and only very infrequently are there stop sign controlled intersections, though in the cities there are stop light controlled intersections. Part of my curiocity is satisfied by a brief internet search. For commuters they keep traffic moving, which is more efficient than the stop and go of light and sign controlled intersections. Apparently they don’t reduce the number of accidents, but they do reduce the number of high speed accidents because they slow you down. They cost about the same as a light system initially but have virtually no follow-on maintenance, which is significant. Why don’t we have more in the US?
January 11, 11; Tuesday
We successfully made the flight Carins to Brisbane and switched vans and hopefully jumping over the extreme floods of southern Queensland. The new one is a 2003 with only 367,170 km. Drove a bit southeast of Brisbane and made a very poor choice of caravan park that is really a park full of permanent trailer trash – but was getting dark and raining, so not much choice. While driving out for dinner we came upon an 8 ft python (boa constrictor) http://www.snakecatchers.com.au/Snake_ID.html on the edge of the roadway making its way to our trailer trash park.
Today we drove south and looked around Surfer’s Paradise, which it’s not! I think it got that name from the tourist bureau, but while surfers do party and hang out there, the surfing waves aren’t very challenging, or even fun for above beginners. Then on to Byron Bay (Point), the eastern most point of land in Australia with impressive lookout points and it does have surfing waves of very good shape. All of this east coast from Noosa Head down I had visited on a camping trip in 1992. I think I was able to spot the precise place where I pitched my little backpacking tent on the beach at Byron Bay 18 years prior. Continuing further down the coast highway, rain intensified and we soon found we had not quite outrun the flooding. The rain was increasing and north of Grafton the road was closed forcing us to detour. We were advised to “get south” tonight so we pushed on to Woolgoolga where things are comparatively benign tonight. Later, the evening news reported 4 dead and 400 homes flooded in Grafton.
One wonders if cell phone technology is moving forward or back. At the Sydney airport we bought a pre-paid Vodaphone broadband modem with a 3GB data limit This seems to work in my computer when we have coverage, but frequently requires software re-installations in David’s Netbook. In Darwin, on Dec. 17, David bought a Telstra SIM for only $2.00 that allows him to receive calls only, receive does not cost “minutes” in Australia, that works very well. I bought a SIM and a prepaid voice [my Ozzie Telstra number 048 730 2878 (from US +61 48 730 2878)] and data plan. Many trips to Telstra stores and hour of technicians thrashing on help lines up to level 4, and today on Jan 9, the data service is still not working. But slowly I am learning enough about APN Settings, etc. that I think I will be able to teach the Telstra technicians, and am still hopeful I will get it working before leaving Australia. (A postscript: In the Sydney airport while I have only about 45 minutes left in Australia, this thing finally decided to work on its own best as I can tell Telstra SIM is receiving data at about 1 MBs! – can I use up my 150 MB in the remaining time?)
January 13, 11; Thursday
There seems to be little serious agriculture in QLD and NSW, except sugar cane and some bananas around Cairns. We see some cattle grazing, and they always seem to be in cow heaven, i.e., tall lush grass. But my perception is that there is nothing compared to the huge ag economy in South and West Australia. Yesterday we traveled south to Forster an ocean front resort area. It appears we have now escaped the rains and floods for the most part. Today we proceed south to the Sydney area, pausing to look at the sights of Newcastle and taking the slow laborious route through The Entrance. Hummm, the Ozzies have a town with the same name in Victoria at which I camped on the 07 trip. Finding camping near Sydney is difficult without a prior reservation, so we had to go rather far out to the northwest, inconvenient for the subsequent day’s activities. On Friday we toured the north beach areas of Sydney that are now familiar to me from several previous visits – Manly, Dee Why, Narrabeen, Mona Vale. Then a group of 5 or 6 prior colleagues from Optus (the satellite and cell phone company of Australia) met us in Terry Hills for lunch. NewSouthWales Album
Running out of books, on this trip I read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a terrible book, but a classic, made worse by other writers adding big sections claiming to be telling us what he’s really saying, John Grishim’s King of Torts, an entertaining book that confirms the truth we knew about the vulture class-action lawyers we hear on TV incessantly, and Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World, he did it 1st about 1900, a great adventure and a great book, on another great travel adventure.
[1] A note about photos. There is a link to shared Google photos related to each geographical, cities, states, territories, area. There are too many but hopefully the reader can choose to indulge as many or few or none, as he and his giga byte limit will accommodate.