Port Headland

Some hundreds km South we went into PH, which is a prospering city, living from the harbor and the iron-mines around. Good to refill our boxes with food and the tanks with affordable gas and petrol.

We found a place to overnight nearby about 65 km from PH at a working cattle-station. That was interesting, because they invited us to join their “happy hour” which is their time to sit around and chat in the evening, talking about weddings, broken generators and a lot of more stuff, which is important to them…

Karijina was the next national park on our route another 200km trip South. On the way I saw the first real desert in Australia it’s a so called reg - a desert with stones only. No wonder we found it here, they say this is the hottest part of Australia. I believe it, yesterday we had 48 degrees…

The main attractions are gorges, waterfalls and pools to swim. The only problem is, you are on top of the gorges and to swim you have to go down, which is not the worst part, after refreshing you have to climb up and the temperature was 48…

Tom Price, a nice little town West of the park is our place for tonight with pone and i-net connection and “celebrate” New Year here.

Broome

We went up North to spent some days and nights at the beaches.

In spite of of what I thought, we were alone because of the X-mas days. The sea was really warm and nice to play in the surf, no Stings and other Jellyfishes appeared.

Nice driving, no “road closed” signs and all the beaches were open to drive on. That was why we could stay on the beach to overnight joining the sea-breeze, to cope the sun and the high temperatures.

There was another flat tire and we learned, that our fridge definitely passed away. By chance we found a very affordable offer for a new one. It was only 53,10 $ ;-). That was our X-mas gift. Cool beer in the evening. How much luxury is this?

The Kimberleys

Cause of the early wetseason this year all the national parks were closed when we arrived there. This is really disappointing. But there is something to see outside the parks. Wherever we can, we are leaving the great paved roads.
So we went along the Tunnel Creek NP and the Windjana Gorge NP on a nice dirtroad with a lot of beautiful landscape and sometimes heavy rain. We saw nobody on that road. But the other day I saw a couple of the rare Rock Wallabies jumping around in the rocks.
Sometimes it was a little tricky to keep the Toyota on the road after the strong rain, the surface was slippery like soap.

The Gibb River Road led us into the Leopold Ranges, of course there too all parkroads were closed for season, luckily we could see Queen Victoria, better the rock beside the road, which is named after her.

On the Gibb River Road we saw 15 cars. 14 of them were white Toyotas. So we are fully in the trend ;-).
Now we are traveling with our Toyota since more than 10.000 km. The costs for maintainance and reparations are about 1000 Euros, for new rearsprings, a new mainbreakcylinder, a speedocable, a muffler, oil and grease. Still the engine needs no oil and runs pretty good, so I’m beginning to believe in the “everlasting” Toyota.

We arrived in Broome an old pearlfishertown, which is now the greatest settlement in the North of Western Australia. There are nice beaches for example the Cable Beach.
For us it means affordable fuelprices and not so expensive groceries, internet and phone.

The next days we want to spent on a beach in the North of Broome, before we start the long journey down South between the desert on the left and the sea to the right.

Victoria Hwy

After doing doing the groceries we left Katherine on the Victoria Hwy hearing some music from the Victoria Dr, maybe Seb should think about some Didgeridoo in his band ;-).

Still we have thunderstorms in the evening, the light-show with the rain, which is cooling down and keeping the Mossis away for better sleeping.

All the national-park are closed for season now, weigh earlier than usual. So we missed the Bungle Bungles NP, this is closed since five days. Even if it’s now dry and no more rain in the evening and the nights are warm….

Anyway the landscape in the Kimberleys is pretty nice outside NP’s too, that helps a little not to be too disappointed about all the closed roads. The “closed road” is the most seen sign in this area, we are really tired about this annoying signs.

Litchfield

After the visit in the hot and dumpy Darwin we are heading South again toward Katherine.
On the way we went into Litchfield NP, which is much nicer and not so costly than Kakadu NP. We jumped into the pools with cristalclear water at some waterfalls and spent some days at Florence Falls campground. There we had our “private” Kangaroos - mother and joey so they call the young ones here - , they came every morning pretty close to our camp for breakfast.

And there were the impressive termitemounds standing like Menhires in the Normandie.

Almost each and every evening we have more or less spectacular light-shows from faraway thunderstorms, since we left Dubbo. But in the last days the light-shows come with thunderstorms around us and heavy rain. If I say “heavy” its really a lot of water, which is falling down from the heaven, but fortunately it’s mostly only a short time. The good things at this weather-conditions are: less Mosquitoes and a cooldown for the night.

Before we arrived Katherine we went into the Nitmiluk NP with its gorge and the Edith Falls.

We are about to leave to Western Australia and the Kimberleys, hoping we are back soon on the internet. I don’t know when we’ll have the next connection, maybe we are without connectivity the next weeks….

Darwin

We arrived at Darwin at the Topend of Ausralia.
Nice beaches but nobody can swim in the sea cause of the Boxjellyfish, the most poisseness animal, and the Salties are there too.
At 43 degrees Celsius you would like to have some refreshment in the sea…

We don’t like cities too much, so we used our stay there to buy groceries and refill the tanks in the car, for less dollars than in the Outback, where is everything expensive.

Mary River

Only a few kilometers after we left the Kakadu NP we went into the Mary River region. The pavement ended without a road-closure and the wildlifefewing began.

We saw Wallabees, different kind of lizards in various sizes. At the campground we found “our” first Salties, saltwater-crocodiles. They were simply there in the river without advertising and commercials. So it was almost perfect, but there were other wildlife too, the Mosquitoes, they were really annoying.

Next day we booked the so called “Crocodilejumpingtour”, there we came very close to the Salties and could see them jumping after the bait. It was spectacular. So we had much more in the last two days than in the days before.

Kakadu Nationalpark

We see here a lot of nice nature, landscape and Aboriginal Art, but it isn’t still the highlight we expected.

The most of the roads, we wanted to drive, are seasonal closed. That means most of the interesting points are closed, especially the ones you can only rich with 4WD vehicles and the ones where you could see crocodiles.

But in Jabiru we found a nice camping-place, which is compare to the priceniveau within the park affordable and comfortable, with a real nice swimming-pool and spa, showers and all the other facilities you wish at such a place.

So everything seems to be alright, except the prices, which are weigh higher, than in the rest of Australia, where almost everything is more expensive than in Europe. Nevertheless we enjoy our days here and try to save money… a little.

We tried to visit another place with Aboriginal art, Ubirr, but this also was closed, only open in the afternoon, so we turned around, because we didn’t wanted to wait for hours in the heat. Next day we left the park pretty disappointed, everything is very expensive and the few you can see is it not worth.

Stuart Hwy

This s a boring road with less traffic and more less attractions along the road, besides the Devils Marbles and a lot of termite structures.
But we had guests at the rest-area, two spiders real serious ones and a mule, which was very attracted by our tobacco. After shouting and showing it some stones, it gave the tobacco back, later it layed down to rest for the night a few meters beside our car, until another car came into the area, which was probably more attractive, it was really funny and made our evening.
Next day we had a look into the Australian UFO center at the Whycliffwell Roadhouse.

We made an appointment with Eugen - another longtime traveler like us - in Pinecreek, from where we started into the Kakadu Nationalpark. It’s now wetsaison in the park and most of the interesting roads are closed, nevertheless there are still many things to see and we hiked a little to a cute little waterfall.

And than there was Nourlangie with very fine Aboriginal art, very well elaborated.

We are still waiting for our first Crocodile...