1998
Lionel the Landcruiser
and Tap-Tap go Walkabout

Out of the bush???
Day 11
Pine Creek - Kakadu

Hi Everyone

We are being a bit comfy tonight and staying in a a little chalet in Pine Creek - as a last bit of luxury (?) before we spend 3 days in Kakadu. We also wanted to send/check e-mail before we disappeared into the swamps 'cos we can't be contacted from now on until we get to Darwin - and by then we'll be at the conference!

Well, we planned to be in Katherine tonight, but it was full because it is a Wednesday. Yes, we thought that as well, but apparently all the bus trips come in on a Wednesday and that fills up most of the rooms. And right now seems to be the peak holiday season up here (as we have found all around our trip) so there are lots of people around. We seem to be always finding the wrong day to do things on this trip: First we got to Warburton on the day the roadhouse was closed for stocktake; so we pushed on to Giles and found that it was their stocktake the day after (and we had arrived after they closed for the night); in Alice, all the shops were closed because there was the Alice Show (which we only found out about after the event so we didn't even get to go); we got to Halls Creek on Sunday; and now it was Katherine on a Wednesday - where will it end?

So, back to today. I think the last bit was written in Kalkarindji where we spent last night on a small but well set up camp site. We did the usual this morning and got up before the sun to be on our way (with a jerry can in me to make sure we got to Top Springs OK). In fact we got to Top Springs by 9 because the road was nicely sealed - but it was a bit hard because the sun was coming up and we were travelling almost straight into it! Top Springs was nothing more than a bar with some petrol pumps outside it, but very nice people and we filled up and were away on another gravel road towards the Stuart Highway.

This was a nice road with cows and horses and some interesting creek crossings (some even had water in!). But when we got to the Stuart Highway it got pretty boring and ordinary. This is the main (and pretty much the only) road north to Darwin from Alice Springs and there were a reasonable number of cars and trucks on it. Well, every few minutes one came the other way anyway.

We stopped for lunch at a place called Elsey National Park outside a town called Mataranka. This was made famous by a book called 'We of the Never Never' which was made into a film. For the film, a replica was made of the ranch house and this has now been used as a museum at the national park. We didn't go in as the place was still recovering from the floods on Australia Day this year when the whole place was under a couple of metres of water! There was still a lot of work going on - the 'phones were still not working and they had only just got the backpacker accommodation finished today. But lunch was really nice.

We then got into Katherine, we had planned to stay at the Pine Tree Motel ('cos we had found an advert for it and it looked OK), but then we found it was full so we tried another place where they told us that everywhere was full because it was Wednesday! Then Hild came up with the idea of checking with the tourist information and they very kindly 'phoned through to the Diggers Rest Motel here in Pine Creek and got us their last room.

So off we went again and got here just before 5. A day mostly of driving, but we have got pretty close to Kakadu now so we don't have far to go tomorrow. The plan is to drive into Jabiluka where the main park information centre is and then find out what kind of things we can see. We rather fancy a boat trip to see crocodiles and such like - we don't really want to see them any closer than that! Meanwhile, there are a couple of nice 4WD tracks for me to play on getting to such places as Jim Jim Falls.

So we'll send some more stuff from Darwin in a couple of days. Keep you fingers posted!

Lionel