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August 27, 2007
We passed a new milestone today, after two
months in Australia we finally crossed a state line, from
Queensland into Northern Territory. A sign on the wall of
the last roadhouse in the state read "Welcome to Queensland, 5
years and 30 minutes ahead of Northern Territory
(NT). The five years is a joke on what is considered the
backwardness of NT, while the 30 minutes has to do with the time difference between
the two states. Yes, it is only 30 minutes, not the one
hour that might be expected in other countries.
At the border there was a
photo stop welcoming us into the state. Don climbed up on
the roof to take a 360º photo of the
emptiness that stretched all the way to the horizon.
| Then we
drove the entire day, as there wasn't much of anything else to do
or see. When we stopped for lunch, we were bombarded by
tons of grasshoppers, it was almost like a plague of locusts.
We made it all the way to the town of Tennant Creek because
there was no reason to stop. The
last 30 miles or so, we passed by an area that was suffering
from a bush fire, so there was lots of smoke and even flames right
up to the roadway. At night, the smoke covered the sky and
the flat land
made for a simultaneous blood red sunset and moonrise. |
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August 28,
2007
| Once again
we were up early and did Internet and shopping to replenish our supplies for the drive
north. We then headed off to explore an old telegraph station,
one of only four left along the Stuart Highway and then to a
spiritually important aboriginal site for the Warumungu women,
called Kunjarra, in English it means The Pebbles. At night
we celebrated a total lunar eclipse
at this spiritual place. |
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Tenant Creek Overland
Telegraph Station
August 29,
2007
| In the
morning, we headed north along the Stuart Hwy, named after the
explorer John McDougal Stuart which closely follows the route he took in his crossing of Central
Australia from Adelaide in the south to Darwin in the north.
His crossing was an amazing feat considering the landscape.
We stopped at the Historic Town of Newcastle Waters, more of a ghost
town really, but the old hotel was interesting with information,
letters and newspaper clippings detailing its history as a focal
point along three major stock routes, where drovers (cowboys)
began their long cattle drives taking the cows to market.
The last major drive took place in the 1970's, then the highway
and the road trains replaced the long journeys. A final
drive took place in the 80's as a celebration of the history of
the drover. Along the way we crossed the imaginary line
that divides the wet tropic region for the dry central region.
We stopped for the night at a roadhouse in Dunmarra. |
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August 30,
2007
We read
about the town of Daly Waters, also more of a ghost town than
anything else, and decided to stop and explore. The two
reasons to visit here are the abandoned airfield and the old
Daly Waters Pub. The airfield played an important part
during the early days of aviation when planes needed a place to
stop and refuel on trips from Sydney to Singapore.
There is a sign on the gate indicating that the airfield is in
line to be protected, but only the hanger is still standing
fully intact. Everything else, buildings and even a plane
wreck, is falling apart.
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The Daly
Waters Pub is a different story altogether. It has a
history as the oldest operating pub in Northern Territory,
having been licensed since 1893. It also is renowned for
its bizarre decorating tastes. Nearly every square inch of
wall space is covered by: name tags, police or other official
patches, money, t-shirts, underwear, stickers, farming
implements and who knows what else! We stopped for a drink
and to watch the action as people came and went.
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| Now that we
are out of the dry central area, there are more interesting
water related sights to visit. We camped in Elsey National
Park, a very small park, which protects the head waters of the
Roper River. The Roper gets its start in a number of
springs, several of which are thermal and which can be visited.
We swam in the Mataranka Thermal Pool which has a temperature of
34 degrees C, just cooler than body temperature, which was very
relaxing. Even though it is called a thermal pool, the
water isn't really heated by anything, that's just the
temperature that most of the underground water is in Australia! |
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August 31,
2007
This morning
we did a hike to Mataranka Falls. It was 4km each way,
which made it almost 5 miles round trip. We started a
little late in the morning, so we didn't get back until the heat
of the day at 2:00. We were pretty exhausted so a dip in a
different thermal pool sounded really good.
After eating
lunch, we headed off to Bitter Springs. The spring runs a
long way above ground and you can swim a good portion of its
length. The water again was the 34 degrees C, but this
time we had our masks and snorkels and were able to see what was
under the water. The bright green growth was really
beautiful and even better were the two turtles we saw. It
was so much fun that we did the round trip twice!
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